Waiting For That Drop From Heaven Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Waiting for that drop from heaven

I am a ten year old boy
And I belong to a state of the country
Which has a thin population density
And which has no perennial rivers

Kings constructed tanks in their capitals
Of kingdoms centuries back
And we depend a lot on these water resources

Summer is extremely hot here
And it hardly rains

The state has a number of mineral resources
And our livelihood is mainly working
In these mines

This year it is unbearably hot
And weather forecast suggests
That the days ahead will be hotter
And even the scanty monsoon will break late

You may not know
We walk kilometers for a bucket of water
Regardless of genders and age
All of us are busy looking for water resources
And cover by foot minding not the distances
To fetch water for our survival

At this age mine the children in other states
Will be studying and going to school daily
But here we too go out in the early morning
Not to a school, but to a weak water resource
For fetching water

Walking is not that easy
As the sandy patches we walk through
Get hot soon
Affect our normal walking

Regular bathing and washing clothes
Are distant dreams for us
I leave it to you to imagine
How well we can manage
handling of natural human rejects

We are to be satisfied with that much water
That will suffice our cooking and vessel washing exercises

I heard people pray for rains
But I wonder whether they pray for our benefit too
Something told me that we should also pray the rain gods
Exclusively for us

I floated this idea to my parents
Who rejected this outright
Shared this view with friends of my age
They laughed at me
Prayer and rains do not go together
They declared

I thought I would do it alone
But how and when
What is so great about that
I decided that I would keep chanting within
'We are in great pain
Come down Oh beneficial rain'

I waited for the night to set in
We all retired for sleep
I lied down on my mat

And kept awake
Chanting in murmur the mantra
I coined
I did not have a track of time
And continued the chanting
I should have slept sometime later
When I did so I did not know

I could not believe when my parents
Woke me up shouting that
It had been raining for hours by then
And asked me
What did you do to make it rain
As you were telling about praying for rains

I said
I was telling gods
That we were eagerly
Waiting for that drop from heaven