By Mehreen Ahmed

Baa always said, when the clouds look like paddy fields, that’s when you know that the harvest will be good. 

Every morning, I checked the skies for cloud fields. But there were none. The recent floods had destroyed a lot of crops and I was desperate for a change. If only the clouds would form fields in the sky as Baa said, then it would make a hell of a difference; everything would be great again. 

Days and months went by, minutes passed like water flow, yet the clouds remained the same — a big bowl of blue where disparate clouds floated funnel shaped, circular, fluffy like cotton candy even, and so much more. But never a square or rectangular bordered field like the ones in our wetlands. I felt I was going to burn a hole in my eyes just by looking at the bright sky and also dull sometimes when a rainfall was imminent.

I firmly believed in Baa’s words. Harvest this year wasn’t great, and this was because the clouds hadn’t formed into paddy fields yet.

Cloud-fields or none, one day, Baa had to be taken into the hospital for a serious illness and had to remain in the hospital for great lengths of time. 

I was on my own. Maa sent me to work on the field. I used to bring Baa lunches which Maa cooked with love — yellow fish curry, rice and daal. Today, after a hard day’s work at the wetlands, I sat down hungrily under the neem tree to open the lunch box which Maa had cooked for me with the same amount of love. 

As I was about to eat my first mouthful, I heard my neighbour’s little girl crying that Baa had passed away while I was in the fields.

I shook the extra rice off my hands and I stood up, running like a wild beast towards the hospital. Baa could not have left me in the middle of this crisis; no way he could have died. 

The neighbour’s girl came by and took my hand in hers, but I let go of it as I ran, fretfully, until I was at the hospital doors. 

I saw a white bed and Baa’s stiff, pale face, his inert body laid on it. I was inconsolable, and cried out, ‘Baa, Baa, why did you have to leave us? Why? Why? Why?’

The grieving period passed. After a few days, I went back to the fields. There hadn’t been much rain in many days. Probably there wouldn’t be any bumper crops, either. 

One afternoon, though, as I was resting under the neem tree with the neighbour’s girl, she looked up and said, “ Oh! Look at the clouds, they look like our paddy patches.”

I looked up straightaway and saw some soft-bordered rectangular, and squarish scrawls of clouds that were slowly melting away — leaving a long trail behind just as Baa had described.

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