November Rain

It is a cloudy day. The sand is wet even where the sea can't touch. The tide is high. We are sitting by the shore, on the ridge, just beyond the waves. It's been a cold,wet November week. There was respite today. Only clouds - dense, grey but translucent clouds, hopeful beams filtering through. We have nowhere else to be. So we are here, lost to this. We stare ahead. At the roaring and crashing of waves and the white foam trails on the shore. A lonely gull is fishing. Paper bags and coconut shells bob in the muddy water, keeping time with the tide. Ships sit on the horizon. The late afternoon catamarans are pulling ashore. We just watch, leaning against each other. The sound of the sea is lulling. We are lost in thought.

I feel something in the air change suddenly. Like a promise broken. The breeze bites. We huddle closer. I smell the moisture and sigh. It will rain today after all. We talk of this and that, interspersed with long turns of silence, absentmindedly grabbing handfuls of sand and letting it slip through the gaps in our tightening fists. Our sentences trail off, our voices are low, almost murmuring. A raindrop falls on my cheek. I look up at the sky, and nothing. Perhaps it was the ocean mist? We just watch the crabs jump out of their holes, kicking up dust, their pale brown scales perfectly camouflaged, scurrying across, leaving fresh tracks on the sand that waves wash away in a minute We fiddle with the shells, ponder the prawn pink and ivory white while idly dusting off, irritably, the coarse grains pressed into our skin, digging into my heels and his elbows. Now a few more drops fall, heavy on our noses, eye lids and upturned palms.

A boy tries to sell us 'kadlai'. He is encouraged by our amusement at his impish smile and tries his best. Our laughter heralds the fortune teller. Insisting she will tell us if we are a good match, grabbing my palm to read it. I will not have it. And finally she leaves us to our solitude. It is getting dark. So suddenly the air is heavy, ready to burst and fresh black clouds loom dangerously in the horizon. When we turn around, we find we are alone, everyone has disappeared.

It will start raining soon he says to me. And we agree it's time to go. We pick ourselves up and hunt for the shoes we unintentionally buried in the mud. Not two minutes have passed and I wonder if I am mistaken, but the tide has risen, the waves are now 4 feet high. And the gale has begun. The clouds are coming, casting ominous shadows. 'Apocalypse' - the word leaps to my mind, for this is how I would imagine it. There is no time to say it. We begin to run.

Quickly, sprinting, footwear in hand, shielding our heads in vain, but it's too much to fight - this crazy wind. It has blown us back to a halting canter. We push ourselves against it and the raindrops that are pelting away. The sand rises like a tornado, not circling but carries rather in sheets. And then it stops, because the rain has finally come. And it is torrential, cyclonic - like Orissa. We reach the car wet like we just swam in the sea and get in just in time - The rain comes down like panes of glass, piercing, clanging away mercilessly at the metal hood, battering our car into relentless motion. And we are inside, shaking, cold and stranded - I joke about warning signs and tsunamis. Lightening strikes what feels like ten metres away from the car - I'm terrified into silence.

It is dark like dusk. Tempestuous.

We can only wait.

And just as suddenly as it arrived, it has vanished. Not moved on, just disappeared. The violence erased. The rain is now a trickle from a stubbornly leaky tap. Glad, we laugh nervously as he puts the car into reverse. There is not a soul on the beach. It is peaceful again. Static and calm. Like nothing moved.

It is too suddenly just a memory.

Maybe we imagined it.