After The Rain

The room is engulfed in darkness and Ammu sits on the divan in the corner of the room, the light from her laptop, open in front of her illuminates her face. She has a blanket over her head to shield her from the cold, she is wearing a T shirt and pajama and a sweater on top. She pulls the ends of her sweater tighter to keep herself warm as she wipes a lone tear off her cheek. The last few moments from a web series is playing on the screen, Ammu watches with rapt attention as a young duke confesses his true love to his Duchess, the young couple kiss and embrace, they look into each other’s eyes as if the rest of the world does not exist, as the credits roll on the screen, tears roll from Ammu’s eyes as she feels an inexplicable happiness for the young couple on screen in a fictional show set in the 1800’s. 

She wipes the tears off as she shuts down the laptop, switches on the table lamp and carefully puts the laptop back on the table, she silently wraps the charger and places it on the table, hoping she didn’t wake her mom at 1:45 am as explaining why she was awake at that time would be somewhat difficult.

She slips back into bed, pulls the quilt and tucks herself in like a cacoon, it is an extremely cold December night and there is no respite from the cold, the mood is even more melancholic owing to the rain that is smattering against the window panes resulting in a rhythmic pattern of music. 

Ammu tosses and turns for quite some time, the rhythmic rain that usually puts her to sleep keeps her awake today as she struggles to keep the images of the young couple from the show out of her mind. The rain only reminds her of romance and possibilities of love.

Questions crowd her mind with nary an answer. The young couple fight against all odds to eventually end up together. Love, it seems, makes anything and everything possible. She thinks to herself and lays wide awake staring at the ceiling. 

“Is that even possible? This love that is described in poems, written about so eloquently in books and picturised beautifully on these movies and shows, does it even exist in real life? Is it even possible to actually fall in love?” Ammu’s thoughts run wild, exactly as they should for a modern independent woman in her mid 20’s living in a post pandemic world who has never experienced something so ethereal and time-less as love. 

“How is that in all these years of conscious life, have I not once thought of getting me some of that? it is not an alien concept that I never thought of but it is just that I always assumed that it will happen one day, some day but now I am left wondering when that day will come”. She thinks and scowls into the darkness.

“How does one decide to fall in love?” All this while she hadn’t given much thought about it, the concept was something that was always there, something she thought was inevitable in life at some point at least but as the older she grows the farther it seems. She finally sits up in frustration, her mind all over the place. “Is it even important to think of this abstract concept that has the same mental effects as going through a depression? Especially in the middle of the night and ruin your sleep?” She thinks as recalls a podcast where a neurologist explains how love and depression are kinda same neurologically. Apparently a depressed person and a person in love both go through the same stages mentally.

“So is that I’m depressed? Or that I am just craving for love, now that just sounds cheesy and I have to stop.” she thinks and shudders involuntarily.

It is not possible though to stop thinking, as they say, once your heart takes control, your brain just obeys.

Ammu wonders how this was never a topic of concern before tonight? She wonders about the logic and magic of love. She herself seems to not know what brought on these emotions so suddenly, it was certainly not the first of such shows that she had seen. It did not make sense to question something that is intangible and she had no control over, now that she has these feelings she could not fall in love with a plant and it did not seem like she would find some guy to fall in love with in the middle of the night. 

The questions fail to die down, it seems as though she is playing Whack a mole but with a hammer too small and with too many moles. There is a low growl that fills the dark room suddenly as Ammu’s late night musings result in hunger.

She gets off the bed and quietly makes her way downstairs, moving cautiously, one step at a time, feeling like a thief in her own house. She fills a bottle with water and grabs a packet of biscuits to appease her growling stomach. As she creeps back upstairs she catches a faint light coming through her parents bedroom door and freezes in place thinking her parents are awake. She is just not ready for a heated confrontation as she might not have any come back to her mom’s first question “Don’t you have to start working at 5 am in the morning?”

There is no way of making a run for her room as she has to pass her parents room on the way, time stands still as she waits for the light to go out but nothing happens for the next few minutes until she loses patience and starts taking baby steps towards her room, balancing the water bottle and trying not to crinkle the biscuit pack. 

She stops right next to her parents bedroom room and sneaks a peek to see if they are awake, she lets out a sigh of relief seeing both of them peacefully sleeping, wrapped under a thick blanket, an open book under a reading lamp on mom’s side of the bed. 

She realizes her mom must have fallen asleep while reading, her preoccupied mind probably failed to see the very faint light earlier when she had sneaked downstairs. She stands there watching her parents sleep blissfully, as a sense of calm washes over her mind and the questions die down. She leans over and switches the light off and quickly runs back to her room. 

The midnight crisis ends as Ammus realizes that just because you don’t have something now does not mean that your day will not come ever, her parents found each other very late in their lives as well but what mattered was what they did after that. How they spent that time later and how they too fought for their love and their family. Although there might be no definite answers to all her questions, she finds comfort in the fact that it is a blessing enough to have such loving parents and a lovely job and a warm bed, it is not wise to pester over unattainable goals and make life unnecessarily miserable. She might not have found love yet but her life is not empty, not senseless or purposeless. Maybe not today but she sure will find love someday and until then there are other purposes to life than just falling in love.

As she settles back into bed with a smile on her face she hopes for the day when she too might experience the most beautiful and ethereal feeling that one could apparently feel. 

© Vaishnavi T N

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