Pied Bitterness

Remember the day you wanted to wake up?

Breathing in and out the serenity of summer winds - I could always close my eyes and wonder, 'How would it be, if the sun didn't shine?' The answer always remained the same.

I looked outside the window to scan the weather and I was attacked. The high mountains stood tall and magnificent without the usual cloudy veil over them today. It was the uncanny resemblance between them and a combative army that alarmed me. Even though the humongous giants sat at the periphery of the city, it felt as it they were right outside my window - asking me to let them in like dogs after timeout.

When I thought the mountains alone were the ones shining their glory while the human race stayed restricted between walls, I was proved wrong by a multi-scale assembly of a flock right outside the door.

The crows cawed their side of the arguement while the mynahs sang their song. The sparrows waited patiently, hopping from one branch to another on the gulmohar tree. The koels sat quietly, having done their morning duty of waking up the city with their heavenly calls. Everything was fine. Until, I heard the cuckoo. Not any cuckoo, but the Jacobin cuckoo. Better known as the rain bird.

My eyes shot open and in the next moment, I deflated with a sigh escaping the lips. The rest of the colony of birds went silent when the cuckoo sang loud and clear. As peaceful as its call was, I never enjoyed it... because I dreaded what followed.

Months of May and June were allotted to the Summers in the southern Himalayan range - at least that's what I inferred from the years I've lived here. But the latent fact that always accompanied the prior was that these months also prefixed the onset of heavy Monsoons which paraded their offerings in full glory in the following months.

Believe me, no personal grudges against the replenishing season of Rains but I had grown a slight against their beauty in the recent times. I did love a petite pitter-patter here and there to evaporate off the intense humidity but the constant thundering and downpour brought my spirits down with the cold water from the clouds.

It wasn't like this always. My younger self quite cherished cloudbursts a lot. You could run out in the pouring rain and splash around for however long your mother wanted. It was - as the cultured call it - hakuna matata.
But soon I realised it wasn't exactly hakuna matata. It was like how the cunning society sometimes represents romantic relationships between people. You meet someone and in the first minute, your heart, soul and body accepts them as your soulmate. However, it isn't until some time later that you realise that the world doesn't run on such idiocy.

Time is the an element that plays the most important role. You never know what or how this little word of a syllable and four letters can change your life. It's a famous saying - 'Time Heals' but what if, 'Time Kills' ? The actual truth is, it doesn't either. It's us who deal with our challengs all along but the self-depricating human race cannot allow us the sweet idea of how powerful we are. Just like how I can't allow how important rain is.

If we compromise a bit and come to meet in the middle, it's easy to understand how these two periods bring out the best representation of life. If the sunny days are the vigour and enthusiam of the will to exist then the rainy days are the undercover enervation that comes with them. Or if the rains are the vitality of growth and blossomimg then the sunnies are the dry stagnation out of tiredness. It's your view what changes their beauty.

Like how a tiny little birdie can aggravate someone just because an old wiser observed and noted the probabilities caused by their calls and named them as the harbinger of rains. I mean, what did the poor little cuckoo ever do to me? In all honesty, the cuckoo should be happy that its songs bring smiles on the faces of meager farmers, little kids and many unbeknownst people. The echoing song halts. I peek out the window to find the Jacobin and oh, wait a second - do we have a birdwatcher near? Because that looks like a glad Jacobin to me. I think it knows. I'm not sure that it knows that I know that it knows. Jacobin titled it's feathery head around and sang the loudest than ever, probably to increase my antagonism towards it since it knew that the number of its lovers were way more than its despisers and my hostility was a cost that did no harm to it but to me.

Little did the cuckoo knew, I wanted to be her.