'Remember that time...?'

Memories from Monsoons

---

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, each of us examined the concept of ‘MEMORY’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

Image Credits: Aarti Krishnakumar, Aarti’s Substack

---

My cousins and I share this core memory from our childhood years. During one vacation at our village located on the slopes of Western Ghats, we were trekking up a nearby hill. As we got closer to the peak, a cloud descended from the sky. We stopped and watched as it covered the peak at first, and continued to sail further down. Very soon, we were all enveloped by a fog so thick that we could hardly see each other. We had to shout out asking everyone to not panic and stay where they were. By the time the cloud floated away from us, we were all left drenched and shivering. The pictures we took afterwards don’t do justice to the surreal feeling of a cloud dropping from the sky and passing through us - just like that. When we exchange stories from our childhoods, it’s not unusual that each of us remember different versions of any given incident. But in this case, we all remember those few minutes exactly the same way.

Remember that time when we walked into a cloud?

In our younger years, we were not much aware of the changing seasons but the rains offered just the diversion that children needed. We had our mundane daily lives revolving around school and homework, but one fine evening, the sky would open up and nothing was the same anymore. We had to look for umbrellas, wear raincoats, take shelter at a stranger’s house, and that one time, even school got cancelled because of waterlogging and all the neighbourhood children played in that muddy water.

One August, they sent me home from boarding school because I had contracted jaundice. That was the first time I was at home in the village during the monsoon season. I spent most of the time in my room watching it rain outside the window and noticed the many kinds of rain. The rains which slanted this way, and the rains which slanted the other way. The rains that came without a warning and poured for long hours in the same steady manner. And there was the rain so light that you wouldn’t even call it rain unless you were out walking without an umbrella. Years later I heard the term - continual rainfall. Rain was a constant companion whole of August like the aching/soothing theme music of a Wong Kar-wai film.

While that was August, the birth of the rainy season in early June is anything but soothing. I was over 35 years old when, for the very first time, I witnessed the arrival of monsoon rain in my village.

I was in that same room but unable to sleep that night because of all the drama unfolding outside my window. The southwest monsoon was making its way up from the coastal areas with such a fury that tall and large trees were bending over to give way. Even after keeping all the windows shut, the wind screamed through tiniest of gaps making loud whistling sounds like a horror movie trying too hard. For a moment, I feared if that was usual or if the roof might just fly off.

As scary as the night was, I woke up next morning to see the world around me had sprung back to life. A robin was tweeting from a nearby tree, while big flies buzzed outside my window, and children on the street were making haste to reach school on time.

---

---

Here are essays from my fellow writers exploring ‘Memory’ -

• Memory — my blessing and my burden - Aarti Krishnakumar

• I am at war with memory - Ameya Thachappilly

• Unphotographable by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• #12: On Memory by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

• When the Screen Came to Life by Vikram, Vikram’s Substack

• the memories/ earrings / people i keep by Shruthi, Will you be my friend?