Fire and Rain

He sat cross legged staring into the blaring blue sky for a minute before he opened the measly tin box. It was still not noon, and the ground in front of him still lay wet from dew. He had covered a quarter of the ground and was wishing to cover at least three quarters before retiring for the day. As soon as he opened the adamant metal container, a whiff of baked flour and old oil brought him back from the sky. He felt a gentle wind and his inner alarm went off. His head whipped to look at the pile he had collected over the entire morning while the sun had blazed over his hat. A sigh of relief went over him as the winds decided to leave the pile untouched save for some adventuresome carrot-shaded leaves. As he broke a piece of the bread, he looked out over the auburn ground reminiscing about his childhood home. It was long ways back, but the orange of it brought it all back. The bright flaming orange.

He had been running all morning. The spruced up people were busy with the preparations. He was 9, it seemed fair that he play. He ran from room to room with the little blue aeroplane he had received 4 family festivals ago. He spirit was a little dampened by the fact that no one of his age was their from the crowd of numerous dynasties that were cramped into the little villa, but his aeroplane kept him company nonetheless. He banged and crashed into busy bodies, jumped over garlands and flowers and what nots. He had lost count of the number of times he had been stopped, stood over and scolded for being a miscreant in an auspicious occasion and then being let off courtesy of some sympathetic grand-relative. He couldn’t really figure what the entire fuss was about. He did overhear some gossipy uncles discussing the controversial nature of the event. It was a wedding and apparently the conditions of the wedding were not quite in sync with conditions of the city. He wasn’t really sure what that meant, but the gossipers were too upset with the slanderous-nature of the discussion to elaborate any further. He had not really stopped amidst them, but they shooed him away nonetheless. He was rushing off in the opposite direction anyways, given that his hound-like nose had given away the location of the exquisite yellow sweets. He spent the rest of the preparatory phase of the wedding detecting and spying for the sweets for somehow the audacious sugar balls kept changing their position.

The wedding started off as they all did. Pomp and celebration followed by a sequence of rituals with the two people performing all sorts of rites he did not really care for. He had finally found a quiet secret spot to gobble down the sweets he had managed to amass from his exploits over the evening. As he sat on the ledge of the balcony looking at the dark space looming over him with the smoke from the fire below him causing his eyes to water, he pondered over deep existential questions of what he might do to skip school next day. As he planned meticulously, he looked below, irritated by the unnaturally loud commotion below him. He was acclimatized to noise but this was cacophony and chaos and no happy sounds. And then he heard a scream tear through the air vanishing into the dark space above him. He could see people running about below him. Some people, looking in a not-so festive mood had entered the compound. There was chaos below him and even though he felt he ought to leave that ledge and hide, he simply couldn’t move his legs. A gunshot and there was pandemonium. People running in every direction imaginable. Fires being set everywhere. He was still frozen with a golden dessert in one hand and a blue toy in another. A lady in frenzy emerged from one of the rooms on the floor he was on. She screamed, cried and scooped him up from the ledge. He was not sure if he was being taken to safety or if he was in danger and all this thought did was cause a lump in his throat and suddenly all he could feel was panic and tears down his face as he wailed. The lady carried him down the creaking structure weaving through the pandemonium, crashing into everyone. Once they had exited the structure and were out of the crowds, the trembling lady put him down on the side of the little gully and ran off in a direction unfamiliar to him. He stood outside the structure, a little 9 year old kid stuck wailing in the middle of a human riot. He had little energy to stand and sat down on the sidewalk as people kept running past him, while tears poured down his soot covered cheeks to keep company to the howls being emitted by his throat. He was lost and alone. It had started raining with thunders cracking in the air adding to the panic and commotion. People were fighting over things he could not and did not want to understand, for he had realized that he had lost the one familiar thing he had. The little blue aeroplane was no longer in his hand. He decided to be brave and go look for the little treasure that belonged to him. He stood up and walked back to the burning structure and as he stood at the burning gates he realized he would no longer get his precious toy back for just at the ledge lay with a dozen burning bodies, a melting blue wing of a blackened aeroplane. And the crying child stood there, on the burning gates of his childhood home with his eyes fixed on melting plastic and burning flesh as rain slowly drenched and drowned his tears.

He washed off the dry flour on his hands and packed up his little bundle of half-cooked morsels. It was time to get back to work. As he entered the ground barefoot, he felt the warm dew slowly rise up in the air and vaporise. The wind was the right kind of pleasant and the sun the right kind of warm. Little bursts of breezes blew over some of the leaves spread across the landscape. He dusted off the hat held in his hands and propped it up over his head like those characters in those foreign movies. The rake propped on his shoulder, bobbed up and down as he made his way to the section where he had last left cleaning up. All of a sudden, his feet felt more water than he expected. He realized his folly. The hose that was supposed to be lying around like a still snake, was spewing water silently and had swamped the entire surrounding area. He moved quick to turn off the hose and mitigate the intensity of the situation. It is much difficult to rake leaves in a wet situation. As he mulched through the water, visions of those watery days flew in front of his eyes.

He had been in the village for over ten years now. Although he had been living alone, he had made some acquaintances over the way and kept an identity in the entire village. He may not be a known in the village, but not an unknown. The village had grown on him too. For a few years now, he had felt the closest to home in a long time. The inhabitants were peaceful and concordant. Disputes happened seldom and clashes involving more than five people were rare. He strode over the boulder looking over the sheep who had the uncanny ability to wander off and disappear right in front of him. He sat down tired, gazing at the twisting riverbed which had been dry for two summers now. He remembered the days when he used to go for a midday wash in the water just to feel clean for once. He still felt the blood and soot of that night on him even if the memory was beginning to fade off. He took out his flute, keeping a spry eye on the grazing beasts. It was going to be time to return, but there was always time for one last song.

It was in his last verse, that he heard a rumbling. It did not look like the clouds above him were the source. The rumbling was almost unnatural in its quality. It was brute and forceful. And as he stood up to look around for the source among the mountains surmising a landslide, his eyes were pulled to the river below which was no longer dry. It was full. But it was not the right kind of full. Neither was it meandering anymore. The river was gushing over the bed which was no longer visible. The meanders that already existed were facing the wrath of the river as it rushed into the banks. The thundering increased over time as the level of the water rose to incredible heights. His mind was pushed into a numbness which did not feel new to him. He had felt stupefied like this once before. He decided to walk a few ways uphill, for he had a hunch on where the water was coming from. As he cleared the horizon of the hill, he saw something which could neither confirm neither deny his supposition. He saw the dam which was holding the water for some years now. Only, now it wasn’t. Chunks of the dam were missing from the top. The dam had not released the water, the water had decided to break free from its bounds. He could hear the creaks of the dam even still, threatening to release the entirety of the river in one shot. It was only a few moments later that the fact actually struck him. The village that he knew, no longer existed. Originally, the village that had existed and proliferated on the banks of the river, had spread and spilled over the dry banks once the dam had been constructed. The villagers, he had heard, had protested half-heartedly for the river that had supported their livelihoods. But the fire of their protest decided to extinguish itself once they decided to compromise and “understand”. The dam promised prosperity to villages near and far. They had been promised of safety and a regulated supply of the river. They understood and agreed and all the discontent was locked somewhere in the niceness and understanding of the village. He walked down to the village to find people clambering over rocks, reaching higher points on the landscape to be safe from the unnatural rain flood of the prosperity they were promised. People were burning fires atop the highest hill they could climb to stay warm. The small hillocks lit up with cold fires of desperation as the village attempted to survive. He was close enough to the water to find his feet numb from the cold. The water was cold and biting. The water was just as he remembered, except that it could no longer wash the soot and the blood. He remembered his little orange hut, now under fifteen feet of icy cold water crushed into non-existence.

It was almost nearing the dusk. He had finished what he had hoped for. The ground was almost clear. He could see two spry youngsters sitting at the edge of the ground. Just in time, he thought, as more people began to fill the ground. Within the hour, he watched as the ground filled with the generation of the time. The crowd was agitated, yet controlled. It was simmering and yet calm in its own way. Soon enough, the chanting started as the crowd started raising their signs and pickets. The slogans and the chants filled the air. He watched from the edge as he sensed the heat in the crowd. Fire had changed quite a bit since he had last interacted with it. This was a different kind of fire. It showed its power and yet, knew how to burn within its flames and not burn everything in sight.

The crowd had been chanting for an hour now. From what he had heard, they were waiting for the people who were supposed to answer. As soon as the authorities arrived, there was a silence, he could have sweared, even he had not heard in all his life. And that was saying something, given that he had spent his nights in mountains. Soon, the dialogue was initiated and it was quite unlike what he had ever witnessed. The fire he had witnessed moments ago was replaced by an unprecedented calmness. The fire was no longer a fire but a river attempting to adjust to the mountains that it knew existed in its path. Both sides spoke, none intervened. The river knew where to turn and where to cut its path. Every now and then, one would notice a little flicker, a small cinder in the crowd to be instantaneously replaced by a self-controlled wave of pacification.

The debate was not destined to finish in a day. He was not educated enough to know what the debate was. What he could feel was the emotion attached to the topic by both sides. The discussion, the protests, the slogans extended into the night. He could feel the damp, cold air. Bonfires lit up over the entire ground as it started drizzling. He stood at the edge of the ground with the rake over his shoulder, smiling, for he felt, the rain and the fire were no longer the same.