Monsoon Benediction

Let us suppose: today there is no sun. The sky is heavy with clouds. Yet the clouds cannot be captured, for they are elusive — and yet they were real, present. It was because of them that, after promising to meet at three, I arrived at the bus stand at five. There was no telling when the cloud-laden hour would arrive. But the promise was certain: she would come. Is there any year when she does not? Rather, it is I who must wait — scorched beneath the furnace of summer afternoons, holding my patience as though it were a ritual.
 
At last, at five, Meghla appeared at the bus stand. Around us the sun blazed mercilessly, and yet from the southern sky there spread a quiet, dark smile. Gradually, evening crept in on the clock’s hands, and it seemed as though the sun, restless and hurried, had sunk prematurely into the west. Then suddenly — tap — a raindrop slid down my ear and touched my neck. Another, and another — larger drops. From the opposite stand, I glimpsed Meghla, raising her hand to call me. As I moved toward her, the sky burst open — torrents of rain crashing down. The monsoon had arrived. My old beloved had returned.
 
And how could I not recall that song — “On a day in Baisakh we first met, the rains brought us together, now Ashadh has come, the heart wonders, what may unfold, what may unfold?” In this blending of old and new, the romance of the monsoon still carries a fragrance of love, untouched by time. Spring and autumn may claim the prestige of elder siblings, but monsoon — my younger sister among the seasons — is my dearest. Yet, what love, what tenderness, what familial affection dwells within the rains — all of it vanishes, almost instantly, in the monsoon-bound city. After a single downpour, the romance dissolves.
 
The very beauty of the word barsha (monsoon), its romance, its emotion, curdles into melancholy the moment it is trapped within the sticky mud and sweat of urban life. I, at least, reached Meghla that day across the street, rain-drenched but unharmed. But that very day, another lover of rain, on his way to another Meghla, slipped into a manhole at Gariahat and never returned. At Hatibagan, yet another slipped in the mud beneath a bus wheel; his body, bloodied and caked in filth, made my heart shudder.
 
And there I stood, with Meghla, beneath the shelter of a bus-stand roof, when a taxi roared by, splashing the entire gutter’s filth upon us before vanishing into the storm. That day, rain was no longer romantic. This city, this state, this nation, remains forever a land where monsoon means wading knee-deep in obscene city waters — stepping into unseen pits and breaking a leg, watching children drown in open manholes, epidemics of enteric fever and dengue, markets in disarray, inflation soaring — an unbearable season. And if too much rain falls, the curse grows worse: the terror of floods.
 
Only last year, after great hardship, people rebuilt their homes, returned to villages — and yet, before the year is out, floods threaten again. Endless political squabbles over relief, endless protests, endless hypocrisy — all must be endured again. Last year’s wounds have not dried, and already the clouds gather. Ministers remain oblivious. River-reclamation projects have not begun, mired in bureaucratic lethargy. Wooden bridges wait for concrete replacements — held up, not by engineers, but by the absence of a proper dignitary for the inauguration. And in Calcutta, the drainage system has gone to hell in the furnace of political infighting. The branches of the Ganges have rotted into stagnant canals, silt choking the rivers into lifelessness.
 
Meanwhile, life sprawls upon pavements under a sheet of plastic — an entire household under one tarpaulin. The surrounding lowlands stand like goats before the butcher’s block. Commerce sits at the altar, worshipping Lakshmi with zeal. Developers fill wetlands to erect concrete dreams. The state remains apathetic to monsoons, apathetic to floods. Bureaucratic files crawl at a snail’s pace. Somewhere in West Bengal, it is said, water from last year’s monsoon did not drain until May — just a week before the new rains began.
 
Hearing such stories reminded me of my childhood’s first encounter with the sea — when a wave drew back, I felt I too was being pulled into the abyss; then another wave hurled me back to where I had been. Growing older, I realized: I had never moved at all. It was all illusion, sensation, deceit. Likewise, at times, we imagine ourselves shifting right or left, forward or back — when in truth we remain bound in the same darkness.
 
Great whales and leviathans — the mighty powers of the world — sometimes quarrel over our tiny pond, and in their quarrel we feel the illusion that we, too, are moving forward, or backward. But for the poor man whose doorstep lies under water for fourteen months of the year, what meaning have spring, or autumn, or winter? For him, it is always monsoon. Always flood. The romance of monsoon is a cruel joke. For those crushed by its fury, there has never been love in rain, nor ever shall be in this tormented land.
 
Thus the man-made face of monsoon strikes us again. No, rain itself can never be man-made. But can floods be? Every year, before Puja, there must be floods. Homes will drown. People will turn refugees in schoolhouses, eating khichuri and watery stew. Is this truly our destiny? Ministers remain obsessed with ribbon-cuttings, but the red-tape around river restoration never unravels. Money is not the obstacle — will is. Floods have become political capital.
 
MLAs who do nothing all year return to their constituencies only in flood-season, distributing khichuri and tarpaulin, securing votes at minimal expense. Permanent flood control is less profitable than the spectacle of relief. Every year, the state blames the centre; the centre blames the state. Meanwhile, villagers drown again, lose everything again. In Bengal, flood has become an annual business. Relief money sustains not only victims but also the lifestyles of local leaders. Sometimes one hears such grotesque tales that it seems the state itself thrives on disaster.
 
And if the centre fails to send funds, the state behaves as though West Bengal were some foreign nation. An earthquake may strike Gujarat once in a century, but Bengal’s floods come every year, like a ritual. The victims suffer endlessly, while the so-called rescuers rejoice.
 
Thus, within this tragic chronicle of monsoon, romance fades away. Meghla the beloved is banished. Floods darken the skies, and reality thunders in. Political vultures circle, masked as humanitarians. Love, human love, patriotism itself — all are exiled in this season of rain.