Storm

Earlier on, I was updating and talking to emerald_embers and idly listening to the rain outside, when suddenly, crash bang wallop, the storm that had been threatening all afternoon broke. I was cut off in the middle of everything. The computer shut itself down, and I went on downstairs to find all the lights flickering. Nupur wasn't home - play rehearsal - and we were due to pick her up, which was another worry, and the announcers on the television had disrupted all normnal programming for thunderstorm and tornado warnings. We're in Marion County here, and the storm was threatening just over our heads. Nupur's Dadi (paternal grandmother) and my uncle went to pick her up, driving very slowly and carefully, and I went to the windows and looked out at the storm. I've attempted to describe one of these storms before and failed, and I'm going to try again and fail. Yet again, I'd never seen anything like it. The trees were bending back and forth in howling winds, branches were breaking off and hitting the windows, the sky was a horrible colour, sort of iron grey, and clouds were building up in huge masses that were being split every few seconds by flashes of lightning, and the thunder was so loud I could barely think.

After a while, the advice from the television was we should go down into the basement. My aunt (Bua, I call her - Hindi for younger-sister-of-one's-father) had to stay up to look after Nupur's grandfather, so Shivani and I went down into the basement together. She was in hysterics, split between fear of the storm and fear of the basement, but I managed to entice her down the stairs in the end. I switched on as many lights as I dared, and tried to answer all her questions. She wanted to know what the lighting is made of - I found it rather hard to explain induced negative charges to her - and then she asked me why I wasn't more scared. "Is it 'cause you're a grown-up?"

Me, grown up? I explained about how I've had a little more education than she has, and how knowledge is power and all of that, and to get her to calm down, I found a pair of tennis balls and amused her by my minimal juggling skills. She, weirdly enough, was impressed, and laughed happily at my efforts to juggle while lying flat on my back, and while I was doing it I told her the story of the last thunderstorm I was in (at the beach with purplerainbow) and going further back, I told her the story of the time Becca stood on me in the pitch black and everyone thought we were being murdered, and she giggled away and was quite calm when we emerged from the basement twenty minutes later.

Nupur came back not long after that, seemingly in shock. She'd had a scare, too, but I looked out of the window and saw the storm had passed. Now, the sky is a lovely azure blue and lighter than it was two hours ago. Everything in the garden has been washed clean.

Strangely enough, I have that Crowded House song stuck in my head:
"Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you;
Everywhere you go, always take the weather..."