Sizzling September

 

As August hands over the baton to September, you have a fluidic canvas of blue, grey, white and black—loafs of clouds floating to give sunshine and shade almost alternately. Some naughty little cloud wets the cloth-lines even though there is sunshine.

One can even beat one’s loneliness by looking at the shifting shapes and turn it into solitude.

After a brief spell of rain if you care to look among the fallen leaves under a tree, you may come across a dead butterfly. She too was a colorful flying leaf on the tree of mother existence.

The beauty of September rain is that it doesn’t upbraid you directly like the previous months when the monsoon was at its prime. The clouds cantering towards conclusion, the sunshine capering about them forming a frivolous game. Then suddenly a brief drizzle comes to wet everything. And before you realize you see the clouds drifting away; they have many interesting shapes and silver edges; leaving behind a green world full of freshly bathed leaves gleaming under the bright sun. The butterflies come out again. Sometimes you get rain and sunshine side by side. You cannot help gasping with ravishing delight because the rain wasn’t expected. But someone gets disconcerted because the clothes on the line are wet again. The September rain is in trilling accompaniment with mischief—old season’s young spirit.

One such naughty spell of rain catches a blacksmith gypsy woman off guard. She is selling plastic ware. Iron-forging days are over. It’s a world of plastic and fiber. The mass-produced items hardly leave any space for them to forge small iron implements and utensils in their little furnaces. So they trade plastic now. She still wears their traditional dress. But they are clearly struggling. It’s impossible to survive as a wandering nomad these days. You need to dig your survival well at a congested place. They are trying to move faster by changing their bullock carts into bike-rickshaws, their sides having a cheap imitation of the nail artistry that those sturdy carts used to have. The big caravans changed to lonesome nomads driving the tattered bike-rickshaw piled with meager possessions and the family. But this swifter movement isn’t enough. So they now turn squatters in urban areas at narrow strips of public land along the roads. They now expect the government to accept them as the citizens of India with identity cards, documents and some entitlements.

On a September evening, we have a brief but heavy downpour. Then the clouds part. The sun plays with clouds in the west. One ought to keep one’s eyes ready for a rainbow in the east on such occasions. If you are lucky you will have your multihued arc in the sky. And coming across a rainbow cheers you up; just like finding a peacock feather on the ground towards which both a king and a pauper will run with equal enthusiasm. The fact is we are seeking colors. So if you don’t get a rainbow on such a rainy evening, the clouds will make up for it. White, orange, red, yellow, grey blue, black—you have the entire range as the setting sun peeks through the rain-soaked veil.

The peacocks are into love games in September. Lots of dancing and you should keep an eye for their love-drops—master-colored feathers. If you find one, rush to grab it before anyone else, and hold it; it’s an asset in many ways.

A bulbul and a sparrow are having a tiff on a wire. The swallows are angry that the little hawk, shikra, is here. They want him out. A squirrel hurries in dragging a strip of rag. It goes up a few feet on the tree and then takes a pause to roll the strip into a ball to crawl up easily and then adorn her house with the new decoration. But while she rushed in, she scared an adolescent gecko. The latter simply panicked at the sight. The leaves drip due to the shower they recently received. Thus passes a rainy September evening. All this is so familiar, yet so-so different.