And If The Rains Don’t Stop
Photo courtesy: Megh Pyne Abhiyan
Short story by Chitra Gopalakrishnan: ‘The river always makes a mockery of these predictions, bursting its banks when least expected, and changing course as it wills, when it wills. The only certainty is its uncertainty.’
Floods and marriages don’t mix. Floods come every year, but the marriage would be once-in-a-lifetime.
Ravi Prasad’s wedding was only two days away, and it was certainly not meant to be a ‘barh’ wedding. Preparations were nearly done, the guests had already arrived and were staying at the community centre in the village, hired specially for them.
The air in the village was humid and heavy . The monsoons arrived to Raghunathpur and across many other nearby villages in Bihar two days ago, much earlier than expected. It drizzled in powdery lightness at first, and then, in savage downpours. Though the incessant June showers had doused the tyrannical summer heat, there was nothing now but a sullen stillness, taut, braced like a predator, as if to resist a sudden attack from outside.
As the evening dimmed, the night rose ground up. It spread in straight, vertical lines, like dedicated bar codes, from floor to ceiling, from grass to trees, from trees to the sky that pressed low. And then as hours went by, as it gathered more darkness, and in what seemed like a fit of pique, it zigzagged and smudged everything around in a dark mass, including the stars above.
The yearly rampage of the raindrops was yet to come, especially when the river Burhi Gandak fills with rainwater overflows, cut paths, changes course and clogs and chokes the land. When it does, it would erode everything.
The villagers, who marked the arrival of floods as a distinct season called barh—different from the regular monsoons—were sure that it would happen much, much later. Just a few days ago, the head of the village had announced that the barh would only happen two to three weeks hence. “Only then should we make a move to the land raised and protected by embankments, as we do every year.”
But the villagers had been wrong earlier in their predictions. As were the weathermen. They’d said the skies were expected to open up this year only by the 20th of June; both were off-the-mark by seven days.
But no matter.
Everyone, in equal measure, also knows that the Burhi Gandak is a capricious river, and all forecasts about its flow—after getting plump with rainwater—are, well, just forecasts. Mostly useless. The river always makes a mockery of these predictions, bursting its banks when least expected, and changing course as it wills, when it wills. The only certainty is its uncertainty.
“I hope the villager’s prediction of the annual deluge is right this time,” Ravi silently prayed. “Make it come true, just this once.”
The electricity in the village had been gone for hours—five, six, seven, Ravi lost count as he tossed and turned on his thin, floor mattress. It comprised a mat and a thin sheet. The sole fan in the house looked down at him, disconsolately.
He could not sleep, did not want to sleep. He was unmindful of everything around: the heat, the stillness, the five other people in the room, all stretched out beside him, his snoring parents, his two brothers, a close cousin come for the wedding and the whizzing, whining mosquitoes, absorbed, instead, with thoughts of his soon-to-be-bride. Rupa Sinha.
For the very first time in Ravi’s life, real-life was better than his dreams. A timid man of twenty-five, with ordinary looks, few ambitions other than earning a living as a teacher, and an unlively life, Ravi was happier than he had ever been in his life.
“Rupa, Rupa, Rupa,” he breathed into the darkness. The urge to shout out her name into the void was strong. He felt himself get impatient as thoughts of her got out of control. He looked furtively at the only other room in his home that the family had temporarily reserved for them.
Ravi’s cousin, Rajesh, restive in the still heat, woke up and saw Ravi awake. He stretched himself into wakefulness, shaking his shoulders and flexing his hard muscles.
Sitting up, Rajesh whispered, with a smile, “Bhaiya, you’re thinking of her, aren’t you?” Mischief glinted in his eyes. “Tell me about her, what was your first meeting with her like. It is anyway too hot to sleep.”
Ravi was made to select his bride from displayed profiles of women within his caste, class, and community, all vetted by three references of a neighbour, the village head, and a peer, and filtered by so very many unspoken rules; and yet, he fell in love.
Love had happened to Ravi in a heartbeat.
Arranged marriages in his village would set aside love. Ravi was made to select his bride from displayed profiles of women within his caste, class, and community, all vetted by three references of a neighbour, the village head, and a peer, and filtered by so very many unspoken rules; and yet, he fell in love.
Ravi was only too happy to speak of his love for her. The lilt in his voice, its music, over their already sing-song dialect, made it evident. “I remember the day I first went to see her,” he told Rajesh. “It was a hot day in May last year with the sun poking through my polyester shirt with its jagged blades of light.”
He edged closer to Rajesh, scared his parents may overhear, or worse still, wake up. “Her house is in the neighbouring village of Abhi Chapra, where the Burhi Gandak flows as it does here.” He drowned in flashes of memory from that day. He remembered lilac water hyacinths that peeked shyly over large buffalo herds nearby. “The river was mild that day, infused with almost yogic calm,” Ravi continued. “Outside her home, there was a group of children screaming in a hopscotch game, gaggles of squawking hens and crows lined up on overhead wires above, cawing loudly, as if in my welcome.”
He stopped to drink water from the earthen pot beside him. Setting his steel glass down, he said, “My eyes searched for her among the relatives who crowded the room, gaped at me and whispered amongst themselves. I pushed my glasses up my nose expectantly when she was finally bought in, her head covered in her yellow sari pallu, carrying an enormous tea tray loaded with a teapot, cups, savouries and oozing milk burfis, that were losing shape in the heat.”
Lowering his voice so that Rajesh had to lean in closer to him, Ravi said, shyly, “All I could see were her large eyes. I fell in love with them, with her, right then. I could feel my love for her like I could feel the breeze, like I could inhale her musky smell of jasmine oil when she handed me my tea. I rested my eyes on her whenever I could, taking a measure of her when I thought she wasn’t looking.”
“Did she look at you?” asked Rajesh. Undoubtedly, he now wanted his own story of love.
“No, she was staring down at her palms the whole time.”
“What else did you like about her? Did you get to speak to her?”
“Her silky brown skin—it mesmerized me,” Ravi slowly said. “I was not allowed to speak to her but my mother asked her a million questions, “Can you cook, can you sew, can you tend to cattle, can you work in the fields?”
“Then?” Rajesh queried.
“Her voice had a husky edge. It made her words fade, and left me with a yearning to follow them. We have been speaking on our mobiles since then. Our parents know, but pretend they don’t. They haven’t let us meet after our first interaction!”
Rajesh took in his words in silence.
Cracks of thunder and lightning broke the quiet. As did the sudden gusts of wind. Then came the pelting raindrops, followed by harsh, unrelenting rain, in sheets of silver. Their windblown, thatch roof fluttered demonically, and then, began to leak water. The sleepers woke up in alarm, in confusion, in dampness. Buffaloes housed in the outside shed bellowed in fright.
In the dark, they could all hear the trees billowing, twisting, cracking and the churning of the rising waters outside. Anxiety ripped through them. They huddled together, putting away their mattresses in the space above the cupboards.
Terror sneaked through Ravi. “What if the rains don’t stop?” he asked his parents.
They looked equally stricken. His mother’s thin body was bent like a sickle.
“Oh no,” cried Ravi, in distress, an hour later. “The rain is getting intense. This was not supposed to happen for another ten days. And what of our Burhi Gandak…?”
“I think the embankment has given way,” said his father. “Which is why there is so much water.”
“Our emergency shelter is gone,” his mother despaired.
Through their window, they could see heaving masses of water, the rain and river come together and carrying whole trees; at least, that’s what it looked like in the blackness. It could well be homes, people or livestock.
They knew their emerald fields bearing paddy were already gone, bloated beyond repair.
For hours, the rains and the river wasted their lands outside, flayed and devoured it, soaring in height from waist to shoulder high. By dawn, it came up to their doorstep. The buffaloes stood waist deep in water, but there was no room for them indoors. Ravi and his family somehow managed to tether them on a raised platform in a neighbour’s home.
Instead of a visible sun above, there was nothing but a dim light. A false dawn, Ravi thought, dejectedly,
Ravi’s mobile rang. It was Rupa.
“What are we going to do?” He could hear her high-pitched wail.
“I will die if our wedding is postponed,” he said. “The expenses my parents have made will go waste. Neighbours will blame me for the misfortune. Yet the rains and the river are showing no mercy.”
Ravi felt his own panic rise.
“You and your family will come, won’t you?” begged Rupa. “Rain or no rain. You will not abandon us? Please, please, promise me.”
“I promise.” Ravi breathed down the phone, before their call drowned in the waters.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
His father, who overheard them, said, “Let’s get out today, somehow, and see if we can find a tractor. The big wheels can wade through the floodwaters and a trailer attached to it with a tarpaulin could accommodate our forty guests.”
Ravi, however, was still agitated. A tractor? Anything less than a horse—as a groom was supposed to ride—would be degrading. “But what about my reputation?” he said. “A tractor used for ferrying crops and waste…”
Yet they all persisted; gasping, coughing, water-walking, struggling to stay up and fighting against the tangles within, the damp logs, cans, bodies of cattle, masses of dead fish and squids, as well as its undertows.
Rajesh, who stood nearby, agreed. “I have a better idea,” he said. “Let’s go by boats instead. We can festoon them with the strings of flowers we have readied for the wedding.”
“Our closest people on boats!” Ravi’s mother exclaimed. “Chacha, Bhaiya… Your father’s Mausa, Mausi… they don’t know how to swim! A dash of a strong current could topple these boats.”
Ravi wouldn’t budge. “We have to do this for me and Rupa, for her parents,” he insisted. “Anyway, you have both told me that when things go wrong, don’t follow the wrong. That’s what I intend to do.”
It rained the whole day through, and with it, the river continued to haul a mass, pulling and pushing objects, making all of them feel as if the waters were inside of them. It was as if they were hurtling with them into an abyss, into endings of sorts.
Yet Ravi and Rajesh determinedly waded across huge whooshes of dull brown water, across the smells of dead fish, of silt, of decay, to first check on the wellbeing of their relatives, and then to hustle a few of them to help hire boats and boatmen.
Ravi’s Maama, sunk waist-deep in water, said, “I can’t find my feet, I feel weightless.”
Yet they all persisted; gasping, coughing, water-walking, struggling to stay up and fighting against the tangles within, the damp logs, cans, bodies of cattle, masses of dead fish and squids, as well as its undertows.
The boats and boatmen were found and hired at exorbitant prices.
And then, the day of the wedding arrived. Daylight broke. The grey trees were greened. The family and guests clambered onto the boats in their festive clothes, singing and clapping, undeterred by the continuing rain. The din of their voices carried over distances.
The boatmen rowed in unison. Their teeth jutted out of their lean faces, out of their grimaces. Fighting the tides was hard work.
They arrived at the bride’s village, damp, clothes stuck to them, hungry, to be greeted by women singing even as the rains came down. Fed well, they rested and waited for twilight.
It arrived in a harsh magenta. Now, it was time for the wedding. The venue was soddened but no one cared. Children merrily jumped into the gathered puddles. Loudspeakers battled each other and blared music, their wires dangling precariously. Women and men crowded in gaudy clothes, eating food that was cooked indoors in the small dry patch.
Ravi in his wedding finery was welcomed by the bride’s mother. Dipping her finger into kumkum paste, she planted a vermillion dot on his forehead. “Welcome to the family,” she said. “We thank you and your family for standing up to your promise.”
“I know how difficult it must have been for all of you to get the preparations together,” he responded.
Half-a-dozen priests—bare-bodied but for their dhotis, saffron chadors and sacred threads—officiated the wedding. Until dawn, they rang bells, they changed hymns.
And the dawn was clear on the next morning. The air was fresh and cool. The rains ceased, for now. A bird sang. Another bird sang back. The first bird sang again. The second one replied. The sun threw flashes of gold.
Ravi was transfixed by the signs. His worries about taking back his bride to a sodden home dissolved.
“You are my sun, Ravi—the sun that you are named after,” Rupa said to him when they got a moment alone. Her face was luminous, and then cupped his face within her hennaed palms. It was this moment when Ravi felt that every planet only seemed to revolve around him.
***
Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a New Delhi-based writer, uses her ardour for writing to break firewalls between fiction and poetry, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript and tree-ism and capitalism. www.chitragopalakrishnan.com
