WAITING FOR RAIN

IN KERALA, MUCH LIKE THE REST OF INDIA, THE MONSOON CAN REDUCE A REGION TO PENURY, AND ITS LACK CAN CAUSE THE SAME

- ANITA NAIR

THE FLIGHT NOSED INTO A CLOUD, and we rocked with the turbulence outside. A peculiar silence crept among the passengers, most of whom were young Bengali men seeking the green, the myriad hues of green pastures of Kerala where it seems everything was in abundance but a labour force and rain.

The plane rocked some more, and somewhere behind me, a child wailed in fright.

An elderly couple alongside, who had been chatting incessantly, was finally quiet. I noticed the lady who had been woman-splaining family politics to the man with much authority now held his hand tight.

I wondered what the young Bengali men, almost all of them in the uniform of the guest worker (we don't say migrant workers. This is Kerala, please)—jeans, t-shirt, windcheater and sneakers—thought of this turbulent return to their workplace. The memory of the horrific floods in 2018 is still as vivid as they are frightening.

Even the man who hadn't stopped snapping orders on his phone from the boarding gate until the flight took off: "one samosa on every plate and one piece of cake. What else? Tell me what else…" had retreated into his thoughts.

All around me was fear and anxiety, which manifested as a reined-in silence and a determined grip on the seat handles.

I must have been the only passenger on that flight who was happy with the turbulence. An uneventful flight meant good weather. So turbulence meant just one thing—wind currents and hence the monsoon. After all, I was travelling to Kerala to renew my acquaintance with the monsoon.

For almost six weeks now, the southwest monsoon has been playing hide-and-seek. My daily calls to my parents would begin with the query: "Is it raining there?"