Walking through a lot of rainstorms gets you clean

”The one who makes the thunder roar also hears a butterfly sigh”  Ruzbeh Bharucha   

As you begin your journey through the garden of life, tiny and petrified as you are, you decide to come on terms with the phrase that the world is your oyster. Unguided, a little caterpillar, you crawl through the tall grasses, offering shade and promising shelter, but never for too long. 

You keep moving, awestruck by the rainbow of colours around you, forever curious about what lies on the other side of this? You cross the grasslands, and meet some roses, ready to befriend you as you're drawn to their fragrance, yet you trip over their thorns wondering, how could something so sweet have such a bitter side to it? 

You move on to meet promising Lilies, those promises lasting a day, just like they do. You meet chirping birds trying to eat you away, befriend some mesmerising fireflies which never come around in the day. So you walk, in the search of your purpose, as the rain pours and the thunder roars, and it seems like this is when the sky falls. You try to fight your demons of fear, and stop to befriend some dandelions. They offer you shelter, comfort and care, and you think this is where you finally belong. As the thunder subsides, you admire them for their defiance in their fragility and just as you think you

should settle down, they fly away, light as the wind, fast as the wind. You try to chase with all your might, but chasing the wind doesn't get you too far. 

 You ask yourself if you would ever belong, if you were perhaps too green for a world screaming red. You still move on, wondering what would happen if the rain pours again? You travel far to find a steady twig, offering nothing but the assurance of solitude, so you choose and settle, and decide to build. 

You build the days away, comforting and caving yourself in the weaves of a cocoon, and as you finally lay within, the sleep seems eternal. It seems eternal in a comforting way, perhaps this is where you belong. As you lay, confiding to the darkness, it all comes back in flashes. It was the dust, the wind, the wicked and the strange, the lovely, the dull, the promising skies and the sun, that together made you who you are. Do you have to belong? Is this even you? If you're meant to chase the wind, why are you here? And just as it seems, it would last forevermore, the dawn breaks and the darkness ends. You crack open the shackles you built and hear the thunder roar. As you break free, you realise, you have wings that span with the wind, and as you tremble and learn to feel the wind embrace you, you realise that there was much more to you than the world made you learn, and that your path was predetermined to be metamorphosed. As you fly through the rainstorm, letting go of everything that held you back, you finally realise that someone, somewhere who made the thunder roar, also put you on a path that would eventually make you sigh.

Hitarthi Angral, XII A, Editor in Chief

Cambridge International School for Girls

2019-2020