Gayani Jayathilake

November had learnt a new language and bickered alot, I noticed. It squabbled alot in it’s northeast monsoonal rainy days this year, I realised. Where sporadic bolts of lightning as though recharged sparked in renewed charge against the blackness out the window for anyone who looked.

From a raging storm’s point of view, farmer Dasa’s tiny cows seen in a distance crossed fields losing each other along the way. Branches the sizes of trees fell like they had been glued together with cheap tape that had come with a buy one get one free offer. Tampering winds made clotheslines dance high in the air, tranced as though spellbound. The age-old tamarind tree at the residence below that had resisted for decades had finally cracked open to reveal its secrets within. Rain drops fell on roads with little splashes that resembled flowers never seen before. Once upon a time I had read a book that had described such flowers that had fallen from the skies. Mythical flowers with such plush petals that curled around the sepal tightly so that the pollen rods leaped in the air as though separate from flower, stem and whole. Grass blades danced like never before. It was as though there was a new conductor in charge of the orchestras of the weather temperaments. A violent and strict one, that drove the innocent cows mad with fear.

Then when it softened down to a dim cooing, and the storm vapoured away as though it had never existed, we stepped out onto tar roads to witness the aftermath. There was no trace of water on once again scorching roads. It was as though it had never rained. The soil was back in a fit to boil up a rage.

But lingering memories left behind made people around prepare for sudden and unexpected storms. They hurried like ants finishing work that needed to be done before the next rainfall. Leaking roofs were fixed in haste. Pots dotted around houses, kept to collect rain droplets, were emptied. Leaves were raked away from paths that water had to flow down from.

When all the clothes were found hanging like protruding evil teeth over fencelines and draping the canopies of innocent shrubberies, when branches were chopped into log it was time for the sun to set and people to rush indoors to sleep off their anxieties of weather changes they had never seen before so they were fit enough to wake up and witness another. When yet another November day came to an end the lost cows returned back safely with the setting sun to reclaim the grass they were promised at the farm.