The rain has been falling for a while now.
Long enough for the roads to glisten. Long enough for the smell of wet earth to find its way indoors. Long enough for the kettle to whistle for what feels like the third time today.
Outside, the world is in no particular hurry.
Someone is sharing an umbrella that isn’t quite big enough. Someone has abandoned their plans altogether. Someone is watching raindrops race down a window, a cup of chai growing colder by the minute. Somewhere, pakoras are making their way from the frying pan to the table. Somewhere else, an old playlist has found its way back into the room, sounding just as good as it did the last monsoon.
The rain has a funny way of slowing us down. It gives us permission to linger. In conversations that would’ve otherwise ended with a quick, “See you.” In books we’ve been meaning to finish. In songs we’ve skipped too often. Sometimes, even in ourselves.
Maybe that’s why we wait for the monsoon every year. Not because life changes. Because, for a little while, our pace does.
One more cup of chai suddenly sounds like a good idea. So does cancelling plans. So does standing by the window and watching the rain like you’ve never seen it before.
Funny what a change in weather can get away with. Maybe that’s also why this is the season for love stories. Not only because the rain creates them, but also it gives them room.
You know the kind. Someone leaves home. Someone else is waiting without knowing it. Two strangers come close. Miss each other. Come close again. Eventually, they meet.
Predictable?
Maybe.
Worth returning to?
Every single time.
While we’re indoors romanticising the rain, a river a few kilometres away is having a season of its own.
By the second week of the monsoon, corners that looked forgotten in May are suddenly alive again.
With fish, birds, and the main character of our story, the smooth-coated otters.
The river has seen this before.
Every monsoon, a young adult otter leaves home. Because that’s what growing up looks like.
They are known as transient otters. They leave the family they were born into and venture along the river stretches beyond the ones they grew up in search of a mate and a territory. Presence of transient otters in a habitat indicates a healthy otter population.
Leaving home is an odd thing. You spend years waiting for it. Then, on the day it arrives, you wonder whether you were ready after all.
The river doesn’t answer questions like that.
It never has.
It just keeps introducing strangers.
Sometimes with something far less poetic…
Spraint a.k.a. otter poop.
Otters leave scent markers on rocks and riverbanks. To us, they’re easy to overlook. To another otter, they’re impossible to ignore.
And soon, another transient catches the scent.
They stop.
They look around the river in hope of finding the one.
Still, it lingers.
Funny how a good story can begin with almost nothing at all.
The next few days are full of almosts.
One reaches a sandbank just as the other slips into the water.
One climbs onto a rock still wet from the afternoon shower while the other disappears around the bend.
Close.
Not quite.
The river isn’t worried.
It has seen this before.
Just two otters sharing the same stretch of river, each curious enough to stay a little longer than they had planned.
The days that follow are filled with play.
They dive beneath the surface and appear somewhere else entirely. They race the current, wrestle through patches of floating grass and disappear into the reeds often enough to make you wonder if they enjoy being found as much as being lost.
If you’ve ever watched smooth-coated otters, you’ll know they take play very seriously.
It’s how they build trust. It’s how they explore. And, ever so often, it’s how they fall in love.
Somewhere between all that splashing and chasing, they decide to keep choosing the same stretch of river. The same resting spots. The same company.
Love, it turns out, doesn’t always arrive with a grand gesture.
Sometimes it arrives disguised as another ordinary day.
Before long, the river has new regulars.
By now, your chai has probably gone cold.
The playlist is still playing.
The rain is still finding its way onto windowsills and rooftops, rivers and forests.
Somewhere, someone has decided to stay in instead of going out.
Somewhere else, someone has stepped into the rain without caring if they get drenched.
And somewhere beyond all of that, a river is watching another story begin.
It doesn’t celebrate.
It doesn’t interrupt.
It doesn’t rush ahead.
It has seen enough monsoons to know that every season brings someone home, sends someone away and introduces someone new… Maybe that’s why we keep returning to the rain.
