Gojay dreamed of a well by the acre of hardened land his father had inherited from his father; a well with water in it. That monsoon after the last rain cloud was blown away, he dug little shallows in his fathers ungiving field, but there was no water. That summer and the next.

One weekend there was water in the local borewell, water enough to drink a palmful and then he was chased away by the queue of local women with pots. The following weekend it rained. It rained like it were asking him to come out. Ir rained in the coir cot outside his hut, it rained through the roof, it rained in Mai’s hair and in Maimai’s, his grandma’s….

It fell in the streets and mud steps. It washed away Boka’s wall, it swamped Keju’s hay, it felled two old banyan trees. They loved it then hated it, but that time Gojay had prayed for the first real time for rain, and now he shivered.

Yes God was real; He had fallen rain in Gojay’s eyes like tears. As he walked around the village in the torrent, the boy stopped and stared at a local cross he had always ignored, not because its iron was bent out of shape, but because in the rain, the Cross shone. Anush his friend said it was the way light reflected on wet iron surfaces, but all that and the lightning! It made Gojay want to say thankyou. For the rain, and for the way he was stopped in his tracks, in the rain, in the marketplace, opp. Teraki Saheeba palace ruins, in the street in the rain where the metal cross seemed to seep at him. It tore his quiet out of him. It wreaked a smile on him. For the first time in all his life, young Gojay felt everything was alright. Oneday he’d find appropriate words to tell all this to someone but for now, he felt he was in the presence of the King of Everything: where there was no external famine

That was enough for him right now, that was more than enough for him for right now. And no it wasnt. The more he thought about it, the more he reached out his palms.

Ĺà