The rains in poetry and THE rains have all but ended now, at
least for this year. Those clouds, "trumpeting like haughty
tuskers", are gradually withdrawing from the skies; the "banners
of lightning" no longer light up the vault of heavens. But,
somehow, memories of rain do not go away all that easily, for,
they are etched upon our awareness. And in any case our poetry
and paintings continue to remind us of them, rushing images and
sounds into our minds. It is just not possible, for instance, to
think of the papeeha, or chatak, without recalling that this
little bird – throat parched, beak open, panting in the heat –
keeps waiting for the rains, for, as the myth has it, it drinks
no water other than the first drop of rain as it falls from the
skies. And then, when it has drunk that, it breaks into the
sweetest, most seductive of songs. In Kalidasa’s great classic,
Kumarasambhava, occurs one of the most celebrated passages of
Sanskrit literature, in which the poet traces the journey of the
first drops of rain