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“The world won’t stop for anything or anyone — and yet, even it can weep.”
It was raining cats and dogs as I stepped off the bus and hurried toward the roadside to get under the umbrella of my mother. The wind bit through my clothes, cold and sharp, and the rain hadn’t let up since the evening before. All night long, every time I stirred from sleep, I could hear it hammering against the windows. Steady. Relentless.
As the bus stop faded into the distance behind us, traffic came into view — cars, trucks, and all kinds of vehicles rushing past through the downpour. We stood with a group of students on one side of the road, waiting for a chance to cross. No one was keeping social distance.
Across the road, we could see Tony sir and Firos sir huddled beneath their umbrellas. Normally, there was always at least a policeman at the school gate — but today, they had not shown up. Probably didn’t want to brave the rain.
When the rush thinned, the teachers stepped into the road and raised their hands, stopping traffic. One by one, we began to cross. When a few kids hesitated at the back, we could hear the teachers calling out to them, urging them to hurry. Eventually, we made it into the school grounds.
As I walked through the gates, the first thing I saw was a few teachers standing around with umbrellas in one hand and either a sanitizer bottle or a thermal scanner in the other, holding them like they were some kind of Astras. Right. We were just coming out of a global lockdown.
The staff room was in the ‘Silent Valley’ block, and my classroom was on the third floor of the ‘Ponmudi’ block. After dropping me off near the stairs, my mother headed off toward the staff room. I climbed the stairs like a kid who’d been promised presents. The classroom was still pretty empty, though I figured I was just early, like always. But the students who had arrived looked deep in a conversation far too serious for this hour. I almost ignored it—until I heard the name at the center of it all. Rahees. Ah, No wonder their faces were that dark.
Though the heavy atmosphere dragged the mood down, I found myself glancing over at Rahees’ usual seat. His desk and bench were still covered in drawings he’d left behind sometime over the last few days. One stood out. A river, a boat on that river, a man in the boat, mountains, the sun rising between them, and on a patch of land, a bunch of odd-looking goats soaking in the sunlight. It was kind of unreal how he managed to pull all that off with just a pen and a single shade of color. But somehow, it looked completely, impossibly green. The kind of green that makes you stop and stare.
Since primary school, I’d always noticed that Rahees had a knack for drawing. He’d be sketching all the time — between conversations, during lectures, whenever his hand found a pen. One day, Rashmi Teacher caught him mid-doodle. But she didn’t scold him or put on that usual disappointed face. No lectures about disrupting class, no sighing. She was actually… kind. She looked at the page, smiled a little, and said,
“The picture’s nice and all, but don’t you think you’re wasting too much ink?”
He didn’t say anything — just lowered his head. She walked away, still smiling, tossing a playful warning over her shoulder.
“Now, if you want anything above zero on your answer papers, try your best to focus, will you?”
Almost everything he ever drew was about nature — always tied to something bigger, something spiritual.
Snapping out of that thought, I glanced around and spotted one of my close friends. I grabbed my bag and sat beside him. Since he was always more plugged into the gossip than I was, I leaned in and asked, “Rag, do you know what actually happened to Rahees?”
Sreerag didn’t even look surprised. Like he knew someone would ask. His voice was quiet.
“He and his sister went to the field yesterday. Bad luck, I guess — she slipped and fell into the water. He jumped in after her without thinking. Thing is… he didn’t know how to swim either. But somehow, he kept her afloat long enough. The people nearby got there fast enough to save her. But not him.”
With the truth settled heavy on both our minds, we fell into silence again. Every now and then, we traded books to double-check each other’s work, like some unspoken truce against the weight of it all. Then the first bell rang. A few minutes later, our class teacher, Krishnapriya Teacher, walked in.
Her face carried a sadness that felt older than ours. Like she'd had time to understand the ache, while we were still just holding it in our hands, unsure what to do with it. She didn’t take attendance. She just stood there for a moment, mouth half-open, then closed it again—like she was still trying to figure out how to start. Right. Some of us probably still didn’t know.
At last, she spoke.
“Children… One of us, Rahees, left us yesterday. I’m sure most of you—” Her voice cracked. She paused. “—have already heard.”
She didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to. Her voice was already trembling.
“Please, don’t go to fields and such alone, okay?”
No one said anything. It wasn’t just our class— the whole school felt like it had gone quiet. But even in that silence, our eyes slowly drifted toward the one seat that would never be filled again. The one that had belonged to our ever-energetic artist, the boy everyone knew.
“When… the second bell rings, please stand up and stay silent for a minute of respect for Rahee—”
She didn’t finish. The bell rang. And just like that, she fell silent. We all stood.
The rain had only grown heavier. In every drop, I saw his face. And in that moment, I understood—this was how the sky wept for him. Not out of rage, but out of grief it could no longer hold. It was painting its farewell, stroke by stroke, with every falling tear. A final picture, not drawn by his hand, but drawn for him—by the sky itself, mourning the boy who had once drawn its beauty.