People stared at me from the restaurants as I walked along the sidewalk by Fewa Lake. It was pouring. I was completely soaked, but I wasn’t the least bit bothered.

The raindrops splashed against my head, trickled down my neck, and entered my shirt. I can’t say if I was enjoying the rain. My body was listless, and, to be precise, I wanted an adventure. So I let myself out in the heavy rain. I didn’t consider that getting soaked might cause fever or something more serious. I assumed people who sat beneath the roof of restaurants thought I was a lunatic. But I didn’t care. To my right, in front of restaurants, the grass was slippery, and each time raindrops splattered against the grass blades, they wavered a bit.

Every day, my feet dragged my body to Lakeside to find stories and interesting characters that might spice up my writing. Deep inside, I knew my regular visits to Lakeside were just a way to escape the writing hours, an excuse to procrastinate. When I returned and sat to write in the evenings, I couldn’t even fill a page. The nights were long and agonising.

The anxiety of not being able to write engulfed my mind throughout the night, and some nights I woke up to tear down the pages I had painfully written.

Despite many failed attempts, I had a hunch that Lakeside was the place that could spark my creativity. On every visit, I passed countless strangers, some with forlorn eyes, others with jovial faces. It always mesmerised me to imagine the possible events that had shaped their lives and faces. I wondered if everyone was seeking something like I was looking to find stories in a face, a collision, or eye contact.

On the banks of Fewa Lake, you could always find photographers waiting to capture the perfect landscape, scammers trying to draw you into their game, poets buried in papers, and astrologers trying to assure you everything would be fine. Some regulars sat in the same spot daily, making me wonder if they remembered my face as I did.

When I reached Disneyland Fun Park, I couldn’t spot anyone without an umbrella above their head. A harsh wind and heavy downpour made umbrellas sway back and forth like a thin leaf. The cafe where I often sat and sipped coffee was still farther. Even without looking into people’s eyes, I can say that they sympathised with me. They must have wished I entered some cafe and wolfed down something hot. It didn’t occur to me that I had a phone in my pocket and must keep it safe.

I was at a point where small things didn’t matter. I didn’t know if it was called carelessness. The only thing I cared about was my writing. “It’s a type of madness, and it is important for writers,” one of my friends had said when I confided in him that nothing except writing made sense to me. The source of my happiness and anxiety was writing. On days I wrote a good volume, I was cheerful and talked to everyone. If I couldn’t write well, I lashed out at close ones for unnecessary reasons.

A few days ago, I met a friend from the school while walking along this same path. “I remember you used to wander around the PN campus before Lakeside became your spot,” he said. I nodded. It was true that the premises of the PN campus always fascinated me. What annoyed me and made me stop going there was the presence of people who pressed me to offer opinions on every political move.

I would be on my own, shifting from the library to the playground, and someone I knew would wave a hello. “Tea?” they would ask. I couldn’t say no to tea. Another person would join us for tea. Then another. And the air was filled with castigation and tirades. Poor ministers! Everyone at the table spoke with an air of certainty. They seemed to know why the country was suffering and what was required to set the nation on the right track. Eventually, I became fed up with the mundane discussions on how youths should take charge of everything. I feared that I would become like them, so I stopped going to the PN campus and took refuge in the tranquillity of the lake.

Walking past Chiya Chautari, a small tea shop where I sometimes stopped once to have tea, the downpour receded to drizzle. My hair was glued to my forehead, and my eyes felt sore from the rain.

Not long before the rain had stopped, the lightning flashed above the far horizon, and suddenly, big hailstorms claimed the soil. The rain was tolerable, but I couldn’t resist the hailstorm. The sound of a hailstorm hammering against the nearby roofs sent a shudder through my body. I rushed to what looked like a closed cafe. Beneath the cafe’s awning stood a girl. She looked younger than me. Her face had a pale complexion, and she smiled wryly when my eyes met hers. I thought I had seen her before—maybe at the bookshop or around Lakeside. She held an umbrella, and her demeanour suggested that she was desperately waiting for someone. Perhaps she is waiting for her boyfriend, I thought.

“What a disaster!” I said and pointed towards the sky. She pursed her lips and nodded her head.

“You are drenched,” she said.

“Yeah, but I getting drenched in the rain,” I laughed. She smiled back.

“No books today?” she asked.

“How do you know that I carry books?” I asked in disbelief.

“I know you. I have seen you like a hundred times,” she smirked.

The statement caught me off guard. She must be one of the regulars here, I thought to myself.

“Where did you see me? How come you never said hi before?” I mumbled.

“I’m an artist, and I have even sketched you walking along the pavement with books in your hands.”

It surprised me that someone had drawn me as I walked in the hunt for stories. Like I was searching stories around Lakeside, she was also into carving something out of her curiosity, skills, and concentration.

“I’m lost for words. I had never imagined I would be someone’s creation,” I said, surprised by her confession.

“I sat on the cafe terrace and watched you walk by. It took me a month or so to sketch. I had to remember the details as I always got to see you only for a split.”

“Do you want to sit for a coffee?” I asked.

“Some later. Maybe tomorrow,” she said and poked her head out under the sky to inspect if it was raining. The hailstorm had already stopped, but the pavement was covered in ice pellets.

“Are you waiting for someone?” I asked her.

“Yeah. My lover,” she said casually.

My guess turned out right. I imagined her boyfriend, tall and handsome, with a beard covering half his face.

“Don’t you have an umbrella?” she asked. Before I could say anything, she talked to a woman who’d just entered the cafe.

Both the women smiled at each other and turned around to face me. “She’s my girlfriend,” said the artist. I must have looked befuddled, so the artist lady simply smiled.

“We have an extra umbrella. Take this. It might rain anytime,” she said as she was leaving. “If you bring the umbrella back tomorrow, I’ll show you the sketch.”

As I walked home, determined to write something about the couple. The next day, I would head for Lakeside to return her umbrella and look at the sketch that featured me.

–

Gautam is a writer from Pokhara.