Rain: A Privilege and a Curse

From behind the safety of glass windows, rain feels like a poetry. We watch it streak down in silver threads, each drop a small miracle that refills our wells, greens our gardens, cools our burning cities. Inside our homes , with their sealed roofs and drainage systems, rain is a gift we invite and thoroughly enjoy. We open our windows to breathe in its petrichor, that intoxicating smell of earth waking up. Children press their faces to the pane, mesmerized. We brew chai, pull out books, find an excuse to pause from the rushing life . Finally, we say, the rain has come and we feel our stress and pain melting.

We pray for it during drought. We ask the heavens for more water, more abundance, more life. We celebrate when the monsoon arrives, when the rain promises to quench our thirst and fill our reservoirs. We plan picnics around it, sing about it, write poetry celebrating its arrival. Feeling rain is a luxury that only the privileged can afford.

But step outside these walls—step out of the privilege of solid roofs and functioning gutters—and rain becomes a catastrophe.

For the family living in a tarpaulin shack on the edge of the city, rain is an invasion. A curse . Water doesn't fall gently on them , it attacks them , It finds every gap, every weakness in their shelter. It drips onto sleeping children. It seeps into the cloth bundles that hold everything they own. It turns their one room into a swamp. They don't ask for rain, they are afraid of it. Every cloud overhead brings not hope, but anxiety.

The mother who works in construction doesn't celebrate rain; she dreads losing a day's wages. The farmer whose field floods because proper drainage was never his government's priority doesn't thank the sky; he watches his crops drown. The elderly man whose arthritis flares in the dampness, sitting in a shelter with no walls, doesn't find beauty in the drops—he counts them like wounds.

We ask for more rain so we can enjoy it. They ask for no rain because their houses can't hold it.

This is the paradox of our world: the same rain that brings us poetry brings them suffering. The same water that we long for becomes their nightmare. We live in two different worlds, experiencing the same sky, and yet our prayers point in opposite directions.

This side of life has always troubled me and will continue to do so .

Whenever i find joy in smtg , i think about the people who wouldn't - idk whether it makes me a good person or not but what i no for sure is , it makes me a troubled one

This constant mental fight is quite draining.