The Fight

It is the onset of winters and we have gotten busy, I am told, slugging it out to decide which one the two -- Sunnis or Shiites -- has a better Muslim soul. And the faithful can go bonkers in trying to prove that their belief has some divine sanction while 'otherising' the godawful deviant. Unmind of the ludicrousness taking place in down town Srinagar, heavens opened up last night and it rained. Nature has its own ways and means of pissing at human witlessness.

How I love the sound of ceaseless tapping made by a million tiny rain globs! Like some ancient aqua dance. Nature is an orchestra conductor with a magical wand-in-hand. An unseen choirmaster to whom the clouds bobble. Winds blow. Plants prance. Like tiny teardrops, which are beautiful, glistening and innocent, rains come.

I like to walk in rain. When it rains on humans it cleans up many dusty layers and cuts through the cobwebs. I imagine old chimneys happily piping up smoke in a distance. I think about a flock of swallows fluttering somewhere in a frenzy, caught up in the rain, looking for some dry perch.

When it is dark and cloudy outside, I’m oft transfixed by lightning -- the ferocious signature of God on his palimpsest. In red ink. Like a furious school teacher, signing a poor marks sheet. In red. Cross at us for some archaic reason. Don’t we do our home work well enough?

It is end November and it is raining. On our new found bitterness. On stones lying about in Zadibal. On Sunni mosques. On the homes of the Hurriyet. On Taj's ill-gotten farms. On half-constructed aspirations. On bunkers with ugly slits in them. On Shaheed marguzars. On bare cherry trees.

It is raining. In-to our old miseries. In large puddles. In the begging bowls of the homeless who have nowhere to go. In desolate alleys. In the hollow of our prayers. In the crevices of our history.

Early winter rain. How genial.

© Sameer
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