Rain-from an Unconventional Solitude

Written by Subhashree Pattnaik

It’s late at night and sleep doesn’t seem to be hovering around in my room. But rain sure has replaced sleep. The sound is too tempting to not indulge in solitude and sit in a corner, where I can see the drizzling waters in orange light and hear it quenching the land’s thirst. It’s not romantic to watch rain from a distance. It’s not something intrinsic either that moves whatever could be moved inside me. It’s just a stillness and a monotonous solitude that becomes an action of self-reflection. 

There is almost no one in the road except for the trees standing at the sides. It’s not a lonely sight nor does it haunt me. It is in fact something terribly real. Why? There is such a space inside me perhaps. Can I stand there? No. Do I wish to? Maybe. It’s universal. I am not lonely now, but I once was. Reality keeps fluctuating like that. I wish to make coffee and have it in the rain. But I can’t. Because one way or the other, I do need to sleep. The next day won’t be as still as this night. 

A solitary rain spectator as I am now— I think of things and times passed. The space outside looks like a void in which I feel consumed. Despite being away from the drops,  in shelter I can very well feel what it’s like to be under the blurred streetlights. What I’m going through is not really remembrance nor sweet nostalgia of days passed. But, a recollection of things that tend to leave me incomplete still, the collective accounts of what could have been and what could be. 

I think of the times I could have been kinder. What could it have cost me? What could it have made of me then? And all the times I wasted my kindness like flowers plucked for momentary pleasure. Why? My kindness wasn’t meant to be butchered like that. Butchered. Too intense a word for an abstract like kindness. I have always been this intense for everything around me. My anger, my sadness and the casual fits of annoyance. How? Whatever had made me angry doesn’t seem much of a deal now. My sadness seems to have settled inside me like dust in a closed store. I do get annoyed but perhaps that too will become a future observation or self-reflection. 

It’s not a gesture of guilt, nor regret. So, then why must one always revisit what could have been? Is it a consolation to who you are presently? Or a comparison? Am I different from who I used to be? And does it even matter now— who I used to be? Perhaps it does— to the void inside me. The void inside me that I can see outside from my solitary corner.