While we were in Karnataka at our Indicorps workshop I had forgotten the Rajasthani heat, which had been creeping upwards from 110 degrees Fahrenheit. When we came back, it was nearly 120 degrees during the day, and not far below 100 at night. These days the sun scorches anything it touches, carving cracks into the earth, my skin. I remember the winter here, wearing layers upon layers against the cold. As that cold began to fade, and the weather became pleasant, we were warned about the summer. But the subject of those warnings seemed so far away; May and June would never come—we had loads of time. Now the heat is here, we are in the middle of it. How did it come so fast? We are all begging for the rains to come, waiting for the relief they will bring. It must be only me who is at the same time hesitant, who is not sure she wants everything the rains will bring with them.
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Yesterday afternoon, as I was walking with one of the older village women to the field to cut fodder for our buffalo, I received my first warning from the sky. I felt something small, delicate, and wet land on my forehead. “The rains are coming. Your year is almost over.” I looked up at clouds that looked too white to bear rain. It was only May 29th—early yet for the monsoon. It was too hot for my brain to process the possibility of an early shower, so I continued cutting grass for Bhensie, and came back to the campus believing the single drop had been in my mind.
Shortly after, Harpreet and I headed to the kitchen to begin cooking dinner. I was mashing potatoes for parantha, when I heard a faint hush sound coming from the quiet evening outside. Harpreet and I looked at each other, too hopeful to say much of anything. Before we could process the notion of a weather miracle, the kitchen door blew open, and a heavy wind carried in a storm of dust—the dry gritty kind that covers everything after nearly eight months without a drop of rain. But the wind felt cooler, as if to say, “All right, here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for!” Then the water fell. The rain came in huge drops that pelted the dry earth, hitting her almost abusively before she drank in the first rain of the year. The storm wanted to be violent, dramatic, but everyone was too blissful in the unexpected rain to treat it with such reverence. The air was cool and tranquil that night, and everyone slept well. I was kept awake though, for a while, for the rain was a bittersweet rain. It was cooling and exciting, but it represented something else also: the nearing completion of my one year in
The following morning everything was as dry as before, with hardly any sign of the early storm. We are back to the oppressive heat; we will continue napping during the hottest part of the day when our brains cannot function. But it is only a matter of time before the real monsoons start. The first rain was a reminder that these last months must be my strongest. The rain will be my ending note here—the end of a year of discovery, of myriad failures sprinkled here and there with successes and acquired wisdom, of growth. My final season in
Love.
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