060 - The Grammar of Rain
The etymology of grammar suggests it is the art of the letter
The silence has ebbed, the whirring and hooting and blaring, all test the receding waters. Soon we will forget this week, soon the noise will engulf and life, fully emerged, will find its feet and will forget that it was once submerged.
After a week of what appeared to be some mythical deluge, I write this letter from the city slowly bringing itself back to life. The third of this fourth season of Bombay Daak.
Life is the Grammar of Rain
As the rains poured outside, and my street flooded, everything that I did during the week took on an experience of an immersion. Time felt heavier, pressing down, slowing things down, and small matters took on an enormity not prescribed for them. And so I stay drowned in this feeling, hoping the weeks ahead brings light and lightness.
*
In all the myths of all the old lands, life begins after a mythical flood. To take a new shape. In thinking about this, I found myself drawn to two poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.
Infant Joy, by William Blake, from Songs of Innocence and Experience.
Perec
Reading about Georges Perec and Oulipo overlapped with my excursions into the imaginations of Blake. And the ideas and explorations of the group, particularly Perec’s novel Life: A User’s Manual, felt like a things Blake might have approved of if not pursued.
This is a book review I have been waiting to share since ages. Take your time with it, this too requires an immersion.
These memories for the most part belong to the period when I was between 10 and 25, that is between 1946 and 1961. When I evoke memories from before the war, they refer for me to a period belonging to the realm of myth: this explains how a memory can be ‘objectively’ false.
– Georges Perec, I Remember
Life: Another User’s Manual
… major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response.
- When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness, Oliver Burkeman
Burkeman’s lessons on living and life reflect a bit of my own personal philosophy. I mean, there’s St. Kentish on Happiness from last year.
William Blake’s Infant Sorrow, from Songs of Innocence and Experience
Lost Postcard
In July of 2019, much like this year, the north was ravaged by floods and landslides. Two weeks after the clouds cooled down, I found myself in a rickety bus from Delhi to Manali. An anxious night in it became a concerned morning as I saw roads halved, hanging, caved in, tress broken in half, cars and buses and trucks washed away into the river. Mud and dirt everywhere.
But as the sun settled into the morning sky, the vibe changed. We stopped at this market somewhere en route and through the rain-hazed window I saw the morning trade in full flow, while a river raged swallowing everything in its way right behind them. There was nothing more calming than the bustle of humans going about the job of living.
The Grammar of Rain
The grammar of rain is the art of rising to the heavens and then falling down. The grammar of rain is the art of pouring life into what’s barren. The grammar of rain is the art of quenching thirst. The grammar of rain is the art of drama — thunder, lightning and storm. The grammar of rain is the art of debauchery — puddles, mud and dirt. The grammar of rain is the art of destruction — floods and landslides and cloud burst. The grammar of rain is the art of the cleanse, nature's mirror, home for reflection. The grammar of rain is the art of falling down and rising again to the heavens. The grammar of rain is the art of life, mother sky feeds its infant earth.
That pome though! :D