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Memories of Rain

Posted on October 5, 2008
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Oct 4th. The first rain of the season arrived today. All of yesterday carried the portent of rain but it didn’t rain. It started sometime early today morning. I had left Maya’s car seat outside after Shanthala had washed it. I don’t know if Shanthala asked me in the middle of the night if I had told the nanny to bring the car seat in. I believe I nodded yes and went back to sleep. I didn’t remember that I had also asked Ginez to leave it out because the seat was still so wet. I woke up around 6 am startled that I had left the car seat outside. I brought it in, wetter than before. And I was awake.

Rain here falls in the winter, beginning some time in autumn and continuing till the break of summer. So it is cold. Like the ocean, Shanthala dislikes the rain here, an event she enjoyed in India, where coming after the torrid heat of summer, the cool rain was a welcome relief, the dark clouds providing some cover from the months of blue, blazing skies. Here the rain adds to the chill of already cold winter days, the gray of the clouds bringing the daylight at noon and twilight at four. Here, Shanthala finds it gloomy and depressing.

Not surprisingly then, in the west rain usually has a negative connotation. The English language is filled with expressions such as “rain down on my parade”, “come rain or shine”, “into every life, a little rain must fall”, “save for a rainy day”. Hollywood has tended to use rain to show depressing, gloomy and even ominous conditions whether it be Blade Runner, Gorillas in the Mist, Jurassic Park or Raiders of the Lost Ark. The only movie which showed rain in a positive light was the Gene Kelly classic, Singin’ In the Rain, but that too depicted a man happy despite the rain, not because of it. The most positive light that the west has shown rain has been as a time for rumination, especially in modern American nature poetry.

In tropical places such as India, rain is usually greeted with joy. In rural countries, it is a harbinger of joy and life. In the African country of Botswana, home to the Kalahari desert, the local currency is called pula, the local name for rain. Growing up in India, I frequently saw kids frolick in the rain. In the poorer quarters, the puddles provided much needed water for cleaning, and in some cases even drinking. The puddles were also a fertile ground for disease breeding mosquitoes. In India, rain has frequently been romanticised, especially in Bollywood movies, from film songs such as “zindagi bar nahin bhulegi woh barsaat ki raat”, “rim jhim gire sawan”, “main pyasa tum sawan”, and “sawan ke jhule pade”. It has also been a repeat setting in the movies, from Nargis and Raj Kapoor singing in the rain in Barsaat to their modern day counterparts using the rain to accentuate the eroticism of the song and dance ritual.

In Bangladesh, rain must be dreaded, for every year, a regular event of the monsoon season is the flooding of the Brahmaputra river, an event that made me associate dread every time I think about that river. Between originating near Mt. Kailash in Tibet and emptying into the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, it forms the deepest canyon in the world, Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon in Tibet. Occupying the flood plains of three major rivers and with the highest population density in the world, causing much of the drainage areas to be occupied, it is hardly surprising that so much flooding occurs there with so many deaths.

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls

From the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain drenched streets
To India where my heart lies – Paul Simon

Once in Davanagere, the rain had created a little pond just outside our house. The water was knee deep. When I was little, my father had purchased a battery powered toy ship that moved through water. Not having sufficiently large clean, accessible bodies of water, the ship had been stuck in my closet. Seizing the chance, my cousins, who were visiting us, and I eagerly released the boat in the pond. I had seen it move only once before in my life, in a little bucket that my father had used to demonstrate the toy to me. Released from its years in the docks, the green and white ship eagerly chugged through the water, heading towards the far shore. As we watched enthralled, it promptly sank in the middle of little puddle. Dismayed by its Titanic behavior after such a short run, I wondered how we could retrieve it. Without much ado, one of my cousins, happily waded into the puddle and retrieved the ship. My father was aghast when he heard what we had done. “Do you know people relieve themselves in such puddles ?”, he demanded, “You can get all sorts of diseases from doing what you did”. He insisted that my cousin bathe immediately. Repulsed and fascinated by horrible skin conditions that I thought could be contracted from such dirty water, I secretly looked for any signs of a monster on my cousin’s skin for the remainder of the days they stayed with us. The ship was returned to the closet, where I believe it still is.

My first experience of torrential rain was in Kerala. The rains typically started around 9 or 9:30 in the morning, just as we got into our classrooms, providing a gentle rhythm to the monotonic drone of the teachers. It didn’t stop till around five or so in the evening, when we were ready to go home. I had never seen rain like that, lashing at the buildings, the tall, slim coconut trees swaying like they were out partying on a Friday night. We’d be stuck at lunch break in our classrooms, our playground flooded. In the evening, my father would typically send a car to bring me home, but sometimes one of our house helps would arrive in a bicycle to take me back. Balanced on the front bar of the bicycle, He weaved a complicated weave on the road, avoiding puddles as much as he could, but not succeeding entirely. I’d lift my feet up precariously whenever the splashing got a little more than usual, making him wobble dangerously. I hated getting the dirty water on me.

In Bangalore after I started working, a few nights I rode my motorcycle home in the rain. I remember one time, I rode home around 1 am. It had rained steadily for a while and the streets were flooded, the water a little more than ankle deep in many parts. I was tired and brilliantly awake at the same time, having successfully debugged a rather difficult problem in my code. I rode home high on the thrill of a job well done, enjoying getting drenched.

The rain came down like beads
Bouncing on the noses of the
People from the train
A flock of salty ears
Sparkled in the traffic lights
Feet squelched soggy leaves across the grain
I took my love to Clifton in the rain – Al Stewart

One evening, two months before our wedding, Shanthala and I accompanied our parents as they shopped for the event, going from shop to shop as they looked for sarees, shirts, pants and suits. Shanthala had come down from Mumbai where she was doing her residency in Anesthesia, and so we had just a couple of days in which to cram something that people usually spend weeks, if not months, on. I insisted that we both ride on my bike, wanting as much alone time with her as possible, before she was just a voice on the phone again. The skies opened up between two shops and we arrived, wet and ragged. My father insisted that we buy new clothes. “I don’t want you two to die before your wedding”, he joked. Another time, taking Shanthala to the airport after our honeymoon, I overrode my parents objections to taking an autorickshaw and took her on my bike. As another vehicle swerved suddenly in front of me, I lost balance on the wet street and crashed. Luckily neither of us were injured. Shaken, we got into an auto for the airport, the driver seemingly sympathetic to our plight. Halfway there, the auto driver insisted that we pay him double the fare. Irritated and upset at him taking advantage of our condition, we asked him to drop us off immediately so that we could flag another auto. When we finally got to the airport, Shanthala realized that she had left her wallet in the previous auto. She lost her passport, air ticket and a few thousand rupees.

In Mumbai too, the rain comes down in sheets, clogging up the rain gutters in a matter of hours, flooding the streets and the slums, bringing the local commuter trains to a halt at least once in the season, making the people jump onto the tracks and wade their way home. When we lived there, on Saturdays, Shanthala usually got off work around noon. I’d take the train to meet her at her hospital. We’d have lunch some place and wander the streets till we met some friends for dinner in the city, eventually taking a late train back home. On one such day, I was looking out the window of that small room that we called house, watching my first rain in Mumbai. When it showed no signs of stopping at eleven, having started early that morning, I decided to go down to a store and place a call to Shanthala indicating that we should put off our afternoon sojourn because of the rain. As I emerged from the apartment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. People carried on their frenetic Mumbai life as usual, but with umbrellas. But on Tuesday, July 26, 2005, Mumbai experienced a deluge, 27 inches in 24 hours causing the entire city to come to a standstill. 400 people died, an estimated third of the city under 15 feet of water, many buildings collapsed, dead cattle floated through the city streets. Pictures below courtesy of mumbai77.



The rain’s stopped. I had wondered when I awoke if this would be Maya’s first experience of rain.

When it rained, Kitty would sit like a stuffed doll, his eyes languid and dreamy, sleeping most of the time, demanding to be let out only when the sun was shining, shunning water in that mythical feline way. Like the rain, he’s gone now, his season over, but acyclical unlike the rain. I remember the first rain after he was gone, I worried that he’d get wet out there in our yard, unable to come back in, unhappy that his fur was all wet. Does he frolick in the rain now, now that his fur is no longer in the way ?

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I – Paul Simon

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Just A Place Where We Used To Live

Posted on September 22, 2008
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Ghost towns. Towns completely abandoned by its inhabitants because living there was no longer possible, usually due to economic circumstances. I’ve always thought that ghost towns were an American artifact. I didn’t think this concept existed in places like India where villages have existed for centuries, when new ways of eking out an existence didn’t work, you could go back to the old ways. Usually.

Last week, my parents went to Gokarna, a holy place in Southern India, to perform a ceremony honoring my father’s dead parents. On the way, they stopped at Davanagere and visited Yellamma Mills, the textile mills where my father worked for about six years, back in the ’80s. The pictures that he took, of what once was our house, reminded me of ghost towns.

When we moved to Davanagere in 1982, it was still a big textile industry hub, called the Manchester of Karnataka. A rather dry, arid place, it was on the Bangalore-Pune highway, an important arterial road. There were about seven textile mills, the most famous being Davanagere Cotton Mills (called DCM) and the industry was one of the largest local employers. My father was the General Manager of a mill that was owned by the Government, part of the National Textile Corporation. It was located about seven kilometers outside the town, in a little village called Tolahunase, surrounded by fields cultivating dry crops, and reached by a narrow, often potholed road, off the main highway.

The mill provided quarters for many of its administrative staff. My father, as the chief, had the biggest house. The colony of houses was shaped in the form of a rectangle. Surrounded by a large garden, our house stood in the center of the top of the rectangle. It was a rather large house, as most of our houses tended to be. I had a room to myself as did my sister. My mother was fond of gardens, relying on the gardener to carry out her instructions and perform the daily chores of gardening. Not far from our house ran an irrigation canal, the water flowing swiftly as I watched it from the steep banks, wishing I could swim.

I was in high school, in the 10th standard. I hated it that my father had to move every three or so years, uprooting our lives, carrying with us the things we could such as books, clothes and furniture and leaving behind things we could not, such as my friendships and schools. This move was even more painful for me because I was moving back to Karnataka after almost five years of being out of it. I had studied in a completely different schooling system and had lost touch with Kannada, my mother tongue, and I had to pass an exam in it now. 10th standard is a big deal in India. It was the first of the forks in the road, one of which led to a life of success (as engineering and medical professions were considered back then) or the other to a life that was considered the domain of losers (anything that wasn’t one of those two professions). I hadn’t expected the place to change my life as completely as it did.

Davanagere was a rough, dusty town, unaccustomed to the fineries of larger cities. English movies arrived infrequently and the movie halls were not as grand as the ones we had left behind in Kerala. When we arrived, it had no fine restaurants to speak of, no place my father could take his business associates for a drink and a meal. “The only culture in Davanagere is agriculture”, my father used to say. It was a rich town, thanks to the merchants and mill owners. For the first time in my life, I had friends who lived in larger houses than I did.


It was in this house that I came of age. Here that I first began to question everything including who I was and where I was headed (not career-wise but as a human being). Here that I lost my faith, going gradually from praying three times a day – reciting the holy scriptures from memory as I performed the ritual called “Sandhyavandane” – to to not praying at all, openly declaring my loss of faith and finally discarding the sacred thread that I wore as a mark of being a brahmin.

It was in this house that I was introduced to science in a way that I had not before. A friend of my father’s lent me George Gamow’s classic “One, Two, Three Infinity”, changing my reading and thinking forever. Here that I encountered Ayn Rand and fell in love with her narrative, carrying it with me till I became better acquainted with life and appreciate the Gita of Shanthala’s life, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

It was in this house that I first came face to face with my limitations, with the possibility that I may not be as bright as I thought I was, that my future was more cloudy than I was willing to admit. Here that I experienced the disappointment of failing the IIT entrance exam, of barely scraping into the local engineering school.

It was in this house that I first stared at the night sky in wonder. With the help of a binoculars that my father had obtained, I spent countless hours, lying in the garden, staring at the night sky, trying to decipher the constellations and view the planets, failing miserably at both. But for the first time, I saw that the spaces between the stars were sometimes filled with clouds of what seemed like faint stars. And some single stars resolved themselves into two through the binoculars.

It was in this house that I watched a crow and a cobra fight each other. The crow seemed to be taunting the snake more than actually hunting it, letting it eventually slither away. It was here that one night, a night watchman caught thirteen scorpions and tied them all up for me to see in the morning. It was here that I encountered vipers, two of them sleeping behind rectangular pots of plant, clearly visible from inside the house, excitedly discovered by my sister and I. And here that two people died of snake bite, one a young child.

It was in this house that I first watched a movie on video. My father had purchased a used video recorder and brought home two movies with it. We watched the same two movies repeatedly till video rental stores started sprouting.

It was in this house that I first rode a motorbike, a used Ind-Suzuki that I rode to college everyday. It was here that I first owned a pet, a pair of rabbits. My father built my little sister a tree house at the back where she whiled her hours away, playing housie and holding a school where she was the strict teacher, willing to use the cane at the slightest infraction.

It was in this house that I had my sexual awakening, though as was the case with most kids of my generation in India, there was little I could do with the knowledge.

And it was in this house that that one golden fall evening, Shanthala came home, looking stunning, in that silver gray dress, and I made us a cup of tea and we sat on the parapet of the roof, and watched the sun set. It was the first time I had cooked something for her. Here that I first recognized and yearned for, that childlike delight and innocence that she possessed. It was here that we forged our relationship, talking on the phone for hours, driving our parents mad. “Why do you speak so softly to her”, my father would demand to know, “With everybody else, your voice can be heard for miles”.


To see the house in ruins now saddened me, the sadness catching me by surprise. I have never been able to see the inside of a house that I lived in as a child, not a single one. I had plans of visiting them all some time and taking Shanthala with me, but it never came to pass. The one in Gulbarga is gone, demolished completely. The one in Bangalore is still standing, but just a shell. And I don’t know the fate of the houses in Coimbatore and Kerala. This house also was the dearest to my heart, outside of my grandparents home in Bangalore, which is also gone.

With globalization, the textile industry left Davangere, leaving many thousands unemployed. When I was there the last time, a friend of my in-laws, an attorney, told me about the surge in crime thanks to the soaring unemployment. Of the seven mills, only one still remained, barely. The biggest of them all, DCM, had been completely demolished, converted into a residential development, all traces of it ever being a textile mill gone. A couple had closed doors even while we were there.

Tolahunase didn’t turn into a ghost town, even sporting a new post-graduate center for the newly formed Kuvempu University. But the colony of Yellamma mills did, save for the shrine to goddess Yellamma that my father built, god and nature reclaiming back what was once theirs.


This empty kitchen’s where
I’d while away the hours
Just next to my old chair
You’d usually have some flowers
The shelves of books
Even the picture hooks
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on
…
Once there was a little boy
Used to wonder what he would be
Went out into the big wide world
Now he’s just a memory
There used to be a little school here
Where I learned to write my name
But time has been a little cruel here
Time has no shame

It’s just a place where
We used to live – Mark Knopfler

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Girls in India: An All Time Low

Posted on June 21, 2008
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This was the horror that visited me with today morning’s coffee. The ratio of girls to boys has hit an all time low in five north and northwestern states in India, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana. While I knew about this problem from before, I was shocked to read that the conditions have gotten worse. In one site in Punjab, there are only 300 girls to 1000 boys !

The problems are not just in rural India. The ratio of girls to boys was declining the fastest in prosperous, educated, economic powerhouse, urban India. Shanthala and I know of a couple who aborted their fetus because they found out that it was to be a girl. Laws passed to prevent parents from determining the sex of the fetus using ultrasound go unenforced, like so much else in India. If ultrasound and abortion are the tools used by the rich, the well heeled and well connected, letting the umbilical cord get infected, stuffing rice and tobacco down the infant’s throat and denying medical services is how the poor deal with their “fate” of birthing a girl. The report is available here.

Maya sat innocently and happily in her little infant seat while I read this horror. The thought of subjecting Maya to any of these techniques made our blood run cold. I couldn’t stop the tears as I read about the mothers who were forced by social pressures to kill their infant girls. A villager named Meena Tomar became my hero. She resisted having more children and terminating the lives of her two daughters.

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon – Pink Floyd

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