Amara D’Souza
The first real rain of the season unfurls like a forgotten banner over the city—trams sighing on wet rails, buses coughing mist, chai kettles whistling like small lighthouses—and I walk through it with a borrowed umbrella whose stubborn hinge clicks like a throat clearing before a confession, pale dots on the fabric sparking into constellations if I tilt it just so, and there he is again at the corner by the bookstall that always smells of glue and paper, the same man I have noticed three days running: once at the Park Circus stop where everyone stands in a weary semicircle facing the future, once under the pharmacy awning when the sky broke like a dropped plate, and once behind me at the theatre canteen where the tea is too sweet and precisely what you need, his umbrella black with a wooden crook and a frayed ribbon near the tip, a small failed attempt at ownership I cannot help staring at until he notices and offers a quick private smile that feels like the turning of a page only he can read, and I am not brave enough to speak before the bus arrives heavy with steaming windows, so I slide inside and he remains on the curb, diminishing like a full stop at the end of a sentence I haven’t learned how to say, the rain writing everything down without asking us what we mean. That evening Divya at work declares the monsoon an enemy of hair and punctuality and asks if I am coming to the poetry reading at the cultural centre, and I say yes the way you answer a door you have been expecting, because the rain has started placing people in my path like deliberate pieces on a board and I want to see if it knows how to play fair; the centre is a building that excels at being many things at once—gallery, rehearsal hall, refuge—and outside, umbrellas lean in a patient bouquet, mine among them, his perhaps too if the day wants to continue its trick. The event is called “Underwater Cities,” which seems less like a theme and more like a permission slip for everything the rain has been doing to us; lines and cadences braid with the drumming on the skylight, someone reads in a language I do not know and yet the vowels carry a clear weather I can stand beneath, and when the crowd loosens for tea I find myself in a queue staring at steel cups and small miracles, and he is two people behind me, bringing with him the damp hush of sleeves that have been outside longer than they intended, and I cannot call it fate because fate would have better manners, but the canteen choreography puts us at the same window ledge with too-hot cups, a respectful person’s distance between us, the kind of space that feels like a page margin where stray thoughts sit, and after a while he says, “Long lines tonight,” in a voice lower than I had imagined, the sort of voice that could read a complicated recipe and make you want to follow it home, and I say, “For rain or poetry?” and he says “Both,” with that flicker-smile again, and then a spoon hits a cup somewhere like a bell and we return to our corners of the hall, and afterwards I linger at the umbrella rack longer than necessary, my fingers briefly on the wooden crook as if it might hold his warmth the way metal keeps lightning, but I leave mine and take mine and do not steal a plot point from a poorer story. Days rearrange themselves around water; I see him on College Street where books are stacked into improbable mountain ranges and the sellers speak an auctioneer’s language that can only exist within shouting distance of rain, and he is buying a secondhand atlas the colour of spent sky while I carry a parcel wrapped in an old newspaper whose headline shows through like a faded omen, and we nod the nod of two people who recognise both coincidence and its discipline; another day I pretend to study recycled-glass earrings under the flyover at Gariahat while he tests a clear umbrella that makes the world a fishbowl and tilts it toward the turbulent light as if expecting constellations, catches me smiling, salutes with the handle, and I answer with the ridiculous levity of lifting my paper bag which, to my surprise, earns an unguarded laugh I pocket like a coin for later. At home the borrowed umbrella drips a small comet onto the floor and the rain plays snare drum on the window grills while electricity fusses on and off; I fail to finish the novella I bought purely for its cover, answer emails like throwing stones across a widening river, call my mother to hear the sound of her practical weather, and wonder what he does when the city forgets to choreograph us, imagine him as someone who gives shape to unruly hours—a teacher with chalk dust on his palms, a mapmaker coaxing borders into honesty, a restorer of clocks who prefers time when it ticks. On Friday the building goes dark and the stairwell fills with the metallic smell of wet iron; I carry Mrs. Sen’s vegetables to the fourth floor because her umbrella has retired mid-shift, and in return she tells me that when it rains like this she dreams of blackboards and floodplains, and I decide that dreams naturally invent such unusual classrooms when the city is busy unspooling its syllabus. Saturday’s laundry becomes an offering to humidity; on the terrace, lines are strung like staff paper waiting for rain to write its music, and across the lane on an opposite roof I see the black umbrella with the wooden crook opened like a private awning over a regiment of shirts although the sky is only a dull pewter and not actively pouring, and I lift my hand and he lifts his and the gesture lingers between wave and word—any bridge is good when built of something as temporary as air. By evening the storm returns with arguments; I go to the market for eggs and find the road a river of headlights and honking boats, and as the egg seller closes early the way weather shuts doors, a vendor drops a garland and marigolds tumble like small suns into a gutter, and I bend to help at the same moment another pair of hands does, and water beads on his eyelashes and the ribbon on his umbrella is a small question mark I want to answer, and we lift the flowers and he says, “Marigolds rescue team,” and I say, “Volunteer and volunteer,” and the vendor blesses us with a gesture halfway to dance, and we step into the shallow shelter of the abandoned cinema’s doorway where the rain falls like silver film between us and the world, and he says, “I keep seeing you,” and I say the same because anything else would pretend an understanding I do not have yet, and he begins, “Perhaps it’s the umb—” just as a bus shoulders past and throws a wave that finishes his sentence in laughter, and the light changes and the world resumes its instruction to move and we might have drifted in different directions if he hadn’t said, with a small resolve that fits us both, “I’m Arin,” and I said, “Mira,” offering my name like a token a machine accepts only once, and then a cycle rickshaw rang its bell and a child in a red raincoat stomped a puddle into a galaxy and somewhere, maybe in us, the rain adjusted the tempo, and he looked at me over the curve of the wooden handle as if measuring the weather between us and said, “Perhaps we’ll keep seeing each other,” not as wish but as observation, and I said, “Perhaps the city likes a good story,” and we parted there, shy citizens of a doorway that once sold celluloid dreams, marigold scent clinging to my palms on the walk home while the rain softened into something like memory, the borrowed umbrella drying on a chair like a mild starry animal watching me think about patterns, about whether the sky draws lines it intends to keep, and when I turn off the light the room becomes an aquarium and thunder rehearses a line and forgets it, and sometime in the middle of the night I wake to the smallest click—the hinge of the umbrella folding a little closer to itself—as if preparing to learn a new choreography when morning comes.
Sunday begins with the kind of rain that does not fall so much as lean, tilting across rooftops as though the sky itself is tired and must rest on the city’s shoulder, and I wake to the soft percussion on the tin balcony shade, carrying the certainty that he—Arin—is somewhere under the same weather, measuring it, maybe with that black umbrella of his, maybe with the quiet smile that still lingers in the cinema doorway of my memory, and the thought is unreasonable yet insistent, like a small clock that keeps time even when no one asks. I walk down to the newspaper stall, dodging puddles that have ambitions of being lakes, and the man hands me my copy wrapped in yesterday’s sports page, his fingers stained with ink the way the river stains everything it touches; beside me a boy buys a packet of milk with coins so warm they steam in the vendor’s palm, and just beyond the crossing, through the shifting curtains of rain, I see Arin again. He is balancing a bundle of books against his chest, one slipping toward rebellion until he tucks it with a practiced elbow, and when his eyes find mine across the dripping traffic there is no surprise, only recognition, as if the city has simply upheld its end of the bargain.
We meet in the pause when the signal reddens and cars sigh into stillness, umbrellas knocking like polite strangers above our heads. He says, “You read the Sunday features?” and I answer, “Only if the pages survive the rain,” and we both laugh at the thinness of paper against this weather, at the way newsprint smudges into a half-legible watercolor, and the laugh feels less like an exchange and more like a small room that opens, large enough for both of us to step inside. We walk toward the tea stall at the end of the street, where glass cups sweat and samosas hiss, and it is almost natural that we stand side by side, my umbrella tilted toward his books, his angled toward me, an awkward duet that makes the vendor grin without comment.
We drink standing up because the benches are already occupied by men whose umbrellas lean against the wall like defeated soldiers; the steam climbs into our faces, making ghosts of us, and he tells me he works at a map publisher’s office, drafting lines that sometimes argue with rivers, coaxing coastlines into shapes that can fit onto folded paper, and I say I work at an ad agency where clients are forever asking for slogans shorter than the truths they are meant to sell. He says, “So you trade in words,” and I say, “And you in worlds,” and the pun is silly but it makes the corner of his mouth lift in a way that tells me he collects such moments carefully.
Rain presses harder against the corrugated roof, forcing us to lean closer to hear, and in that closeness I notice the faint scent of pencil shavings on him, of paper that has been thumbed through too often, and it strikes me that we carry our professions on our skins like quiet perfumes. A boy squeezes past with a tray of fritters, his elbow nearly overturning my cup, and without thinking Arin steadies it with a quick hand against mine, and there is that brief electricity, the jolt of skin against skin in a city where contact is often accidental but sometimes feels scripted.
When the rain thins to a drizzle we walk back toward the crossing, not because we must but because direction is easier than deciding otherwise, and he asks if I have ever tried to walk without an umbrella just to see how far the rain will allow, and I tell him yes, once during college when I thought defiance was romantic until the fever taught me otherwise, and he laughs, saying maps too punish defiance: “You ignore a river, it floods the page.” At the junction, his office lies one way, my lane another; we hesitate, two umbrellas describing hesitant arcs, until he says, “Maybe next time the city will decide again,” and I answer, “It seems determined,” and we part like commas waiting for the next clause.
The afternoon drifts uneventfully—laundry sighing on lines, a call from my mother about leaking balconies, deadlines that refuse to dry—but underneath it all runs the quiet knowledge that chance can now be trusted to repeat itself, that we have moved from coincidence to rhythm. Evening brings a fresh burst of rain and I walk to the tram depot where a troupe of children float paper boats lit with matchstick candles, their faces alive with dangerous joy; I kneel to watch, my umbrella propped against a bench, when a voice says, “Careful, those boats believe they’re invincible,” and of course it is him again, appearing as if the rain itself has written him into the scene.
We stand together watching the small flotilla set out toward inevitable drowning, and he says, “Maps never show this kind of voyage,” and I reply, “Advertisements never promise endings,” and the children cheer when a boat survives two whole minutes before collapsing, and in that cheer something opens between us, wider than weather, wider than chance, and the city around us seems briefly to still, as if listening for what we might say next. But we do not say anything more, not yet; instead we share the silence the way strangers sometimes share an awning, not touching but not apart, and the rain falls steady, composing its long patient story on every roof, every tram rail, every umbrella leaning into the night.
Morning arrives with a startling honesty—no veil, no gray curtain—just a clean, polished blue that makes the city blink as if woken too suddenly, and for the first time in weeks I step out without an umbrella, feeling almost underdressed, aware of my hands like actors without props; the streets glisten with the memory of water but the sun is already negotiating its inheritance, rescuing laundry from despair, encouraging scooters to preen, convincing crows to hold court on electric lines, and at the corner a hawker rearranges his plastic raincoats into shy stacks as if embarrassed to be caught overprepared. I tell myself that chance can function without weather, that if a pattern is true it survives the removal of its most obvious ink, yet as I walk I realize how much the city’s choreography relied on the polite collisions of wetness—the ducking into awnings, the mutual lifting of canopies, the crowded islands under bus-stop signs—and without rain the day feels like a stage between shows, the props vanished, the actors hesitant. At the crossing where we first traded that unremarkable laugh about paper and rain, I wait longer than necessary under a sky that keeps promising forever as if that is not its most extravagant lie, and when Arin does not appear I pretend it is because maps require him, that he is indoors coaxing a coastline into an obedient curve, and I go on with my errands with a small, unreasonable ache that I file under “sunlight tax.”
By noon the blue has faded to an honest heat that makes the market sellers fan themselves with cardboard, and I drop into the cool dimness of a music shop that still believes in cassettes, in glass counters, in handwritten labels that lean like attentive listeners; I am not buying anything—I have no device left that can listen to tape—but I like the way the place smells of dust and possibility. An old speaker mutters a ghazal, the singer turning sorrow into a gentle practice, and I am bending over a tray of mismatched cases when a brief shadow crosses the doorway, and before my brain translates the silhouette, my mouth has already shaped his name the way rain shapes a window: Arin. He is carrying a roll of drafting paper like a diplomatic message, his hair pushed back by a heat that refuses polite boundaries, and he lifts his hand as if the city had just called our names in roll call and we were answering present, present. “Clear skies,” he says with a mock sternness that belongs to weather forecasters and conspirators, and I say, “Temporary,” because every blue in this city is, and for proof a single fat cloud floats overhead like a white elephant deciding whether to sit. We step together into the shop’s shade as if awnings can be made of music, and he explains he has come from the stationer next door but the proprietor is at lunch and the bell keeps ringing itself without result, and I offer him half my shade even though there is no rain to justify it, and we browse a wall of album covers that believe faces can be destinations.
We talk about the way songs remember things we forgot on purpose, about the map of a childhood that is not on any paper but can be played if you know the right sequence of chords; he says his father measured the city by the placement of tea stalls and his mother measured it by bus routes, and he tries to decide which instrument gave him his sense of direction. I tell him my father measured it by the seasons of fish and my mother measures it by which markets have the best coriander and the most honest shopkeepers, and somewhere in all that year-counting I learned to draw lines between smells and errands, which is a kind of cartography too. The shop-owner returns with dal on his breath and switches the track to something newer, urgent drums announcing a moral about love that refuses nuance, and we laugh at the way music sometimes offers answers before you’ve asked questions, and then we step back into the day which has carefully added a veil of cloud like a polite shawl over its earlier boldness.
He asks if I have eaten and I confess I have only insulted a packet of peanuts, so we walk to a place with ceiling fans that swing slow enough to be philosophers and glass-fronted cases where jalebis stare like saints, and we share a plate of kachoris with that raw onion that turns conversation into declaration; the table is near a window where sunlight arranges itself into squares like paper, and he sketches a tiny map on a napkin—four lanes, two untrustworthy gutters, one reliable awning—and names it “Rain Refuge Route” with such earnestness that my heart does a small, old-fashioned thing in my chest. I counter by drafting three lines for a pretend advertisement for his office—“Maps that admit rivers. Borders that breathe. Directions that include detours.”—and he says the third line is illegal in his field but he would keep it on his desk anyway as a private rebellion. We agree not to exchange numbers because there is a holiness in the way the city has been arranging us, and though it sounds like superstition I find that I do not want to upgrade our coincidence to convenience; he nods, not as a test of fate, but as if respecting a ritual he didn’t know he needed until now.
Afternoon loosens its grip and the cloud, pleased with the attention it has received, finally unwraps itself into rain—not a tantrum, merely a deliberate handwriting—and the world shifts into the register that knows us; we stand, pay, and without discussion fall into step toward the tram line where iron and water have learned to argue gently. He unfurls the black umbrella with the wooden crook and I resist the impulse to step under it because I want to earn our shelter with walking, but the rain thickens as if responding to a cue, and he tilts the canopy to cover both and our shoulders discover a new arithmetic of distance, one that allows for quick evasions of low-hanging wires and considerate dances around puddles disguised as wells. A bus arrives shouldering its own weather and he says he must go to a meeting about a harbor that refuses to sit still on paper, and I should check proofs for a milk brand that insists on having the face of a cow smile like an aunt, and at the step we hesitate the way people hesitate at the lip of the sea not because they fear drowning but because they know they will be altered. “Keep the umbrella,” he says suddenly, pressing the wooden crook toward my fingers, “a temporary loan for a temporary sky,” and I protest out of courtesy but accept out of something larger, because my hands have been empty of such sentences for years.
On the way home the umbrella changes my silhouette, adds a small authority to my walk; the ribbon near the tip flutters like a punctuation mark unsure if it is a comma or a question, and the rain writes around us as if willing to try a different grammar. At the corner a child in school uniform uses a plastic folder as a ship, steering it along the curb’s stream, and I crouch to rescue a page printed with algebra proofs the rain has made lyrical, and I think about how maps and slogans and songs all attempt the same audacity—capturing movement in stillness without killing it. On my landing the umbrella shakes itself free like a mild animal, and I lean it in the corridor to dry while Mrs. Sen peeks out and says, “Good handle,” with the authority of someone who has seen many handles fail, and I nod as if this is the liturgy of our building.
Evening brings its small errands of light: bulbs waking, kettles lifting, the balcony plant recovering from heat as if remembering water from a photograph, and I keep glancing at the umbrella like a guest in my room who has brought a story it is waiting to tell; I consider texting Divya to say the weather is conspiring again, but I do not, because explanation is often a theft. Instead I open the napkin map and tape it beside the kitchen calendar where my days pretend to be organized, and I whisper the names of the lanes as if they are people—Beniapukur, Anami Sangha, Sarat Chatterjee Road—letting each syllable find its weather in my mouth. When the lights go out for a breath-long second and return, the room feels as if it has blinked and decided to keep the memory of darkness as a souvenir.
Before sleeping I hear a bicycle bell ring three polite notes beneath the window, and for a hopeless second I imagine it is a message from him sent by proxy, though of course it is only the vegetable seller doing his rounds earlier because the rain discourages loitering; I close my eyes and in that soft cinema behind the lids I see the old doorway with marigold scent, the tram depot’s flotilla of paper stars, the cassette shop’s patient dust, and this new umbrella drying like a black gull with folded wings. I think of the numbers we did not exchange, the ritual we have accepted, and a part of me—practical, salaried, deadline-keeping—worries about logistics, but another part, the old untrained animal that still trusts weather, settles down purring. If the city wants this story, it will keep writing it; if not, at least I have learned to pronounce its pauses. And somewhere in the district of sleep I feel the umbrella lean a little toward me in the dark, as if remembering the hand that usually holds it and considering whether my name fits its handle, and the rain, grown confidential now, begins to speak in that voice only windows learn, promising nothing, promising everything, promising tomorrow.
Monday wakes in fragments—windows rattling with leftover rain, vendors calling vegetables like prayers, tram bells rehearsing their routes—and I lie still long enough to hear the umbrella breathing against the corridor wall, faintly alive, as though it has remembered me. At work the office air smells of damp files and electric wires drying out, and everyone blames the weather for deadlines, love lives, headaches. I am meant to design a slogan for a new mineral water brand, something about purity, about mountains that never leak, but every phrase I write bends back toward rain, toward the city’s improvisations. Divya leans over my desk, clicking her pen like a metronome, and says, “You look as if you’re writing a diary, not an ad,” and perhaps she is right. I tuck the umbrella map into my drawer, the napkin curling at the edges, and tell her it’s research, though for what I cannot say.
At lunch I step out, needing air sharper than the agency’s recycled sighs, and the street greets me with a drizzle polite enough to be conversation. I open the black umbrella, Arin’s umbrella, and feel instantly claimed by it, the wooden crook warm from memory rather than temperature. As I walk past the tram depot, a voice behind me calls, “Borrowed property!” and I turn to see him, waving a roll of maps like a flag of truce, his shirt sleeves inked faintly with rain. He joins me under the canopy as if the umbrella had been waiting for this very reunion. “How was the harbor?” I ask, and he shrugs: “Still refusing to sit still. The sea is stubborn about geography.” We walk together, shoulders brushing, the city narrowing around us in alleys where shopkeepers sweep water into stubborn rivers.
We stop by a printing press, its windows fogged with steam from machines that turn blankness into announcement, and he shows me a proof of a railway line, the ink smudged at the corner like an unfinished sentence. “This is how maps misbehave,” he says, and I answer, “So do words,” and we laugh at how much our worlds rhyme. Rain thickens, guiding us into a café where the ceiling fan twirls with sleepy grace. The waiter sets down two cups of coffee and a plate of buttered toast that glows like gold, and Arin says he used to come here as a student when he could afford only one cup stretched into an hour, and I admit I used to come too, hiding from lectures I pretended were optional. The idea that we may have shared this space years before, breathing the same damp air without knowing, feels like a secret the city has only now decided to reveal.
We talk—about bridges that collapse under their own arrogance, about books that survive generations in secondhand shops, about how umbrellas always seem to vanish into other people’s lives—and with each sentence the space between us grows gentler, like rain easing into mist. Outside, the street reflects neon like restless watercolors. I notice the ribbon near the umbrella’s tip fluttering against the glass pane, and I want to ask about it—who tied it, why—but stop myself, sensing some stories should be allowed to arrive unhurried.
Evening leans in. We part at the tram stop where the tracks glow with rainlight, and for a moment it feels as though the whole city has conspired to keep us standing there indefinitely. Finally he says, “Keep it one more day,” nodding toward the umbrella. I start to protest, but he smiles, that half-smile that feels like punctuation softer than a period, firmer than a comma, and I carry it with me through the drizzle back to my room.
At home the umbrella leans once more by the wall, a quiet guest, and I wonder how long before an object becomes a companion. I boil rice, water tapping the lid in rhythm, and think of how his voice wrapped itself around stubborn seas, stubborn slogans, stubborn coincidences. Before sleep I open the window just wide enough to let the rain speak, and in the hush it says his name back to me, syllable by syllable, as though teaching me a language I already know.
The week began with a kind of silence the city rarely permits, a Tuesday morning where no tram rang, no vendors shouted, no scooters quarreled, only the slow inhale of air heavy with more rain to come, and I walked with Arin’s umbrella like it had become my shadow, the wooden crook worn into my palm as if rehearsing permanence, and yet I knew it was borrowed, temporary, a sentence waiting for its punctuation, though I did not want to admit it, not even to myself; by afternoon the silence broke with thunder, sudden and theatrical, and the rain returned with such force that buses stalled mid-lane like stunned cattle, and I ducked under an awning that barely kept its promises, only to hear his voice behind me, casual as weather, “You’ve made it yours,” and there he was again, shaking rain off his shoulders, eyes bright in the storm-light, and we both laughed because of course the umbrella had become an emblem, though neither of us said so directly, instead walking together through streets that had turned into narrow canals, children leaping between islands of stone, women holding saris like sails, men resigned to wetness like penance, and everywhere the rain rehearsing its endless script, until we reached the small bridge near the market where the water rushed below like a prophecy, and there, in the middle of that trembling span, a gust of wind so fierce it felt almost deliberate tore the umbrella from my hand, sent it tumbling over the rail with a spin so graceful it looked choreographed, the black canopy briefly a winged creature against the grey sky before it collapsed into the current and was carried off with shocking speed, the ribbon at its tip the last visible note, and I cried out in helpless laughter mixed with grief, because it was only an object yet more than an object, a vessel of our meetings, our pauses, our coincidences, and I stood frozen as if a part of our story had been ripped away. Arin, however, leaned over the rail, watching the current with an unreadable face, then turned to me with a shrug that was neither careless nor cruel but strangely calm, and he said, “Then the city will have to find another way,” and something in that steadiness steadied me too, and we walked on through the rain without a canopy now, drenched, shoes squelching, hair plastered, but strangely unburdened, as though the loss had peeled back a layer of hesitation. We ducked into a bakery glowing with yellow light, dripping water onto its tiled floor, and ordered tea so hot it scalded our fingers, sat at a table that smelled of yeast and sugar, and for the first time we spoke without the safety of metaphors, not of rivers or maps or slogans, but of ourselves: he told me about a childhood in a one-room flat above a tailoring shop where the whir of sewing machines was his lullaby, of a sister who moved abroad and sends postcards that arrive months too late, of a father who measured love in cups of strong tea and a mother who measured it in folded laundry; I told him about a college year I almost quit because my words seemed useless, about the time I lived with an aunt who spoke to plants more than people, about how the city both shelters and swallows, depending on its mood, and he listened not with politeness but with the kind of attention that rearranges silence, and when the tea was gone we sat longer, as if neither wanted to disturb what had begun to breathe between us. Outside the rain softened, the storm’s tantrum over, and the street was strewn with fallen gulmohar blossoms sticking to the wet asphalt like stamps, and for once I did not dread stepping back into it empty-handed, for we had already crossed some invisible bridge the umbrella had once symbolized. We walked slowly toward the tram line, our shoulders brushing more often than not, and when we reached the stop he paused, looked at me with a half-smile that felt like a beginning, and said, “Perhaps it’s time we let the city rest,” which I understood to mean that chance had served us long enough, that perhaps now it was our turn to decide, and though the idea of exchanging numbers still felt like breaking a spell, I found myself writing mine on the back of a bakery bill and pressing it into his damp hand, and he nodded, not triumphant but grateful, folding it carefully as though it were a map of some secret territory. That night, lying in bed with rain still whispering at the window, I thought not of the lost umbrella but of the ribbon spinning away, how sometimes objects must leave to make room for words, and I realized the city had given us its blessing in the only way it knew—by taking back what was borrowed, and leaving us instead with something less fragile, less temporary, something that might survive even the sun.
The umbrella’s absence rearranged the days. At first I felt exposed, as though I had been walking with a secret companion and now moved alone, my shoulders suddenly discoverable to the sky. Yet strangely, I did not resent it. The loss on the bridge had done what neither of us could have done deliberately—it left no excuse for hesitation.
On Wednesday the streets wore yesterday’s rain like a faded sari. The sky threatened another downpour but held back, indecisive. At the office, Divya teased me again, tapping her pen like an impatient tabla. “Why are you glowing? Did someone finally approve one of your slogans?” she asked, suspicious. I wanted to tell her that no client, no deadline had given me this warmth—that it had come instead from a bakery bill folded in someone else’s pocket—but I kept silent. Secrets tasted better when they were still rising, like bread in an oven.
That evening, as the tram screeched past Park Street, my phone buzzed with an unfamiliar number. The message was short, unadorned: “The city doesn’t need to keep working so hard. Coffee tomorrow?” Signed: Arin. I read it twice, maybe thrice, not because the words were complicated but because they felt too simple for all the meanings behind them. My reply took embarrassingly long to type: “Yes. Where?” His answer: “Anywhere the roof doesn’t leak.”
We met at a corner café the next day, the kind of place where ceiling fans shuffle lazily and the tables bear initials carved by students convinced of their forever. No rain, no accidents, no awnings forced us together this time. We had chosen it. That realization sat between us like an unwrapped gift, and we both kept glancing at it, amused and shy.
Arin ordered black coffee; I chose tea with ginger. He asked about my deadlines, and I admitted I had convinced a client to accept a tagline longer than they wanted: “Because thirst isn’t measured in slogans.” He laughed, the sound like warm rain striking stone, and confessed that he had accidentally drawn the Hooghly bending the wrong way on a preliminary draft, earning him a lecture from his supervisor. “But rivers never listen to us anyway,” he added.
We talked until the café lights flickered and the staff began stacking chairs. Outside, the street reflected neon puddles though the sky stayed dry, as if rain had left behind its mirrors. I realized with a jolt how easy it felt—how conversation with him did not require performance, only presence.
After that, the city’s coincidences grew fewer, replaced by choices. We began to plan. Not elaborate things, only small ones: a walk along the riverbank at dusk where fishermen mended nets that glistened like constellations, an afternoon in College Street where we bought books by weight, a tram ride where we both pretended not to notice the conductor’s grin at our awkward closeness. Without the umbrella, we learned to share space without props. Sometimes we argued lightly—about the best place for street food, about whether maps told lies or truths—but even those disagreements felt like threads weaving us tighter.
And yet, even in this new clarity, I found myself missing the city’s role. I missed the mystery of its arrangements, the thrill of believing the rain itself had conspired. Now that we had stepped forward, was the story less magical? One night, walking home alone, I passed the bridge again, the same one that had swallowed the umbrella, and leaned over the railing. The river carried its eternal cargo of silt and refuse and occasional light. I imagined the umbrella still drifting somewhere downstream, ribbon trailing, a relic of coincidence. Perhaps the city had not abandoned us at all—it had simply given us enough of a push to walk on our own.
Later that week, in the hush after dinner, my phone buzzed again. This time it wasn’t a question but a statement: “The weekend forecast says heavy rain. We should let it.” I smiled at the screen, hearing his voice in the words. Perhaps magic doesn’t disappear when chosen; it only changes its script.
The weekend began the way forecasters love to be right—skies swelling with grey muscle, thunder rehearsing behind curtains, vendors pulling tarpaulins tighter around their stalls. By Saturday afternoon, the storm arrived in full procession. Rain slashed sideways across tramlines, pooled under rickshaw wheels, and beat on corrugated roofs until they trembled like drumskins. I watched from my window, the glass fogging with my breath, when my phone lit up: “Outside. Bring nothing but yourself.”
I hesitated only long enough to grab sandals I didn’t mind sacrificing. When I stepped into the lane, water already ankle-deep, he was there, drenched, hair flattened, grinning like someone who’d finally gotten his way with the weather. No umbrella between us this time. “You trust forecasts now?” I shouted over the rain. “Only when they promise mischief,” he answered, and we laughed, though the storm swallowed most of the sound.
We walked without destination, the city unrecognizable under its sudden rivers. Children floated plastic bottles as ships, dogs shook themselves pointlessly, and women leaned out from balconies to collect water in buckets as if harvesting from the sky. The rain made equals of everyone—soaked, blinking, alive. Arin reached for my hand not dramatically, not even tentatively, but with the quiet certainty of someone picking up a thread mid-conversation. I let him, and our fingers interlaced like something that had been waiting for this precise rehearsal.
At College Street the booksellers fought valiantly with plastic sheets, whole universes threatened by water. We ducked under a half-collapsed awning where words bled from spines into rain, and he held up a ruined paperback, its letters running like mascara. “Even maps do this,” he said. “Lines dissolve, borders blur.” I touched the page, smudging it further. “Sometimes that’s the only honest version.” Our eyes met in the dim light, and for a second the storm hushed, as if listening.
We moved again, the city guiding us through its soaked arteries, until we reached the Maidan where fields had become lakes. There were no cricketers, no couples on benches, only water stretching wide, reflecting lightning like a cracked mirror. He led me barefoot into the flooded grass. Cold water clutched at our legs, but it didn’t matter. We waded out, laughing at our own recklessness, until the city itself seemed to vanish, only rain and us and the trembling horizon remaining.
There, in that drowned meadow, he stopped. “You know,” he said, rain streaking his face like lines on a map, “I used to think chance was enough. That if something mattered, it would keep appearing until you listened.” His grip on my hand tightened. “But now I wonder if chance is just the rehearsal. Choice is the real performance.”
I wanted to answer, but the words tangled. All I could do was nod, rain plastering my hair, my clothes heavy, and lean closer so he could hear what silence wanted to say. He kissed me then—not shy, not practiced, but with the raw urgency of someone finally stepping off the curb after watching traffic too long. The rain closed around us like applause.
When we pulled apart, both breathless, the city seemed to return—horns bleating faintly, thunder muttering, buses growling somewhere distant. But something fundamental had shifted. We were no longer waiting for umbrellas, or for chance meetings at crossings. We had chosen.
We sloshed back toward the streets, soaked to the bone, people staring, some smiling at our foolishness. At the bakery, the same one where we had once rescued ourselves from storm-light, we wrung out our sleeves and shared a plate of pakoras, steam rising like small promises. “We’ll catch fevers,” I warned, and he said, “Then at least we’ll have the same prescription.”
That night, back in my room, I hung my clothes like defeated flags and lay under the fan, shivering but unwilling to close my eyes. The storm outside raged on, yet I felt oddly calm. In the darkness, I pictured the lost umbrella spinning somewhere far downstream, ribbon trailing like a signature, and I realized it had served its purpose. It had been the prologue. The city had stopped writing for us because we had finally picked up the pen.
The storm broke overnight, leaving the city raw and rinsed. By Sunday morning the sky was a fragile porcelain blue, edges cracked with thin clouds, and the air smelled of wet dust and fried pakoras from some early vendor who believed hunger was timeless. I woke with my body still remembering the weight of rain, my skin recalling the press of his hand, my mouth tingling with the memory of that kiss in the drowned Maidan. Everything seemed different, though nothing in the room had changed—same peeling paint, same unwatered money plant, same kettle shrilling at the edge of patience. Perhaps it was I who had shifted, tilting slightly on my axis.
When I stepped out, the city was busy patching itself together. Shopkeepers dragged plastic sheets off counters, students shook water out of satchels, trams groaned awake like hungover men. I half-expected to stumble into Arin at every corner, but this time there was no coincidence waiting; instead, my phone buzzed with a message: “Lunch? After all that rain, I think the city owes us something warm.”
We met at a tiny restaurant near Shyambazar, a place barely wide enough for two rows of tables, its walls crowded with framed gods and fading calendars. He was already there, hair still damp, sketching on the back of the menu with a stub of pencil. When I sat down he slid it toward me—a rough map of the Maidan with a small star drawn where we had stood. “Historical site,” he declared, eyes gleaming. I laughed too loudly, the waiter staring as if we had committed blasphemy in a temple of food.
Over rice and mustard fish we talked about ordinary things that somehow felt extraordinary in their sharing: his dislike of bitter gourd, my failed attempt at learning the guitar, his habit of keeping ticket stubs, my ritual of writing down overheard phrases in a notebook. At one point he reached across the table to brush a grain of rice from my cheek, casual as breathing, and I felt the restaurant tilt slightly, as though the city itself had leaned in to listen.
After lunch we walked slowly through the streets, the ground still slick with retreating water. No umbrella this time—only the wide sky, scattered with hesitant clouds. Our conversation meandered like the lanes themselves, drifting from childhood stories to work frustrations to dreams so unsteady we almost whispered them. He confessed he sometimes imagined leaving the city for good, escaping to a hill station where the air smelled of pine, but always stopped himself. “Because I think the city would be offended if I left,” he said. I told him I too had imagined other places—Delhi, Bangalore, even abroad—but somehow the city always pulled me back, like a persistent parent tugging a child’s arm.
We ended up at the tram depot, watching carriages clank into rest, their paint gleaming wet in the sun. It struck me how natural it felt to stand there beside him, not waiting for coincidence, not hiding under awnings, but simply existing side by side, two shadows stretched across the same puddle.
In the following days, life resumed its rhythm—work deadlines, market errands, the daily choreography of survival—but woven through it now was this quiet certainty. We no longer needed accidents to meet. He called, I answered; I messaged, he appeared. Some evenings we walked without talking much, listening instead to the city’s mutter—the cries of hawkers, the gossip of pigeons, the hiss of street food oil. Other nights we argued lightly: he swore by one tram route, I by another; he insisted maps were about accuracy, I argued they were about imagination. Yet even our quarrels carried a current of laughter beneath them, like a river steady under surface ripples.
Still, I noticed the city watching. Whenever we crossed the bridge where the umbrella had been taken, the river seemed louder, its current more insistent. Passing the cinema doorway where marigolds had once scattered, I caught the faint scent of flowers though no stall was near. And at the tram depot, when children floated paper boats again, I thought I saw one shaped uncannily like an umbrella. Perhaps it was all fancy, or perhaps the city wasn’t finished with us—it was simply letting us write the middle chapters ourselves.
One evening, after a long day of failed slogans and endless edits, I sat with him on the steps of the Indian Museum, the sky bruised purple above us. He leaned back, arms folded, and said, “Do you ever think we’re characters? That the rain wrote us into its story?” I wanted to laugh it off, but the seriousness in his eyes stopped me. “Maybe,” I said slowly, “but if that’s true, I’d like to know how much is script and how much is improvisation.” He smiled, reached for my hand again, and said, “Then let’s keep improvising.”
And in that moment, with the city humming around us, I realized the umbrellas had only been a prelude. The real shelter was here, between us, fragile yet stubborn, a canopy no storm could quite undo.
The city does not let you be content for long. It tests. By the second week of our deliberate meetings, the rain returned not as playful coincidence but as inconvenience: buses refusing to appear, power lines crackling out, advertisements smearing into ghosts. Work at the agency grew frantic—clients demanded miracles in slogans while servers drowned in humidity. Arin’s office too bristled with deadlines; he messaged once: “They want a map of a river that hasn’t decided where it wants to be.” I answered: “Tell them rivers are better poets than planners.” His reply was only a tired smiley, which somehow unsettled me more than silence.
We saw each other less. Not absence, but thinning. The city had stopped arranging accidents and was busy throwing obstacles instead. One night I waited nearly an hour outside his office, the rain pinning me to the same awning where years ago I had hidden from my first college storm. When Arin finally emerged, he was distracted, his eyes already carrying unfinished maps. “Sorry,” he said, brief, and kissed my forehead like an apology rather than a beginning.
The following Sunday we tried to reclaim what had frayed. We met at the riverside promenade, umbrellas this time purely practical, not talismans. The Hooghly was swollen, tugging at its banks as though impatient with its boundaries. Streetlights blinked in haloes of drizzle. We walked in silence for a while, listening to the water roar under Howrah Bridge. Finally, he said, “I think we mistook the city’s stagecraft for permanence.”
I looked at him sharply. “Do you regret it? Us?”
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head, rain splattering his glasses. “Not regret. Just… wonder. Whether we can carry this without the city holding the threads.”
I wanted to say yes, we can, we must—but the words tangled with doubt. The truth was, I too had felt it: how much of our story belonged to the city, to umbrellas and storms and accidents. What remained when those were gone?
A rickshaw passed, wheels slicing water. We stepped aside, close under one umbrella now. His shoulder pressed mine, warm despite the rain. “Choice,” I whispered. “You said choice was the performance. Then let’s choose.”
He turned, studied me, and for a moment I thought he might smile, but instead he only nodded, serious as a vow.
The rain thickened; we ducked into a riverside stall selling roasted corn. The vendor rubbed lime and chili onto golden cobs, smoke rising like incense. We ate, dripping, watching ferries lumber across the river. Somewhere in that ordinary act—sharing food with fingers messy and red with spice—I felt steadier. Perhaps the city didn’t need to conspire anymore. Perhaps storms could become background, not script.
But the city had one more test. The next evening, on my way home, I saw him at a distance—Arin, unmistakable—standing under a streetlight near College Street. Beside him was a woman, umbrella angled to cover them both. They were laughing. I froze. The traffic between us surged, rickshaws, scooters, bodies pushing. By the time I crossed, they were gone, dissolved into the rain-drenched crowd.
That night I barely slept. My phone stayed blank. No message from him. I told myself there were explanations: colleagues, old friends, a cousin. Yet the image of them sharing an umbrella burned like a watermark I could not erase.
The next morning, bleary-eyed, I reached for my notebook and wrote the words: “Shelter is fragile.” Then tore the page out and tucked it away like evidence.
When we met two days later—by arrangement this time, at the museum steps—he was his usual self, easy, warm. He spoke of rivers, of deadlines, of a dream he had where trams turned into boats. I nodded, smiled, but inside I carried the question like a stone in my pocket. Who was she? Did it matter?
Rain began again, sudden and theatrical. We rose together, instinctively searching for cover, but there was none nearby. He laughed, hair plastered, and held out his hand. “Come on. We’ll walk through it.”
And I did, letting the storm soak us, the city watching, testing, recording. My doubts walked with me, stubborn as shadows. But so did his hand, steady, warm.
Perhaps love is not the absence of doubt but the decision to walk anyway. Perhaps that was the lesson the umbrellas had been trying to teach all along.
The final week of monsoon arrived like a curtain call. Clouds gathered, heavy and theatrical, rain fell in long rehearsed sheets, and the city seemed intent on one last performance before handing itself to autumn. The tramlines shone silver, gutters roared with hurried water, and shopkeepers resigned themselves to damp goods and patient customers. I walked through it all with my heart full of questions I hadn’t voiced, the memory of Arin under a streetlight with another umbrella still shadowing me, though I told myself it was nothing, though I told myself choice meant trust.
We met again, unplanned, at the crossing near Park Circus where everything had first begun. The rain was steady, umbrellas bobbing like paper lanterns above the crowd. And there he was, waiting as though he had expected me all along. “The city remembers,” he said with that crooked half-smile, as if this were not coincidence but ritual.
We ducked into the same tea stall, steam curling upward into the rain-misted air. He ordered two cups without asking, as though he knew my preferences had become part of his map. I wanted to hold my silence, to sip quietly and let the city write its final paragraph. But silence can rot if left too long. So I asked: “Who was she?”
His eyebrows lifted, then softened. “Who?”
“The woman with you. College Street. Sharing an umbrella.”
For a heartbeat he seemed puzzled. Then understanding dawned. “Oh. That was my sister. She’s back from Pune for a short visit. We were buying books for my nephew.”
Relief flooded me so suddenly I almost laughed, but pride kept my mouth steady. He reached across the small counter, his hand brushing mine. “Mira,” he said gently, “if we’re to carry this forward, we can’t let shadows speak louder than us.”
I nodded, ashamed and yet lighter, as though the city had tested me and I had survived. Outside, thunder growled but softened quickly, like a scolded animal.
Later that evening we walked the long way home, rain tapering into drizzle. We passed the bridge where the umbrella had been lost, the river swollen and urgent beneath. I leaned against the railing, remembering the ribbon spinning away. “Do you think it’s still out there?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s found someone else who needed a story.”
I liked that idea: the umbrella drifting through the city’s veins, stitching strangers together, carrying with it fragments of laughter and coincidence. Perhaps we had never owned it. Perhaps it had only borrowed us.
The rain thinned until only drops clung stubbornly to leaves. Arin turned to me, serious. “We’ve been waiting for the city to decide everything. Maybe it’s time we decide.”
I held his gaze, hearing the weight beneath the words. Not just about meeting or messaging. About belonging. About staying when storms arrived, as they always would.
So I said, “Yes. Let’s.”
And in that simple vow, in that unadorned word, I felt something shift inside me—something more permanent than coincidence, more enduring than chance.
We walked on, shoulders brushing, no umbrella between us, only the wide sky clearing slowly into stars. The city, satisfied, seemed to sigh in relief, streets glistening like pages turned. For once the rain did not intervene, nor did it need to.
When I reached home, I placed my soaked sandals by the door, boiled water for tea, and looked out at the night. The city shimmered, rinsed clean, its lights reflected in puddles that would vanish by morning. And I thought: love, like rain, begins in chance, falls without permission, drenches everything it touches—but survival, the real story, begins when you choose to walk on even after the sky clears.
The city of umbrellas had finished writing us into its margins. The rest, I knew, belonged to us.
END
