Once upon a time the Sky looked down at the Earth. The deep rivers running like arteries of a strong, mother heart. The Himalayas. The blue hills. The deserts. The birds that always returned to their trees on the Earth to roost at night.

The Earth looked up at the night sky. The stars pulsing like minarets. The calm of the white moon. And when the sun rose, how the sky turned into a riot of colours.

They fell in love, the Sky and the Earth.

They decided to get married.

The Sky descended, sporting his clean, blue gown. The Earth rose, coy and beautiful in a wreath of roses and dahlias. A garland of myriad flowers in her hand. But when they touched each other, parts of the Sky froze against the Himalayas. The hidden stars trembled and threatened to fall off. The sun burned the lakes into dust. They realised: Theirs was a love not meant to be together. The Sky cried. The Earth flung the garland into the shocked air.

Sometimes when it rains, the garland appears as the rainbow. 

—-

In Durbar Marg, it starts raining. First a few intermittent drops, then thick sheets, almost black. She opens her umbrella. Blue canvas with jasmine flowers sprinkled on it. You hold it, and she holds your hand. She always carries an umbrella with her. One of the three things she grabs before leaving the house. The other two: Purse and pills. When you had asked her why she carried an umbrella with her all the time, she said, The rain makes me sad. Hence, the pills. You fear she might reach for the pills, so you tilt the umbrella more to her side. She leans closer to you, holds your hand tightly with both of her hands. You speak no more than ten words from Durbar Marg to Ratnapark. You smell the mustard oil in her hair, you take in the warmth of her body brushing against yours.

Inside the bus, you put away the umbrella, but she won’t let go of your hand. By the time you get to her house, the rain has stopped. She hugs you: It’s the first rain she has survived without pills. What neither of you know is it will also be the last: Six months later, you leave the country for America.

—-

You wrap yourself with a thick sirak and open Sirish ko Phool. Then it starts raining. You find yourself thinking about the boy in your school who wore pants too big for him but somehow managed to keep them from falling. And, whatever happened to that timid, big-spectacled girl in the fifth grade, the girl from Darjeeling, who used to leave a handful of White Rabbits in your instrument box every Friday? After the finals that year, she never came back. No one knew why she left or where she went, not even the girl who used to sit next to her in class and spend twenty-five hours a day with her. It was the rain, you heard someone say from the back, as you opened the White Rabbit-less geometry box, It rains everyday in Darjeeling.

—-

During monsoon, after school, you and your brother used to race paper boats made out of used notebooks in a rainwater canal beside your house. You’d launch your boats, and then run before it, barefoot, clearing the hurdles of twigs and grass along the way with your hands. Whoever sailed his boat farthest won. You don’t remember who won, which most likely means it was your brother. What you do remember is catching a cold the next day and your brother getting punished by Mother for making you sick, even though it was your idea. In turn, your brother wouldn’t speak to you for days. But as soon as you were well again, you two would be by the gushing water, your treasure of small, beautiful boats tucked inside plastic bags. Years later you come across a poem by Tagore in which he launches paper boats with his name on them so that people afar might find the boats and know him. As you read the poem, you think of a brother who is now continents away from you, wondering if the oceans ever remind him of a paper boat.

—-

Tomorrow is your last day in Seattle, and it’s been raining non-stop for the past two days. You were excited to have two free days after the AWP Conference, but now you are not so sure. You are sitting at the Tea Leaves & Coffee Beans reading Salter. A cup of chai latte cupped in your other hand. You will not see the sun for days on end, your host friend had warned you the day you arrived to his apartment on the eighteenth floor. Surprisingly on the first two days, it did not rain at all. The sun was out, and it was warm. This kind of weather, your friend said, you have to bow down to it. And, he did several times. You laughed. Two days later when it started raining and showed no sign of stopping, you understood his pantomime. You already missed the desert sun of Arizona.

Outside, Rose Street is dotted with bobbing umbrellas. For a moment, the place reminds you of Kathmandu, its streets wet and clean with the rain, the walkways claustrophobic with umbrellas. You almost look for a blue umbrella, the jasmines all faded now.

It’s just like home, you say to the barista wiping the table next to yours.

But she misunderstands you. She smiles and says, You get used to everything.

—-

A stray bitch keeps making strange sounds. It is past midnight. What’s wrong with that dog? you ask your mother sleeping in the next room, half-expecting her to answer it. She gave birth to pups this afternoon, she says. Next morning you find out there was more to the story, which you gather from you sister, the renters, and the neighbours. The dog couldn’t find any place, so she gave birth in a pit, thinking it would be warm and safe there, not knowing the evening had torrents in store. Despite her frantic attempts to rescue them, all the pups drowned. Afterwards, she would drag the neighbourhood women by their lungis or gowns to the puddle, now a flooded graveyard, and look at them with her liquid eyes. But there was nothing anyone could do except say, Bichara! Not even one made it. You see her in the afternoon. She is dragging her swollen breasts against the wet cobblestones. It must be hurting her, the kirana shopkeeper across the street says. She is mourning, the hotel sahuni adds. The dog cried the whole night. Whenever she cried, all other stray dogs in the neighbourhood whined and barked and howled, briefly erasing the furious song of the rain.