Rain may not take the pain away, but it softens the edges. And sometimes, like the quiet arrival of mushrooms after a storm, healing appears gently, unnoticed at first, but full of grace. A reminder that even in our heaviest moments, something kind can still find its way through.
Thank you :) and yes, Merlin Sheldrake’s book - Entangled Life really opened my eyes too. The way he describes the symbiotic world of fungi, flora, and funga makes it feel like we’re all part of one vast, breathing network. It’s comforting to think that even our emotions- like grief and healing - move through us the way mycelium moves through soil: quietly, deeply, and always connected.
When the sky darkens, brooding clouds hang low, and the wind howls, it is like setting the stage for a thunderous applause of a shower.
And every time it happens, I’m transported back to my childhood in Kerala. Back to those familiar days when umbrellas, if you had them, were mostly useless. The rain came heavy and sideways, large drops smacking your face as you leaned into the wind, pushing against it on your way home, or sometimes, to school.
The rain heals even in Mumbai by taking me back to Kerala.
Rain lifts me up. It somehow holds a promise of a better tomorrow. Things have been washed out for today. I too was born in Mumbai in June, got married worried that it turn out to be wet day and my second born is also born in June. Mumbai and rains, boats in our society, our home being flooded during the 2005 floods, braving the rain to meet my boyfriend in college. Reading this was a walk down my own memory lane
Such a beautiful article. Rains do bring happy memories. But something is changing. The downpours are so heavy sometimes they bring a lot of miseries too
Brought up many thoughts :) Memories of my mother describing floods in Calcutta sometime in the 1980s which destroyed many of her sarees....
This mother and her small, twin boys from earlier in May this year, when a cyclone had brought down heavy rains in Calcutta, and flooding in some parts. I was on a bus at Howrah station, she had just got on with her boys, struggling with a suitcase in the heavy rain. Overheard her telling her neighbour about how here she was struggling to walk with the luggage in the rain, and her boys were thrilled out of their minds about the 'baarh' that had come! Sheer joy seeing their tiny kajaal bindi'd faces still lit up by the rains and the calf-deep water all around, and her laughing at their joy instead of handing out a chapat or two!...
My own changed perspective on the rains, heart singing and stretching in my first mountain monsoons this year. So different from a Delhi/Calcutta monsoon with chappals squelching sewage and muck. Remembering your father's words too, the sheer beauty I'm experiencing from my comfortable little room in a safe mountainous area, when cloudbursts and flashfloods are taking lives in these same rains...
Yes, I was a school going child in the same floods sometime in the 1980s. The flood and Uttam Kumar’s death - two times that I witnessed devastation as experienced by Calcuttans.
Thank you for sharing these vivid scenes from your own memories of rains.
My father was buried today. This was just the lullaby I needed. Thank you, Natasha.
Rain may not take the pain away, but it softens the edges. And sometimes, like the quiet arrival of mushrooms after a storm, healing appears gently, unnoticed at first, but full of grace. A reminder that even in our heaviest moments, something kind can still find its way through.
Thanks, this is so sensitively observed.
Thank you :) and yes, Merlin Sheldrake’s book - Entangled Life really opened my eyes too. The way he describes the symbiotic world of fungi, flora, and funga makes it feel like we’re all part of one vast, breathing network. It’s comforting to think that even our emotions- like grief and healing - move through us the way mycelium moves through soil: quietly, deeply, and always connected.
Thanks for sharing this evocative connection
The rain heals.
When the sky darkens, brooding clouds hang low, and the wind howls, it is like setting the stage for a thunderous applause of a shower.
And every time it happens, I’m transported back to my childhood in Kerala. Back to those familiar days when umbrellas, if you had them, were mostly useless. The rain came heavy and sideways, large drops smacking your face as you leaned into the wind, pushing against it on your way home, or sometimes, to school.
The rain heals even in Mumbai by taking me back to Kerala.
Rain lifts me up. It somehow holds a promise of a better tomorrow. Things have been washed out for today. I too was born in Mumbai in June, got married worried that it turn out to be wet day and my second born is also born in June. Mumbai and rains, boats in our society, our home being flooded during the 2005 floods, braving the rain to meet my boyfriend in college. Reading this was a walk down my own memory lane
I share so many of these Mumbai rain memories :)
Rain writes me on the wall and then erases me
I am a drop that the clouds have abandoned
an unfinished poem from and old journal
Such a beautiful article. Rains do bring happy memories. But something is changing. The downpours are so heavy sometimes they bring a lot of miseries too
Perhaps we are older and more sensitive to large drops of water raining on our head.
Have the downpours changed or have we?
So beautiful!
Brought up many thoughts :) Memories of my mother describing floods in Calcutta sometime in the 1980s which destroyed many of her sarees....
This mother and her small, twin boys from earlier in May this year, when a cyclone had brought down heavy rains in Calcutta, and flooding in some parts. I was on a bus at Howrah station, she had just got on with her boys, struggling with a suitcase in the heavy rain. Overheard her telling her neighbour about how here she was struggling to walk with the luggage in the rain, and her boys were thrilled out of their minds about the 'baarh' that had come! Sheer joy seeing their tiny kajaal bindi'd faces still lit up by the rains and the calf-deep water all around, and her laughing at their joy instead of handing out a chapat or two!...
My own changed perspective on the rains, heart singing and stretching in my first mountain monsoons this year. So different from a Delhi/Calcutta monsoon with chappals squelching sewage and muck. Remembering your father's words too, the sheer beauty I'm experiencing from my comfortable little room in a safe mountainous area, when cloudbursts and flashfloods are taking lives in these same rains...
Loved reading this, thank you :)
Yes, I was a school going child in the same floods sometime in the 1980s. The flood and Uttam Kumar’s death - two times that I witnessed devastation as experienced by Calcuttans.
Thank you for sharing these vivid scenes from your own memories of rains.
This is lovely! I am delighted to know that you have experienced monsoons in Calcutta as a child.
Ranchi and Calcutta rains are my core memories. I am made of those monsoons
This is very very beautiful 😍
Only because of you and the smoke signals you sent me today, have I published this dil ka tukda of an essay from my archives ☔️⛈️
🌧️❤️ and it is raining!!!
What a lovely read! I enjoy the rain - coming from where I do. This essay made me smile and laugh and reminisce. Again and again. Thank you!
Lovely read Natasha. Sharing a short piece on rains in my favourite city in response to your question. Would love your thoughts on this https://open.substack.com/pub/minazansari/p/monsoon-in-mumbai?r=223s19&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Beautiful piece. Maza aa gaya!!