When I was falling in love, she once showed me a picture of her cupped hands holding a few hailstones. I asked her if she knew how they sounded. “Aamar ghor tu tin roof’re (We too live in a tin-roof house),” she said. “Then you know what rains are,” I replied.

Zubeen Garg has sung many songs about the rains. But there is one about how rain sounds, and, for some reason, I have always gone back to it. Probably because the sound of rain acts as phantom words for memories.

For example, the Jamaican poet Esther Figueroa wrote about how rain meant her mother looking out of the window, munching on transparent blue-grey Icy Mints. Now, in memory, the taste of mints mixes with the sound of rain – an echo in her mouth in the absence of her mother. A phantom taste.

The song I am talking about – Boroxun: Etupi Dutupi Pore – is not about the rains during the usual suspect months of the year, when it pours in Assam. The imagery and visuals tell us that it is aabotoriya boroxun – unseasonable rain. Unexpected, heady and beautiful while it lasts. The thoka-thuki maat of aaita (the faltering sound of the grandmother), the falling of droplets, coexisting, getting co-created with the kowari phaali oha haahi (the laughter that splits the corners of the lips), the thunder and lightning – all gives us the visuals of how it begins, in the spell of a rain, or a new knowing.

Unlike this, the song Mayabini Raatir Bukut – one that Zubeen correctly predicted people would sing in his memory once he dies – does not talk about rain but about dew. Tumi je mor xukaan monot, niyorore sesa topaal – you are a cold drop of dew on my dry mind – he wailed. I have often thought that he could just as well have sung xukaan bon (dry grass) instead of mon (mind), and it would mean the same: keeping the mind/grass from drying out too fast, a thin layer of moisture that saves it until the next watering. And for the brave, maybe even a tiny sip.

This is how I hear these two songs. Rain can travel so far and fall with such speed. It wets the soil, the plants, and in the process, replenishes so beautifully. Dew, on the other hand, does not have a grand source like the clouds. No long journey, no gusto. Only minor hydration. But sometimes, precisely when the plant needs it the most.

The crescendo of thunderous rain is not an everyday thing. The loftiness of rainwater and the groundedness of dew are both respected by a wise plant that knows: the rain fills, but the dew preserves.

That’s life. Or love. Explained in Zubeen’s immortal voice in two songs. About two atmospheric vapours: one that condenses and lives dramatically, the other too condenses, but coolly.

Can cupped hands hold dew without the droplets merging?

Jyotirmoy Talukdar is the English Language Adviser to the Dean of Academic Affairs, Ashoka University.

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