Rain smitten: Artistes talk about their works inspired by the season
If there is one thread that can connect different expressions of art, it's got to be the rains.
Priyapetta makal Clarakku (Dear daughter Clara)’, writes Mohanlal. He lifts his blue pen and looks outside the window. At the mention of Clara, it starts raining, there’s thunder too. Some of the drops rush into his lap and onto his letter. Mohanlal gently wipes off the wetness from his face and paper, and there begins Johnson’s famous background theme.
For Malayalam movie lovers, this scene from Thoovanathumbikal stays etched in the mind like a happy and sad memory you can’t let go. Rain and romance, said without saying only in the way Padmarajan, the director, can. Rain continued to remain in the background, outside the house, by the side of an open window to complete the emotions of a movie scene, a painting, a song.
It’s one cliché artistes will not shy away from — creating in the rain, of the rain, by the rain. Rafeeq Ahamed the lyricist has written many songs for films, but it is poems that he says get inspired by the rains. “Songs about rain that you see in the films are written when they are asked for. I’d write it then from my early memories of the rain,” he says.
A recent song that he wrote and people loved - Mazhakondu mathram from Spirit — was reconstructed from an old poem he had penned. “Only a few lines from there… The song says that some things happen only because it rains. I have once read an article how some eggs hatch, and certain plants bloom in the rain. Even in my house there was a tree — Uthirmulla — which would not respond to any amount of water we pour, but in the first rain of the season, begins to bloom.”
If there’s one thread that can connect different expressions of art, it’s got to be the rains. Like there’s writing rain songs, there’s composing it too. Suresh Trupunithura, who works as an agriculture officer, made a music video ‘Ormayundo nenaku’ with rains in the background.
“It was much appreciated so I decided to bring out an album of 15 songs. Rain is like an emotion and so all my songs are about the different feelings rain evokes. There’s love, sadness, nostalgia.” One of his songs is a lullaby that goes ‘Tharatineenam aayi poru mazhaye, nee en thankakudamonnurangumpol.’ The album ‘Bramangal - Ente Mazhapaatukal’ or Cravings for the rains, would come out in June.
Most writers would admit the comforts of creativity that rain brings. “I could hear the drumming of raindrops on my asbestos roof and then my fingers patter on the keyboard in the same rhythm. It is a kind of symphony,” says Manu Remakant, travel writer and associate professor of English. He’s in the habit of waking up some mornings and without much thought, packing his bags to travel somewhere.
In these journeys, he observes the different rains in the different places he takes off too. “Marayur, for instance, gets what you call nool mazha (threadlike rain) where there are no separate drops, but a continuous thread of water falling. And then there is the heavy and powerful rain that falls from the sky like it is poured from a thousand pots. You get heavy rains and waterfalls in Nelliyampathy. But despite that, you see youngsters come in their bikes and enjoy and dance in the rain. You get a cool feeling just seeing that.”
Another frequent traveller like Manu, Megha Rajeev could be seen running, leaning, and crouching through difficult spots with her Nikon D3100. Monsoons make no exception. “My camera has four constant companions- a polythene bag, a lens cloth, an umbrella and copious amounts of silica gel. These let me capture the monsoons without worrying much about the camera’s well being, while I’m running around in circles, smitten and mostly blinded by the downpour.
The running is an essential part of savouring the rain if you’re venturing off the beaten path and into the bushes. Especially if you’re scared of leeches like I am. I’ve found myself, more than once, clutching the camera on one hand and an umbrella on the other, flying across muddy trails that have turned into streams in the rain, to escape these bloodsucking fiends.
Most of the photographs turn out to be accidental images that get clicked whenever I imagine that I’ve been bitten. Nonetheless, the pursuit and capture of rain is inspiring and exhilarating. And at other times, the best images of rain can be captured from your bedroom window itself when it’s pouring outside and you’re pouring over a book, inside.” Books and rains are inseparable like that. Writer Anees Salim puts it simply as “I love to write during the rains. And I would love to die on a rainy day.”