“Good Bye Beads, Your Children Will Look After The Flow”
The sky was full of dark clouds, heavy with the pain of bearing so much water. No, it was not that the clouds were unable to bear the heaviness; they were pained to see the Earth being thirsty for a long time. Unfortunately, it couldn’t see the unwillingness of the already marshy and wet areas, people who were homeless, etc. It rained on all alike.
I was sitting under a frog’s umbrella. The water drops falling in front of me were so big, and I was sitting there witnessing the wet and pure city against their reflections on the puddle in front of me. I was wet from head to toe. All I could see above the puddle was that people were running towards sheds, some delighted kids running and dancing in the rain. But as the fall of water droplets became more and more frequent, the roads became emptier and emptier. It went totally empty after sometime.
Suddenly I noticed a boy looking out from his window and crying. I couldn’t figure out what exactly he was staring at, but he seemed to be very sad. Now the nearby puddles started getting accumulated with salty water too. May be he was not the only one who was crying. Gradually, my umbrella got uprooted and I started floating. I was unable to swim as the miniature waves were too fierce for me to handle. I somehow got hold of the floating umbrella and I climed upon it. After looking at the boy, I thought that may be the clouds were sad too.
My current thought was contradicted when I saw this next event. I saw a girl running with a football at her feet. Her body was entirely covered with wet mud. She went to her mother who was busy covering some potatoes with a sheet of plastic, and placed the football in her hands. The mother started crying, while her lips were smiling. I couldn’t understand whether the girl was crying too or not, as her face was already wet.
While I was going with the flow, l was suddenly struck with a paperboat. I fell off my umbrella and was about to get drowned. But as soon as I went beneath the boat, I realized that the water was not so deep. The umbrella was out of my reach now, as I could see it flowing towards another direction. I somehow moved my limbs as fast as I could and caught hold of that boat. Then I noticed that a small male child was laughing delightfully with his mother sitting on the benches of a deserted bus stop. I saw no tear drops on their cheeks. My lashes were may be too wet to see theirs. The cause of such wetness became more unclear with my eyesight. I got up on the boat and it started it’s maiden voyage once more.
It was nighttime hence. I could see the the raindrops beneath the street light from far away. It seemed to reduce a bit. I couldn’t see where exactly I was lying as it was completely dark. The paperboat was also invisible. Due to tiredness, I fell asleep. Next morning, I saw a horizontal rope above me where tiny water droplets were lined up together; they were hanging upside down. I was resting on a branch of a tree then. Till now, none of the people whom I saw yesterday were thinking about me as I was doing so; I know that.
It’s been hours since I saw such beads of water. I don’t know exactly where they are. I think they were the children of yesterday’s rain. They were all left down by their mothers to clean all the dust and dirt and quench the thirst of the Earth. But they too went away walking the boulevard of sunlight back to their mothers. But the salty beads are still lying in the puddles and everywhere. The sunlight is also not able to dry up some of the wet and marshy areas. Some of these children are still looking after the perennial water flow.
– Pritha Bose