Eyrie

A

savage night storms the hills of Wayanad, soaking my room in pitch-black. Half-awake, roused from dreamtime by a cool, whistling draught, I blink into the darkest moment of the year. The village street lamps are down. There’s been a power outage for days. Traffic’s stalled by roads falling apart, streams running amok. Giant trees downed like matchsticks. Slopes collapsing into slurry. I’m inside the mother of all downpours. Sodden awareness rushes into my lungs. The ocean is here. Lightning thoughts shoot from an underworld of confusion, alarm, and sleep. A sky ocean. I’m on tenuous crust sloshing in the sheer swell of the monsoon—a wind system born of continental deep time. In the Keralan month of Karkidakam.

Is there anything else?