Tulip Chowdhury

Great poet Rabindranath Tagore began his poem ‘Borshar Dine’ with, “Emon dine tare bola jai/ emon ghono ghor barishai.” The words come to me as blankets of dark rain clouds cover the sky over our Georgia home in the USA.

In my present life station, the southern state, with its heat waves and occasional downpours, reminds me of monsoon days in Bangladesh. Walking in the rain is a kind of emotional cleansing for me and a chance to blend into the trees, flowers and birds when I get soaked in the rain in the garden. From my childhood in the late 60’s to the present, I have managed to get soaked in the rain during summer.

And so far, the summer of 2024 found me drenched in rain for more than four days. Experiencing nature adds to the wholeness of my being.

Rainy season makes my heart nostalgic, and I drift back to my childhood. Those were the days spent in a small village called Bongaon in Sylhet. On some rainy days, the clouds and the sun played hide and seek and had the villagers busy. When the sun was out, the village women gave their washed clothes to dry, and within minutes, the sky would get dark and the rain would start pouring.

The women would run to get their laundry in. The rain would disappear as soon as the clothes were in, and a brilliant sun would smile. The appearing and disappearing rain was called Bou nachano bristi or rain of the dancing bride. Elsewhere, the villagers would get puffed rice ready to eat with seasonal fruits like jackfruits and mangoes.

The rainy season is also the season to eat taler pitha, a rice cake made from fruits called tal (fan palm fruits). The rainy days were when Grandma would have hotchpotch and hilsha fish for lunch. I would share jhalmuri (puffed rice with chili) and hot tea with Grandpa while we played chess.

On days when summer storms came, bringing down the mangoes in piles, they would find us under the trees piling up storm-blown mangoes. Getting soaked to the skin and feeling the wind blowing against the wet body held a thrill at times more than the mango-picking. The village people were superstitious and believed that during this rainy season, ghosts and spirits come to the tal trees for the new moon.

You find villagers avoiding tal trees at night. A person looking lost would be assumed to be possessed by the talgacher bhut (ghosts from the fan-palm tree). Back then, I trusted the villagers about the ghosts and avoided walking near these trees, neither during the day nor at night. On days when rain was pouring, I would sit on the porch and watch the rain fall.

The kodom, beli and kamini flowers would give off their cloying scent as they drank in the rainwater. My grandmother would have khichuri, eggplant and fried fish to celebrate some rainy days. Many Bangladeshis continue to keep the tradition of eating khichuri on rainy days after migrating.

If the rain pours over the weekend, they do not miss the chance to have a great adda with friends and family. After all, the Bangladeshis are food and family people who love to share life, and they share their nostalgia for monsoon days in Bangladesh at gatherings.

Rainy days are not all fun in Bangladesh. When community members are together, they follow up on floods, a frequent natural calamity in the country. Rainy days with their worries and glory graces life in the USA. In the afternoon, the puffed rice and tea, that is, muri and cha are shared, and the phones get busy with Messengers and WhatsApp calling home news updates.

The drawing-room politics begins. The pros and cons of BD politics sweep the gathering like a storm, with individuals giving their opinions on the country’s overall situation. Listening to them, one would wonder why the politically wise are not in BD; they might be in better hands after all.

Blistering hot days in Georgia ignite memories of Bangladeshi rainy seasons with a fondness for water’s healing power, whether in pouring rain or the flowing river. Seasons come and go, yet memories of rainy days stay, a time pyramid of its own.
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Tulip Chowdhury writes from Georgia, USA