Once, the rains were gentler.
Fifty years ago, in the cradle of my childhood,
two seasons of water ruled the land—
the monsoon, and its retreating twin.
June opened the schools, and with them the skies;
July carried the rhythm forward.
October and November brought the second act,
a thunderous farewell, a curtain of lightning.
Children, bright in new uniforms,
umbrellas blooming like wildflowers,
walked through silver veils of rain.
The journey to school was not a burden,
but a festival of droplets,
each step a dance upon the soaked earth.
The monsoon poured without pause—
day and night, a ceaseless hymn.
Heavy, yes, but tender in its weight,
filling brooks and rills,
creeks and rivers,
ponds, wells, lakes, and dams.
The soil drank deeply, cooled,
and whispered readiness for cultivation.
The retreating monsoon arrived like a tempest’s drum,
thunder cracking open the evening sky.
Two, sometimes three hours of fury,
yet children walked home unafraid,
their laughter mingling with the storm.
Lightning was rare in its cruelty,
calamity a stranger to those days.
That rain too filled reservoirs,
soaked the soil,
and coaxed saplings to rise.
Only the darkness of power outages
reminded us of its force—
the electricity board silencing the wires
to shield fragile machines from the storm’s touch.
Now the rhythm is broken.
The monsoon no longer keeps its promise,
nor does its retreating shadow.
Low-pressure wounds in the sea,
cyclones unmoored from schedule,
have torn apart the calendar of seasons.
Summer wears rain like an ill-fitting cloak;
monsoon burns with heat;
storms arrive uninvited.
El Niño, the trickster,
weakens the monsoon’s breath,
delays its arrival,
starves the dry lands into drought.
Elsewhere, it multiplies the torrents,
turning gentle showers into violent floods.
It raises the fever of the earth,
summoning heatwaves that scorch the skin of nations.
Now when rain comes, it does not fall—
it bursts, it rages,
it claws at the hillsides,
pulling landslides into its wake.
Floods devour homes,
thousands perish,
and countless more are driven into camps,
their houses dissolved into memory.
Rivers, once regal and serene,
now swell with fury,
overflowing their banks,
dragging devastation wherever they wander.
Reservoirs and dams, once guardians,
become executioners,
their excess spilling into villages,
their waters carrying death.
Electricity vanishes for days,
roads crumble, bridges collapse,
and travel becomes impossible.
The hand of man has carved this fate.
Deforestation, mining, quarrying—
each act a wound upon the earth,
each scar a fracture in balance.
Human greed has tilted the scales,
and nature answers with storms.
In the chaos, even cruelty finds its stage:
men use the cover of disaster
to settle old scores.
Enemies fall,
and the rain itself conspires,
washing away the evidence,
erasing the truth in its flood.
