The forecast has called for a 90% chance of rain for the past...

The forecast has called for a 90% chance of rain for the past four days in Bangalore. It’s been mostly sunny. This afternoon, the sky went colorless, a wintery drain despite the 75 degree temperature, and the birds went quiet. A rain, so gentle, began to fall. The smell in the air changed, the summery smell of grassy wet dirt through the windowscreen. “Ours is a culture in which people talk to trees, talk to ghosts, and it is not considered strange,” an Indian writer said to me the other day. The trees here feel like strangers because I don’t know their names. And the air feels heavy with ghosts, though perhaps that’s been the coming rain.