High-Rise
with Mumbai Rain, Kurosawa, Kolatkar, Le Guin, and finally, "a Company of Ululating Cranes"
“Mumbai Faces Flood Threat As Red Alert Rain Coincides With Afternoon High Tide”
- mumbaiinlast24hrs
There are so many rain texts, and all of them have been swirling in my mind these last few days. I remember, today, the torrential, rain drenched frames of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950).
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) begins in the rain. It begins at the Rashomon Gate, which, through a series of establishing shots, Kurosawa and his cinematographer (Kazuo Miyagawa) describe as a stage-like frame of soaked ruins. For several minutes, each shot lingers on curtains of torrential rain; raindrops drench the gate, cascade down roof tiles and stairs, and swell puddles until the ground looks like a shallow pond.
- From ‘Bodies of Water, Bodies of Text: The Permeable Frame in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon’, David Schwartz (John Carroll University)
That rain soaks. It drowns, even the viewer. “Shrouded Truth”. No spectator could possibly emerge dry from that deluge. No viewer could be innocent of its persistent damp. That timpani of rain on roof and ground and grass. Like white noise. black noise. blank noise.
Apparently, Kurosawa and his team poured black calligraphy ink into the rain machines to darken the rain. To give it that heavy, ‘shrouded’, almost destitute appearance. This is visible in the moving frames - an apocalyptic downpour. This reminds me of Ashok Shahane’s story about how Kolatkar insisted on an exact pantone - a dark shade of black for the cover of “Bhijki Vahi” (“Drowned Notebook”). Like “Velvet”. He went personally to show the printer this shade - not black, but more vivid, visceral. (This is the famous cover, where Kolatkar and Shahane used the spine of the book to frame Phan Thị Kim Phúc, the girl from the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, titled The Terror of War, taken at Trảng Bàng during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972)
I recognise this instinct - to distill the exact shade of truth - to materialise it - this swathe - that is born in the imagination.
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination. [Italics Mine]
—Ursula K. Le Guin, in their introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness
I leave you with a poem doused in this atmospheric, relentless rain. Like the outside, so, the inside. An “ephemeral” curtain, between word, and world. And self….
High-Rise
~ Aranya
Chembur, Mumbai, 2nd July, 2026
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him”
- Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Act 4, Scene 1
Awash in sin
and cement
the tower cranes
go about their business
Gaunt metallic skulls
move solemnly
as if in the anticipation
of a nod
A murmuration
of plotting Elders
turning slowly
not unlike the tide
of this city by the sea
Silent gods
Arthritic Monopods
parked firmly on their haunches
shoulders slouched in the rain
elbows hinged around the empty hollows
of half constructed rooms -
held up by casuarina fingers
each pledged to servitude
with jute rings
They plot the city’s fate
this race of Monopods
who draw their lineage
to the Greeks on one side
and to Birnam wood on the other
a martial race adept in the art
of strategy and urban cyberpunk guerilla
Outside my window
A yellow beast
pronounces the ashen sky
through gritted teeth
On his silver gnarled neck
a name like a leash
hangs black and golden
between alternating grills of lightning
A man with a neon yellow helmet
clings on to the armpit
of the holy grail this messiah
who plants boxes upon boxes
in an assembly line of homes
wedged into each other
I swipe right because that
is the only way
I know how to read
how to trace the lines
of chawl and market
and the New Molochs
of High-Rise
I trace the teetering testimonies
the lines on the palms
of the sky caught between
two peepals with 100 year-old
separation anxiety
I swipe past the prophecies
of modular kitchen and dead steel
In the night I hear them conspiring
when the neighbourhood is quiet
I hear their gleaming teeth of tomorrow
I hear them zinging the word
of the golden laughing metropolitan cat-god
I hear them apprehending
the Day of Judgement
The Ground Must Be Prepared
A smouldering general booms
His arched back a spire of plume
And they watch agog with rumours
of deliverance open mouthed
this audience of two crows
perched apart on identical symmetrical
water pipes 3 tata sky dishes
looming coconut fronds
with coconuts blackened
by the relentless rain
They watch like pilgrims caught
in the statuesque sermon of their buddha
and the rain falls relentless
on the curbside as the missive seeps
through the suburbs across flyover
and suspension bridge embankment
and speed breaker that has stopped singing
Jai Ho for communal harmony and world peace
They watch
this company
of ululating cranes
that pass messages in silence
animating the coup
as we sleep in captivity
Before going, I want you to listen to this cleaving gandhār that Ustād Bahāuddin Dāgar plucks from his rudra veena in this mesmerising rendition of Rāg Abhogi. Bookmark and keep if you want.
Bas
I hope you are finding the space to rest and to create.
Write to me at aranyapadil@gmail.com - if you have any questions, queries, or comments. I will write back as soon as I find the space, and the time.
This newsletter and its associated activities are essentially a one-person enterprise.
If you like what you read, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.