Is it just this year, or have all the transitions from spring into summer been like this? In recent weeks, the gathering dark clouds on the horizon, the whiffs of cool air and distant rumblings have provided me sudden seclusion from my immediate surroundings. They have also transported me to a world that is both familiar and distant. It is odd what a little moisture in the air can do for one's grip on the present.
Indeed, monsoon is a state of mind. Even casually thinking of monsoon brings back a flood of memories, sights, sounds, smells and feelings – as though a Himalayan river has burst its banks. Till 10th grade I lived in Arunachal Pradesh, one of India's most sparsely populated states. I do not have a seasonally sequential memory of the monsoons there, mostly due to the fact that seasons in Arunachal did not matter. Memories of life there are like a painted story: bright smears of games, friends, a pet dog named Marshall, fishing, school, belonging to a community, lush forests, mountains with patches of jhum agriculture, affection and security.
The monsoon would turn the river behind our house turbid, overflowing its banks. We would bet on which direction the fickle course would change after the water subsided. Cloudbursts during the monsoon would bring down red slush from the mountainside, making roads impassable. Migrant labourers would clear these slides, two people to a shovel – one digging into the debris and casting it away with the help of the other, who would synchronously pull at a rope tied to the shovel's neck. The puller was usually a woman, who would be paid less than the digger. They cleaned mud and rocks in the rain, wearing torn plastic shoes held together by pieces of ropes. You could tell from their unsure footholds that they did not belong on the mountain slopes of Arunachal. Being far from their homes in the plains of Bihar and Orissa, they made way for us. I felt their distance from home.
Finishing 10th grade made me an educational migrant to Calcutta. I came to that dense populace with my father shortly before the onset of the monsoon in Bengal. The city's uniform, limitless sky was a shock to my eyes, so used to a view broken up by peaks and valleys. As my father and I walked around looking for possible high schools, the monsoon descended on Calcutta.