When it rains and pours

The power has been down for the past ten hours. The inverter has run out of juice. The internet is down. No wi-fi. My laptop is running on 43% charge. I am trying to get some writing done. But it is just too gloomy. It has been gloomy for the past two days.

It is raining. A lot.

Cyclone Tauktae is passing by. My family and I are lucky to be safe and cozy inside our homes. The areca and coconut trees sway from one end to another, as if pleading for mercy from the torrential rain.

Streets and farms are littered with green fronds of coconut trees. Hardy and robust fronds that take two people to lift, have been peeled from seven-stories high and flicked to the ground like twigs by gusty winds that make their way through the Arabian Sea coastline.

Three generations—my nephew, me and my dad—witness this through our windows, behind the safety of a metal grill, quietly submitting to this fury. It’s like the scary sequence in a movie when a cyclone surrounds your house minus the movie part. There is no editor to only keep the interesting parts. We have to sit through this, let it pass. Nothing bad is going to happen. We’ve witnessed this before. Anything could happen.

The only creatures that are going to have a good time even in a cyclone, it is decided, are mosquitoes.

Mother nature plays the tune. You dance... and you try to do it gracefully.