It is a stormy day
Restless, but free
I decide, to write poetry
Pretty soon, I find
Every idea, that comes to mind
Every verse, I propose
Has been composed, before
By the poets of yore
And so, I decide to quit
And then what do I see?
You are reading poetry
And there is a poet in me!
Well the lizard does not appreciate my poetry. Perhaps you too do not. The storm continues to soar and surge. I sit in the porch and watch. And move over to prose.
Steady rain begins to fall as clouds move in, from yonder. A premature dusk threatens overhead, with the sky covered in a mourning shroud of grey cloud. Wind and rain now whip the house. The wind roars like the train, which passes not too far behind my house. And the rain pounds the roof like the sea pounds the shore, not too far ahead, in front of my house. The coconut palms swivel and swing, leaves tear off from the trunk and fly in the air like so many missiles fired into Israel from Gaza. And I can see the palms strong and sturdy, dance and bend but not break, unlike the Congress Legislature Party! As darkness quickens, so does the fury of the storm. The previous night, was all lightning and thunder, as if it were fire-works at vespers, presaging the feast day.
Never before have I been witness to such winds and rain in the middle of May. It is a frightening spectacle. It is time to shutter the doors, windows and proceed to sleep. Despite tightly shuttered doors I can hear the whoosh of the wind. Hopefully the fury, unleashed will relent by the morrow.
As morning dawns, I wake up and find; the power-lines are down, the telephone lines are down, the internet is down, the trees are down. Only the storm is up and about, with fearful force. The wind howls as the angry Tauktae prowls. But for reasons unknown, the lizard from Myanmar, after a day’s stay decides to move away. It crawls along the eastern littoral of the Arabian Sea and then bends to enter the lands of Gujarat and beyond. Does it feel safer among vegans or feel that it can push them around? Or is it aware that Gujarat is well cared for and will not be left in the lurch? Or has it given Goa a break, because the entire leadership and finance of the country is behind Gujarat, in contrast to the utter helplessness of our state in its fight, against the menace of COVID?
The days following the first rains are always crisp and bracing. I have spent a lot of my youth, trudging the countryside, at such times. It is an experience I love to re-live by revisiting my old haunts. I walk a few hundred metres over a trodden path that slaloms around coconut palms before the grove surrenders to the fields, below. The loose sand is plastered firm to the earth, by the rains. It is comfortable to stroll along. The peasants have mostly abandoned their homes and fled from their liberators, with the passports of the country from which they were liberated, to seek a living which the liberators promised, but reneged later on. The paddy lands intensely cultivated in my days of adolescence which lay deserted, dry, cracked and fallow all summer have now turned slushy, in response to the rains.
Everywhere I look, I see hundreds of tree limbs, with loose leaves littering every lane and by-lane. Mango, jackfruit, coconut and many varieties of shrubs and bushes lie strewn in compounds and along the roadside, torn asunder or ripped from the ground. The stiff bare roots of trees and bushes rise in the air, upended by the brute force of the wind. I realise even the coconut trees have succumbed, split and broken in the night. Not even trees escape the curse which until now, I believed only the Congress, suffers from! But the fields are awakening, to a new life. The ponds that line the edge are nearly full; a rather unusual phenomenon before the real monsoons breaks out. Disturbed by my approach, cattle egrets in white, a few in breeding plumages too fly away, with dark legs stretched behind and the necks topped with yellow beaks well forward, only to alight some distance away. Isolated frog calls can be heard but daylight has scared them away from human glare.
The land vacated by the peasants is being taken over by creatures, strangers to the village, just a decade or so ago. Racket tailed drongos sally to and fro seeking to confuse me with their copycat calls of other avians. A peacock struts around with chest puffed up (to 56”?) and tail feathers fanned to impress the pea-hens which browse in the mud, uninterested. Porcupines hide in the underbrush waiting for nightfall, to venture out. And I am surprised by a fleeting glance of a jungle fowl, which flees for cover in the undergrowth.
All these creatures have seen through the stormy winds and rain without the protection of artificial homes. And after the storm they are back to routine with no worry to repair and restore, which we humans carry. These creatures have done nothing to invite the wrath of nature. The turmoil is over. The land is tranquil in its quiet beauty. I enjoy the silence and the solitude. I slowly retrace my steps, towards home.
But is this storm in May an isolated event? Or is it the precursor to a new and (even more violent) normal, influenced by global warming caused by untrammeled human intervention?
(Radharao F. Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate, a former Independent MLA and a political activist.)
