Rain in the urban daytime

Where I live in Chennai, living space is quickly running out. Because buildings have been squeezed into the smallest of spaces, the municipality has prohibited builders from constructing anything more than six floors or so. What we have now is nothing short of a "shopping hamlet": the city's busiest shopping venue, South Usman Road, is a few steps from my door, and every day, millions of people drive in via small tributary veins to reach the shops and hundreds of houses surrounding it.

[caption id="attachment_21162" align="aligncenter" width="476" caption="Soacha, near Bogota (Where I live, the houses form a hive and the walls are painted anything from nauseating grey to blinding pink)"][/caption]

My house is positionally the backward-most: there are many more residences above mine, beside mine, ahead of mine, and more are coming up behind mine. Compound walls rise and fall at awkward locations; at one point, it disappears for about five feet before showing up again. The section, I hear, was knocked out because it is a popular spot for playing cricket, with each half of the pitch on either sides of the wall. Clotheslines are suspended from one window on the second floor of one building to a parapet on the fourth floor of another building. Those on the third floor whose "view" stood obscured took revenge by flicking the better-looking shirts.

Smack in the middle of this chaos is a large Azadirachta indica, a neem tree of the mahogany family, taking up a small section of land that pushed the parking slots around it into a bulge. Instead, bikes are now propped up against stairways, windows, the doors of houses whose people have gone on vacation (someone's always on vacation), and in drainage pools that have run dry.

The only thing all of this changes is the sound of rain. When it's pouring, no matter how hard I strain my ears, I can't hear the telltale white noise, the cacophonous medley of a million droplets crashing down on mud and grass and rock. I can't spot a droplet against the dark grey skies and trace it all the way down to its demise, and I can't aspire to watch rivulets gather strength and join a meandering boa of dirtied freshwater on the road.



But this is a universe I enjoy living in. I'm not going to root for a rollback of faster urbanization because I know that houses matter more than the sound of rain, and I know that urbanization itself isn't the problem as much as the growing need for such houses. This is rain in the urban daytime, where the best sound is when I hear the water from the open terrace drain through a pipe provided for just that, pouring out loudly on the neighbour's doorstep.

I'm not saying the sound of rain is a luxury. In fact, I'm saying the sound of rain is just not that: it's a mundane fact that doesn't make a difference in my life. The sounds and sights of this world are sounds and sights because we deemed them so. Now, the times are changing, there are different problems that demand solving, lifestyles that demand different thinking. This change in the way we think essentially is a change of our environmental consciousness.

The sparrows didn't fly away because my demand for a house lead to the manufacture of an asbestos sheet for a makeshift roof, a motorcycle whose parts were flown in from Germany or Japan, a plot of land cleared and the dust whipped into the air, or a hundred litres of petrol that had to be drawn out of an Arabian oil-field, shipped to India and distributed in Chennai so I could drive to work. They didn't fly away because my presence in the city demanded all these necessities but because such are the necessities I can demand at all.

If I'm going to do my bit for the environment, I'm not going to do it so I can bring back the sparrows, reclaim the dense green foliage or see squirrels jump on the clotheslines. If going to do my bit for the environment, I'm going to have to live in a city, chase away the sparrows, build clotheslines that confuse squirrels, know it's raining by looking at the sky and then the drain-pipe, and meet all my needs, and then, once I'm equipped with knowledge and resource, set out to do something constructive. I'm part of the problem by default because I have to partake of its advantageous collateral.

Everyone likes to take capitalism to town when it comes to how it's messed up the environment, but capitalism has nothing to do with it. Whoever is the cause of a problem will find himself in the best position to solve it, and that holds true even in this case: the one most equipped to bring the sparrows back is not me, and it most definitely is not my need of a motorcycle. The one most equipped is the maker of the motorcycle. Only at the conception is any thought meted out to implication: I have not created a demand for motorcycles but one of transportation, and giving me the choice - "take the bus or buy a scooter" - doesn't mean I have assumed the burden, too.

I quite enjoy the rain like this, no longer allowed an open air of passage. This way, it doesn't get everywhere, but only where it is allowed to go - into pipes, down slopes, through slits and grills, slowed over ridges, coursing down flutes, collected into depressions and let out into a sanctuary where it won't encourage moss-gathering or rust-forming. It is a controlled and utilitarian environment not because I hate the rain but because it is the only place where, if I slip and fall, I won't fall over a wall, against a clothesline, on a motorcycle, or through the window of the house next door.

The fifth traveler

At the edge of civilization,
Where it was raining day and night,
We decided to bury our our feud and join
Each other on the road thereafter.
Now John he was a guitarist
And struck up a tune
That traveled with us as the fourth traveler;
The sound of its music was like the rain,
Trespassing our loneliness like a silent killer.

As we walked we saw an old man
Sitting in a raincoat 'neath a tree:
He lit up a cold smoke.
Its orange light swam the wrinkles of his hand.
He looked long at us searching for an open ear
Into which he'd crawl to escape the shifting sands.

But we had no time for talk or play
Even though we had nowhere to go
Because each of us knew
That he was in a place where he'd like to stay,
Where the knowing silence of death stalked us,
And the temples were where we wanted to pray.

Gently we came upon a fallen tree,
Uprooted by the fury of an ancient storm,
Its leaves and boughs scattered.
Our journey seemed over in that shadowy sea,
And we rested our backs against the wood,
Finally with that silent surrender becoming free.

And John he finally let his eyes weep
For the loss of a friend long ago;
We tried to hold him down.
His sorrow in the dark was our treasure to keep;
He smashed his guitar there and fell down crying,
And there we lay fear our fifth traveler to sleep.

A Song That Sang Itself

Vienna International Airport is small but interesting. I knew the ‘small’ part of it beforehand. The whole airport, though being divided into five terminals and displaying a confident sort of busyness, has the standard assortment of Duty Free stores to offer. However, the ‘interesting’ bit is something I think will remain so only for a few people.

When I took off from Stockholm’s Arlanda, I did not know that my connecting flight to Dubai had been cancelled, and that I had been rebooked into the 23.15 – a misfortune that left me looking at a stale 10 hours of waiting and watching the clock tick slowly away. An SAS employee at a helpdesk informed me about this much later – but what made the difference was that she really seemed sorry about my status quo. Also, the free food coupons!

Anyway, I landed at Vienna with nothing to do at all and, for the first time in 20 years, realised how important spending time usefully actually was. In those 10 hours, I must have spent at least five walking up and down the longer span of the airport. The other five, I spent looking out a window. That’s also when things were interesting.

The window looked out into an area where the planes seemed to be docked. The runway was a little way ahead, and that particular afternoon, it was very foggy and wet. Below, I could see the engineers bustling around with all their equipments and waiting for aircraft engines to go faulty or the wings freeze up. Just behind me was a shop whose banner read ‘Travel & Care’, and they played good music. Just then, Annie Lennox’s ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ was going on, and my calves were starting to ache. I turned around and decided to lean against the railing set adjacent to the wall. A short while later, when I saw a couple staring pointedly at something behind me, I turned around again, but this time, for quite a view.

The metal birds were dozing while the brains ran around them in their trucks and what-nots. There was a group of crows in the distance, dancing with the wind. A parking lot below was full of cars except for one empty slot, into which was a black car was now easing. The vipers on its windshield were on full swing and its indicators flashed into the blockade brightly.

A gentle drizzle began just then, and if you had been there and put your face against the window, you could’ve seen each raindrop crash and slide against the Perspex. It was like watching the world from inside a prison cell: as each drop landed, a battle was fought just a few inches away from your eyes. So much torment and turbulence at the other end, and you stood here admiring a beauty that only you could see. It was beautiful.

The song changed to Green Day’s ‘Wake Me Up’. Just then, on the runway, an Emirates jet was building momentum for its ascent. Its tail fin cut through the fog like a burning blade through butter, and the dense cold clouds formed a smooth streamlined trail at the end. After the plane took off, all that remained was a streak of water suspended limply in the air, along with billows of dew that had been whipped off the ground. September ended there, and when I looked up, there was a lonely crow flying around in circles.

“Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last…“

The world just beyond that window was like a song that was singing itself, moving from one statuesque verse to another. The crows flying around the place as though not knowing what to do or what to make of the great white elysian birds beneath, the black car now easing itself out of the parking slot as nonchalantly as if it had nothing to with the bustle around it, the rain drops and their ceaseless pounding wanting me to belong to a tempestuous world. Music and nature are enigmas, and will remain so for quite some time to come.

Vienna International Airport was a ghost town that evening, and I was happy to be an ethereal part of it – if only to myself and to those unconcerned crows.

The Dreaming Grey: A poem

Mildewed in cold February were the leaves and grey
In the evening winds where they gently lay
        In pursuit of some joy forlorn
        Whereto the sands of time had never yet gone
        A winter’s fey, a winter’s fey
Mourned the mildewed leaves where they gently lay

Cloaked in dreary snow were the windows today
Overlooking streets where children ne’er played
        Forever lost in a neighbour’s dreams
        Lending an indifferent ear to our silent screams
        A winter’s lay, a winter’s lay
Called the windows unto the streets empty and insatiate

Unborn and nigh loveless were the words left to say
Yet hope remains for a callow to endure the starved clay
        When leaves may know their green again
        And windows may live their dreams under the rain
        A summer’s day, a summer’s day
So the children may remember the vaunt it is to play