Maybe it shouldn't have rained in Assam or No rains for Rupali

I left an already-warm-and-humid-at-6:40 am-Kolkata for Assam. Just an hour and half later, I landed at Guwahati. It was cold. Not cool. Cold. It had apparently rained all night or atleast for the better part of the night. I shivered in my Kolkata summer wear and eyed locals clad in sweaters and shawls enviously. And it rained several times during the two days I was there.

Taxi drivers, hotel manager, waiters, auto drivers, colleagues I met all told me that this was the first rains they have had in 8-9 months.

No rains must have been a terrible ordeal for scores including the father of one Rupali Bhuyan living in Tinsukia. However, the rains couldnot have come at a worse time for Rupali. An article in the Guwahati edition of TOI rerported that Rupali, 17 was yoked to a plough and made to plough her father's fields. It was indeed 8-9 months of no rain, her father kept cursing her and saying a boy would have made things different. And the villagers picked it up from there and somehow things took a strange and unfortunate shape: Rupali Bhuyan plouging the fields in place of her father's bullocks would propitiate the rain gods.

And then the skies opened and it rained and how.

Rupali probably hates her miserable lot in life. But she must be hating the rains even more. In superstition riddled India, no amount of explanations, reasonings would convince her family, neighbours and community. It probably never be written off as a coincidence. THAT would be a miracle.

The report also stated that Women's Rights Group has taken this up but the police said they weren't aware of any such happening since no one had registered a complaint.