According to lore, the first lines Rabindranath Tagore ever wrote were, “Jol pore, pata nore” – water falls, leaves tremble. It is a simple observation, almost childlike, yet it contains an entire philosophy of rain. Rain is never merely an event of the sky, it is a stirring of the earth, a movement of memory. And nowhere is this truer than in Kolkata. Here, the monsoon first touches the thick dark green pine forests, misty mountains and old hill towns of North Bengal before making its way to Kolkata. It seeps into the city’s cracks and memories, returning through songs half remembered, through windows flung open to the scent of wet earth, through old loves, old streets and old selves who come back for a fleeting visit. The rain falls. The city trembles. 

Santadeep De, a journalist with Sportstar magazine, recollects, “I wish I could say the rains smell of home (Barrackpore, Kolkata) . They don’t. At least in Chennai, they don’t. At home, that smell of wet earth and lying under a cool blanket listening to the radio was something else entirely. Now there’s no radio either, and home is very far away. Even now, on rainy days, if I hear the sound of a cooker somewhere, I feel like my mom has called saying she has made khichuri (rice and lentils), come eat,” says Santadeep.

He looks back to his childhood when, “The most fun thing was, in heavy rain, holding kaka’s (uncle’s) hand, with an umbrella over our heads, going out to get aloor chop (potato fritters). We would all sit together and eat them. All of these are just memories now. Kaka is also no more.”

Drifting from the memory of home to songs, Santadeep says, “When Brishti by Firoze Jong released earlier this year, I was enraptured. In parts, haunting, in parts, the lyrics are very relatable. Contemplative. The electric guitar adds to the intensity. And the rain and thunder backing track makes it all the more beautiful.”

Rain also rakes up the memory of a compelling film still, he says, “In Naruto there was one powerful scene where Itachi is seen crying while staring up at the sky. It is raining. It was rumoured that his brother Sasuke had died at that time. He almost manages to hide his tears in the rain, but his partner Kisame understands. Itachi is supposed to be an all-powerful cold character, but his emotions break through his steely features because he was supposedly mourning his loved one then.”

If Santadeep’s rain is filled with nostalgia, for mechanical engineer Riya Roy, it still carries the ache of heartbreak. “I remember I was in my first or second year in college and the boy I was madly in love with had broken up with me because he was moving abroad for work. It was July or August when he left the country, and what I remember most is crying every day on the commute from Gariahat junction to my college in Anandapur. I would look at the rear view mirror in my auto, splattered with rain, hoping he would appear in it,” says Riya. 

“The song I listened to on loop was the OG Bengali song Ekla Ghar by Fossils. The lines that still haunt me years after I have moved on are (lines translated)

‘Though change is what is needed,

I walk again along the path to your house.

The rain gives me companionship.

Will you see this through the window glass?

Or will it be blurred by the thick monsoon rain?’”

“The thing with rain is that years pass, new memories are made, pain fades or we learn to live with it, but the rain and its smell remember. Songs remember. That entire Gariahat to Anandapur stretch still brings back those memories,” recollects Riya as she averts her gaze. 

For some, rain lives in songs. For others, it lives inside music itself.

At 78, Praniti Ghosh, a retired school teacher, feels that every Kolkata monsoon afternoon arrives accompanied by ragas and Tagore. “When I was young, my mother would tell me, ‘Megh Malhar raag shunle brishhti baje,’ (Listening to the Megh Malhar raaga is like listening to the rain) like the rain itself dancing in the notes. When Tansen sang Malhar, clouds actually gathered, and rain fell. That’s why now, when I sit alone on a rainy afternoon, I play Pandit Shivkumar Sharma’s Santoor Malhar. The swaras become raindrops on my window,” remembers Praniti with a glint in her eye. 

“And then Tagore’s Aji Jharo Jharo Mukharo Badolodine. When I hear those ragas, I’m listening to the rain’s memory. The rain that came when I was 20, when my husband was alive, when the children were small. Now I’m 78. The rain is still here. The Malhar is still here. Tagore is still here. Only I am getting old. But the music keeps the rain young for me,” reminisces Praniti. 

For Varnika Lall, management trainee, key accounts manager at CavinKare, rain is inseparable from cinema.

“I think my first memory of rain with music goes back to school when that song came out, Barso Re Megha Megha from the film Guru, and I genuinely believed that every time I heard that song, it rained because it happened a couple of times.

She adds, ”One which is really close to my heart is, of course, ‘Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein’, that iconic dialogue from the film when Madhavan says in a rain-drenched phone booth while watching Dia Mirza dance in the rain, ‘Main Dilli Bol Raha Hoon Maddy Se.’ I love that bit. Love at first sight is something that was defined by that moment in the rain.”

“There are so many songs that I actually listen to and sort of manifest in the sense that maybe if I hear this song it will rain. And it was never the rain that I loved; it was always the build-up to the rain,” explains Varnika.

“There are songs like O Meri Jaan from Life in a... Metro. Just the way that song feels —it’s like when you know it’s just about to rain, when it’s cloudy, getting dark and windy. Then there’s Udi Udi from Saathiya, and Yeh Barish Hai Boondon Ki from Fanaa, which symbolises passion and rain. When you listen to that song, you can visualise it,” she notes.

“More mainstream Bollywood songs like ‘Chham Chham Chham’ are also memorable. With many things in life that we love, it is mostly about the build-up. I love thunderstorms and songs that mimic the weather. Sometimes when I’m feeling angry or passionate, I like to hear ‘Kurban Hua’ from Kurbaan. That song mimics the thunderstorm in my head,” explains Varnika.

“Another emotion that rain evokes is longing for something that really does not exist. Like listening to Adnan Sami’s Teri Yaad Aati Hai or Goonja Sa Hai Koi Ektara. Even though they are not rain songs, because of the picturisation and everything, they feel very rainy. And if we look at the latest, Baarishein by Anuv Jain was also good,” outlines Varnika.

Pratima Das, a 50 year old homemaker, remembers the year 1994.

“The rains came early that year. It was my wedding day , August 18. Kolkata’ s Paris Hall ebbed with the sound of the shehnai and smelled of marigolds and wet earth, and the sound of ululation rose from everywhere as I entered the hall. I remember my Benarasi sari clinging to everything. I remember the caterer’s cook spilling mishti doi on the table cloth and covering it with flowers, thinking no one saw. I saw, but said nothing. It felt like good luck,” remembers Pratima dreamily.

“Every time I see the rain, I think of the shehnai. After the wedding, when my anxiousness had finally abated and I was able to eat after fasting all day, the song that kept drifting from a nearby radio or perhaps from a shop or a passing car was ‘Rimjhim Gire Saawan’ from the film Manzil, which was such a hit in those times. In place of Amitabh Bachchan and Moushumi Chatterjee, I imagined my husband and myself,” giggles Pratima.

“But when I look back on that day now, I think of another scene. There’s a moment in Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar where Apu stands in a doorway, the rain behind him, everything unspoken between two people who are only just beginning to know one another. I watched it again last winter and had to sit very still for a while afterwards. It was so precisely true to something I had once lived and could no longer touch. That particular quality of a monsoon afternoon when your whole life is still ahead of you and you do not know it yet. My daughter thinks I’m being sentimental when I talk about that day. She’s right. I am. Unapologetically!”, says Pratima emphatically. 

Perhaps that is why those first lines of Tagore endure. More than a century later, in Kolkata, it is not only the leaves. A song resurfaces, a face returns, a vanished hall fills once more with the sound of a shehnai. The rain falls, and memory answers.