I just woke up. My iPod is still alive, barely, with a single point of battery. It’s playing “Wrecked” by Imagine Dragons, but the sound is fading, like it’s dying along with me. Everything feels dim, like the intro of a horror movie where it’s raining outside and the camera slowly zooms into a lonely kid staring at nothing. I take off my earphones. It’s raining outside. A cyclone. Water everywhere. The sound of raindrops falling on some metal roof, making a loud, almost deafening sound. Everything feels strange. No one’s around me. They’re just… gone. I check my phone—11 hours of sleep. The sudden climate change makes me feel low, like something is pressing against my chest.
Everything is Strange until I hear my mom’s voice. It’s 9 o’clock. I drag myself out of bed and go to her, ask her why she’s still at home. She should be at school by now. She looks at me and says, “It’s a cyclone, so there’s no school today.”
I nod, but I don’t feel comfortable. Something about the silence in the house, the rain outside, the grey sky—it makes me uneasy. I just take my laptop, go straight to my room, and start reading tech news. Maybe going through some RSS feeds will help me pass the time. The entire day just goes by like that—reading random blogs, staring at the rain, feeling like a failure. Sitting at my desk, watching the rain from my window, listening to “Tears in Rain.”
Then my mom calls me to stay in the tuition room until she prepares food. I sit there, scrolling through Twitter, lost in the endless doom-scroll of meaningless posts. Then suddenly—power cut. Everything turns off. No inverter. Nothing. Just the mobile torch cutting through the darkness.
Suddenly, a little girl, a third-class kid named Ninika, walks in. Her nose is bleeding. I just watch from the side as my mom cleans her up. I don’t say anything. I just watch. And then, without a word, I go to the terrace with an umbrella, standing there, watching the rain, listening to the sounds of water hitting the ground, the rooftops, the leaves. Just feeling it all like a kid.
Later, I come down, take a hot water bath, and go to bed.
Then suddenly—
I’m not in my bed anymore. I’m in my old house, standing in the corridor, watching the rain. The lightning is wild. The sky is cracking open with flashes of white light, but I just stand there, staring. And then, out of nowhere, I see a hand on the wall.
It’s her.
Harshi.
She’s standing beside me, looking at the same clouds. I turn my head, and suddenly, I realize—I’m a kid again. And there she is, my 10-year-old Harshi, standing next to me, just like before. We’re both standing outside tuition, watching the rain, feeling the cold air against our faces.
And then I wake up.
It wasn’t just a dream. I know that. It was a memory. I forgot to play a song before sleeping, and my iPod is dead. The rain sounds must have triggered it. I check my phone—it’s 1 AM. I step out of my room and see the rain outside. The downpour is heavy. The sky is alive with flashes of light.
And then I remember everything.
That wasn’t just a dream. That day really happened. I remember it so clearly now. One rainy day, Harshi and I were sitting in tuition, and the sudden smell of wet mud filled the air. I loved that smell. I asked my mom if I could go outside and enjoy the rain. She agreed and sent both of us—me and Harshi—out. She said that the smell of mud could help stop nosebleeds. We both had the same issue—nosebleeds.
That day, we stood there, in the rain, side by side. I remember watching her silent smile, the way the raindrops landed on her face. She was different. Special. I wanted to hug her in that rain, hold her close, but I never had that kind of luck in my life.
Remembering all of this now, I feel like something inside me is breaking. I open Snapchat. She sent a snap a week ago, sitting in a restaurant with her friend Ramana, talking about his mood.
Ramana.
How lucky he is. He gets to sit next to her, talk to her, laugh with her, without any effort. Just like that, he gets her kindness, her presence, for free.
And me?
I can’t even exist in her world.
I can’t see someone else that close to her. It feels like drowning, but there’s no water. No pool.
But wait.
I go to the water tank, open the cap, and lower myself inside. Just like that. I’m in a water tank. Sitting there, in complete darkness, listening to the tiny sounds of water drops echoing inside. I stay there for hours.
Just sitting.
Thinking.
Crying.
Remembering.
By the time I come out, it’s 5 AM. The rain is still falling. The world is still the same. But inside me, everything is wrecked.