‘Valvacha paus‘, my Aji calls it. Midsummer rain. Rain that stands with one foot planted in the middle of monsoon, the other in breezy spring. Stuck, forever, between arrival and departure. Drenched in the sweat of hurried immediacy that the rising heat undoubtedly forces upon the weather-gods.

I called it “hatti paus” all though my childhood. Hatti, like elephants. “Did you know that raindrops the size of half-anna coins fall from the sky when it rains?” my grandfather asked me one day, as I stood looking out the window sulkily, pouting because it was a school day, and school days meant not getting wet in the rain. It didn’t help that that the phrase imprinted itself in my imagination as vividly as the repetitive forests of green I would scribble in my notebooks. Always, and only, forests of green. It was the colour of transition to me. The in-between. Almost sunshine-blue, not quite rainy-brown. That night I dreamed of elephants and copper coins and puddles as big as upturned umbrellas.

It hasn’t rained like that in my hometown for a while. At any rate, if it did, I missed it, for two years in a row now. When the sky clouds over in my part of the world, I call Aji and ask her how she is. I imagine the rainclouds rushing to listen in on our conversation, elephants trampling in their pillowy depths to make it rain. When I miss her, I say, “I miss you.” When she misses me, she says, “Sleep on time and don’t skip your breakfast.” In between our conversations, the weather-gods work their magic. A while ago, it drizzled in the sunny city where I spend my days. For now, I wait to go home. To sit with Aji and to look out the window. To dream of elephants and to watch it pour and pour and pour.

On Marathi, Ingraji Madhe

I call my neighbour maushi
Which means aunt
In my native language

Sometimes when we have a conversation
I feel her shrink
Into a box
Become smaller with every word
Until her eyes are faraway places
And her voice is a whisper that’s barely even there
Sorry, she says,
I’m not very fluent in English
Sorry

I call my mother’s mother Aji
Which means grandmother
In my native language
There’s a quiet dignity about her
In the way that she reads her English newspapers
And strings her sentences together
With the precision of a tailorbird at work
She doesn’t stumble often
But when she does
I can see the shame rising in her eyes
Thick and toxic
Like the judgement she’s come to expect
For her Indianness, her marathi madhyamik shikhan

An education that told her where she belonged

And especially, where she didn’t in the colonial food-chain
Sorry, she says
I think I mispronounced that word
I’m sorry

When we get invitations for special occasions
They say, saha-kutumba ya
Bring your family with you
Everyone celebrates life and love
And the ability to speak in English
(Which is the biggest blessing of them all, visaru naka)

When I talk to my younger cousins in Marathi
They answer my questions in English
Kase ahat? – I’m great! How are you?

I want to tell them, I’m not okay
I am a dry mouth full of words that are dying out
I am shrivelled leaves from these festering roots
I want to tell them, I’m not okay
That my language scratches at my throat
And hides underneath my skin
Waiting to explode or for me to implode
Because they refuse to speak in theirs

I want to apologize for them
Or for me
Or for the language that gives all its love
And gets nearly none in return
Instead I say, theek ahe
I’m fine –
Or at least, I hope I will be.

***

A portrait of my sister, or a study in grief:

One hand in unthinking, steadfast motion, painting comforting circles on someone else,

The other stiffly curled into a fist, as if to contain the immensity of the breaking moment, when life crystallizes into memory; the present into a tense-change. A tense change: the future into a would-have-been.

Slender neck, drooping, unnatural; out of sorts with natural habit: to greet an ending is to learn how to bend without breaking.

Back stiff, hurt into rigidity by this loss; shoulders stooping symmetrical circles, weighted down by this loss: a push and a pull, no respite in between.

From where I sit, I cannot see her eyes. Thank goodness for that. I can only see the flowers from beyond the blue-black of her hair. Too bright against the white of the shroud: a picture unto themselves.