A Short story by Monobina Nath

When the Rain Remembered

By the time our white-and-blue service quarter had been cleaned, it already looked as
though we had never lived there. That night, the sky was oppressively silent,
witnessing our departure. As our campus bus started, I hadn’t realized this would be
my last time to see my belongings— or my classmates, with whom I had barely
spoken. Will they remember me? I hadn't even said goodbye. Well, nothing.

Our luggage had been shipped out a few days earlier, packed into towering cardboard
boxes and loaded onto a gigantic lorry. During that time, the kitchen had been
reduced to a single gas stove, three plates and three cups, a saucepan, tea strainer,
and small packets of salt, turmeric, rice, and lentils tucked inside plastic bags, along
with whatever personal belongings could fit into our trolleys. Everything else had
already begun its journey before us. On a campus like ours, packing up and
beginning life in a new home again had become ordinary. Our quarter stood beside a
sentinel tree whose thick, dark-green branches brushed against the walls, leaving
nature's brushstocks upon them. Yellow and green moss climbed the damp corners
after every monsoon, while patches of sunlight slipped through the leaves onto our
long veranda, as though it couldn't tell where our footsteps ended and nature's

footprints began. Every quarter looked almost the same, yet I believed ours held a
different silence. Looking back, I was a visionary, zoned-out nine-year-old girl who
spoke with plants, cried over their shedding selves, and turned patches of earth into
graveyards for fallen leaves. Maybe they rest in peace. Often on Sundays, I sat on a
cement bench, near my garden graveyard, where I placed flowers of all kinds. For me,
the smell may disappear at any time, but memory will never leave us behind. Perhaps
the garden had forgotten me. But somewhere beneath those buried leaves, a part of
my childhood still waited.

Tap, tap, tap
The sound of rain tracing slow paths down the windshield of the bus. My father
quickly loaded the luggage inside, and the engine was about to start. All the
formalities were solemnly completed while the rain delayed every small ritual of
departure. The smell of petrichor translated numbness into something I could finally
feel. Even then, I found comfort in the rain before I understood why.

By 7:03 p.m., the bus drove off. This was the time I lost my voice. I saw a boy on a
bicycle through the rain-streaked window, slowing for a moment near the bus stop.
He knew me; I knew him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't quite grasp it... Why had I

not told anyone? Maybe I was scared to leave them behind, or hadn’t accepted my
disappearance from the place I had called home. A drop of water rolled down. Only then
did I realise that some departures happen long before we leave.

Time folded quietly over that evening, but it never truly disappeared. I moved across
states— shifted, relocated, and started over again and again. But the rain transported
me back to the time when I was a nine-year-old girl who rarely voiced her feelings,
seldom asked questions, and quietly accepted every new beginning. Why can't we stay
here? Who will take care of my garden afterwards? Can’t I say goodbye to them one last
time?

Twilight glowed above me. I listened until the drizzle became the only voice that
remembered where I had once belonged. Perhaps belonging was never something I
left behind. It travelled quietly with the rain.