Downpour

Towards May the stifling, overbearing heat wave of several weeks prior broke in torrential rains. The rain came so suddenly and so forcefully, and people were startled, umbrella-less. Some were walking to dinner, some were on their way home, and when the rain came, together with the deep puddles it created everywhere, people had to cancel their plans and run for shelter, bumping into each other, edging each other out under awnings or whatever slivers of roof they could find. It was as if the entire world had stopped in mid-sentence, in mid-bite, in mid-stride, stunned in the most prosaic of manners, like chickens jolted out of their roost at midnight.

I, however, felt it coming, like a rumble from deep in my bones.


For most of my life I have always felt some kind of intuition each time the rains were about to come suddenly. Even in the midst of stifling hot weather, I would feel a tug from somewhere deep inside me, something with a very old and brittle voice, and I know that it would rain very hard in about an hour or so -- and it would. Most of the time I would pretend I didn’t know, and I’d stay out to get caught in the sudden downpour, even letting myself get wet sometimes, just to keep up the pretension. I don’t know why I did it; it was just one of those things that young people did to blend in with the crowd, the crowd that had no premonition whatsoever of the coming rains.

But really, perhaps my premonition of rains come from my understanding of the logic of rain. Because after all, isn’t it supposed to be a cycle? When summer has ended, isn’t the rainy season supposed to begin? When the dry, cracked earth has given up its yield and bounty, the heavens open up to drench the plains with water and then turns the dry, gritty soil into warm, fragrant mud, dark as dead dreams but fertile again, absorbent again, as a woman regenerates after childbirth. Isn’t this an organic thing, an instinct of nature?


Now May has passed in its full unpredictable glory, and June has begun to settle in on us, and at this point, I have begun to enjoy the rain as a happy fact of life. After a while I hear the steady drone of the heavy rainfall die down to a mere whisper, and then hush itself up to the deep stillness that often follows a downpour. The stillness feels portentous, as if it was pregnant with some hidden life that could, at any time, spring forth from a mossy green womb. But though I know there will be more rains, I also know that they will never really catch me by surprise. Something ancient inside of me sees to it that I will always know beforehand.

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