It's official now. It's a drought year in India.

It rained all night in the city. I wonder what drove the sky to tears in this time of festivity.

It wasn’t as if a dam had burst; it was a steady pouring that deflected off the sidewalk,

half-heartedly,

and turned into muddy puddles of pedestrian woes.

As the night turned into dawn and then to morning, the downpour was accompanied by distant rumblings of discontent, too weak to deserve even a solitary bolt of lightning. In the murky light of the morning, the rain retreated quietly leaving the sun huddled behind a cotton blanket of unmoving clouds.

Far away from the city, in the village,

dampness hangs in the air, sticking to an unnatural heat, turning men into sponges that are unable to cry.