Rain Delay in the Theatre of Small Things
🌧️ The bus rolled past Dhakuria bridge, the sky sulking above like an old poet nursing heartbreak.
It was early morning. The kind of gray that doesn't just sit in the sky—it settles in your bones. Clouds hung low, stitched together in an unbroken quilt of gloom. The trees along Southern Avenue swayed like dancers pulled by invisible strings, their branches flailing in the wind.
“What a miserable day,” I muttered, more to the window than to anyone else.
But someone replied. From the seat behind me, a man’s voice, warm and oddly amused:
“You just need new glasses.”
I turned, just enough to see him holding his fingers up like he was offering me a pair—only there was nothing between them.
“Go on,” he said. “Try them on.”
I stared. Kolkata has its fair share of eccentric souls. And yet, something about him didn’t seem mad. Just... certain. So, for reasons I can’t quite explain, I played along. I took the invisible specs and pretended to slide them over my nose.
“Now look again,” he whispered.
Outside, rain had just begun to trail down the glass in quiet rivulets. The bus turned near Gariahat, and I saw it—a single shaft of sunlight piercing the clouds and spilling onto a rooftop like someone up there had opened a door just for a moment.
“See that?” he said. “The light’s always there. You just need the right eyes.”
A rainbow peeked faintly behind a half-built apartment block near Ballygunge. I hadn’t noticed it before.
“See those gulmohar blossoms?” Red and defiant against the grey. “And the kite flying just above it?”
I smiled.
“That’s probably a crow.” “Then that’s one graceful crow,” he said with a wink.
We passed a small para where a boy tugged at his dog's leash, two golden pups more interested in wrestling than walking.
“Puppies!” I blurted, the joy catching me off guard.
He nodded, satisfied.
“You’re seeing now.”
The bus rolled on. We passed roadside tea stalls with terracotta cups stacked in little pyramids. An old man stirred his chai while grinning at nothing in particular. A little girl in her school uniform danced to music only she could hear.
I kept noticing. He kept pointing. Then slowly, he stopped—because I was seeing more than he could keep up with.
Finally, I turned back to him and said,
“It’s not such a miserable day after all.”
He reached forward, hand poised as if retrieving those imaginary lenses.
“It never was,” he smiled. “It’s all in the glasses.”
