The Everyday Pen

For the last few days, it had been raining almost every afternoon. While I was in the library, I used to notice that most of the rain was coming from the west. The wind drived the rain in same direction, caused the rain water was seeping the western windows. But today, now, I felt something different. The rain was no longer arriving from the west. The wind was blowing from the south, and the spray of rain started touching the parts of a nearby house that had stayed dry until then. It was a small shifting, one that could easily overlooked if one was busy. And yet these, the very details I always noticed. Growing up in a village, we didn't rely on weather reports to understand changing the seasons; we learned also from the nature around us. The direction of the wind, the scent of wet soil, the clouds in the evening sky and the sounds of frogs after sunset; these were our weather forecasts. As I watched the rain today, I wondered whether this was the sign of the monsoon finally arrivi...

This story takes me back to when I was young—maybe in class 3 or 4. At that time, there was an old man who used to patrol our village at night. In his left hand, he carried a stick, and in his right hand, he held a lantern. The lantern flickered like a little star. Electricity had reached our village, but it was weak. The streetlights hardly worked. Even now, I think only two or three lights glow properly. When the old man came near our house, he didn’t shout “ Jaagte Raho ,” like we see in movies or on TV. We never heard anything like that in real life. His arrival was quiet, but always on time. Every evening, between 8:00 and 8:10, he walked by. I do not remember what I was doing at that time, but I do remember stopping everything and quietly going to the window to look. As he walked, his stick made a clear  khat khat  sound on the ground. That sound echoed in the dark and made the night feel alive. I liked to watch him from the window. He moved slowly but steadily. I rememb...