Wednesday, 7th June 2023

The Lovely Now

After days and days of heady sunshine, the rain falls. As ever, spectacular. 

Within minutes of the monsoon deluge starting, the lawns become shallow green lakes, their surface calm obliterated every millisecond by fat cool rain drops falling like a bedtime story from heavy skies.

Cool damp breezes stir and waft across the frangipani garden and into my office where Bertie is asleep on a chair pulled up by the window, his father, mother, and sister asleep on the terrazzo below. Several cross monkeys have taken shelter just within view under the thick leaves of the mango tree.

The best thing about this rain is that it is Now Rain. It’s so delicious and overwhelming as to rub out the past and negate the future. It does the work of a thousand therapists, and focuses the mind simply on The Now.

Two inspiringly meditative guests from Singapore are lapping up the lush dramas from a back veranda. Two others have set off intrepidly in a tuk tuk for Ella. 

All sound gives way before the downpour. It fills the estate like the sort of unending “Um” you might breath out after a particularly reviving yoga session.

The shower plucks flame tree blossom, scattering the red glitter across the gardens. I can hear our goats bleating with satisfaction within the dry walls of their new Goat Palace that we have just constructed beneath the main estate road.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”  

Buddhism and Rain are very complimentary.

The Ceylon Press currently produces three podcast shows.
1. The Jungle Diaries (www.theceylonpress.com/thejunglediariespodcast)
2. The History of Sri Lanka (www.theceylonpress.com/thehistoryofsrilankapodcast)
3. Poetry from the Jungle (www.theceylonpress.com/poetryfromthejunglepodcast)