The monsoon that Kerala loved is now the one it fears | Eye News
Padmarajan, filmmaKer and author, wrote a short story called Mazha (1970), Rain. It opens on a single drop coming off the tip of a coconut frond, running the length of the trunk without scattering, boring a small hole in the wet sand below and vanishing, while a child eases back the door-bolt and slips outside without a sound. Nothing much happens for a while. That is the point. The rain is the event. He returned to that idea often. Thoovanathumbikal (1987) is the film that all the state’s rain-soaked romances are measured against. It starts raining the first time Jayakrishnan writes down Clara’s name, and the rain doesn’t stop. A certain generation cannot watch rain without hearing Johnson’s score playing every drop in that movie. Clara comes with the rain and leaves with it, the woman Jayakrishnan wants but never gets to keep. For a Malayali, she personifies the monsoon: something lovely that arrives from somewhere else and will not stay. The rain has never waited for chroniclers here. Arundhati Roy opened The God of …
-1779436310250_d.png "IMD issues orange alert for Alappuzha, yellow alert in 6 Kerala districts amid heavy rain forecast")