#Scurf 122: Delhi's rains and my writing practice
The similarities between of two of the most deceitful and waited for activities in my life
Hi readers! I’m trying to schedule and send out more and more of these newsletters. Tell me if you like one kind more than the other? Wherever you are, I hope you read this with a warm drink in hand, curled up on the sofa, possibly able to gaze at the sky. xx
For most people the monsoon season is a stand in for rain, sprawling greenery, and boundlessness in general. But what we get in Delhi is not even a joke in the name of monsoons. It’s hardly even drizzles. It’s mostly pitters, accompanied by some patters. This is also only every now and then, ab und zu. When it’s cloudy, it doesn’t necessarily convert into rains or a breeze or a jolly, whooshing round of thunderclaps. When it’s cloudy, it means just that — cloudy.
We wait in acrid anticipation, gazing upwards hoping for the skies to tear up, either emotionally or physically, and pour some of their bounty. But it doesn’t relent. Nope, sir. But what we will get will be a round mizzle that will hardly touch all of open surfaces around our house. During one such round last week I stood at the balcony taking a video, and watched the mizzle stop and sun show itself out for us all within minutes. I swiftly stopped the video, closed the camera shutter, and deleted the file without even looking at it.
Living through this season is its own punishment. I didn’t want to relive it by looking at the video.
About the Delhi rains it could also be said that it only rains here in fits and starts. In bursts. Intermittently. I could go on. But in this the Delhi rains mirror my creative streak. I, too, work sporadically. Giving in to bouts of inspiration during odd hours and then backing off right at the peak of my imagination. I, too, am lazy, laid back. I wish for Delhi’s monsoon season to be torrential, substantial and fulfilling, if only ever for just a single week. It’s the same way for my writing. I wish, even if only for a month, I could write every day at the same time. I wish I could even knock at the door of creativity and leave it up to the muse, whether they want to show up or not.
Both these wishes go unfulfilled.
The rain continues to torment me just as much as my writing does. Ideas have continued to elude me for over a handful of months now. Ideas, that I never had before, occur to me and slip casually out of the recesses of my mind even before I can commit them to the page.
Delhi’s nonexistent monsoon doesn’t help much either. Each time it gets grey, my neighbourhood sheathed by a blanket of seemingly pregnant skies all over, I quickly prepare a mug of white tea, open the balcony door, and sit at my desk, notebook and pen ready. This line from Emily Dickinson’s poem springs to mind: “The soul should always stand ajar…”
I sit ajar, waiting for magic, or even the slightest hint of it to graze the earth, but it doesn’t. It feels like frustrating, and sad, but most of all it feels defeating.
Dickinson further writes:
That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
Or shy of troubling her
These lines run in my mind over and over again as I accept my defeat, stare at the empty pages before me and the sheepishly silver skies outside. A couple of words amble along the margins of the page, as do a pocketful of drops of rain outside. I take heart in the them and move on.
I rejig the poem mentally. Heaven needn’t necessarily mean a pregnant rainy day. It could also mean a day pregnant with words that together don’t mean much. But superficially fill up the blank spaces on the page. I imbibe that this could also very well indicate how there was a window, and in those brief moments, when it could have rained (but didn’t), I could have written (and did).
The brevity of Delhi’s rains, much like my writing spells are ways of stopping time, making myths and telling stories. And that’s what deserts require us to do. A barren, land locked, geographically and industrially challenged territory like Delhi, will forever suffer (and self-combust) in this paucity of rain. But it doesn’t have to be the same way for my writing. In the infertile space of emptiness when I’m able to put down even the bare minimum number of words, it feels like an achievement. How big or small then depends on a multitude of factors.
I did write the last time it rained in Delhi. If not the creative kind (whatever that means), then of some other sort. But I did write. And I am now. Irrespective of the rains. And that’s all that matters for now.
Thank you for reading! What do you feel about the rains in your part of the world? Do rains irritate you or do they instil inspiration? What about your creative streaks?
If you enjoy this dispatch share it with your reader friends, the ones who talk more inside their heads, the insomniacs scrolling aimlessly on instagram. Bring it to your loved ones the way they brought chai and samosa for you on a rainy day. See you back here soon. a.
it's been many years since I lived in Delhi -- I now inhabit a colder part of the world, which has been beset by months of winter rains -- I got drenched three times last week, through my raincoat, came home cold and damp. but you're right about the flow of writing, and I can't help but think of silvery skies and my silvery laptop, my fingers combing the keys like a forest, looking for something whole. drizzle or downpour, desert or plateau, I long for other weather and try to enjoy my own.