It was a moist and humid afternoon. In these places, the 4 O' clock showers are very common. Usually, the hot, humid and suffocating afternoons stood premonition to the norwesterlies, commonly termed as the Kalbaisakhi. The symptoms were known to every household. Every mother knew it was time for the windows to be closed.
The hot winds started blowing since three in the afternoon. The doors started making their soft creaking sounds. Some others, that were left unlatched casually, started to bang on their closures mildly and again retrace its original position.
Adu was looking at the golden sun sinking into the ocean of dark clouds. A familiar sight was flashing somewhere close by and a canopy of light was trying to brighten the long lost black clouds, making them appear white momentarily. She was in her casual clothes. She was looking at the sky slowly turning dreadful.
The wooden doors started to clatter against one another. The sharp heavy droplets from the rain clouds were bouncing off her forehead and making her wet. The time was perfect to run to the fields to get drenched in the first relief from the summer days.
The darkness in the evening sky brought about an early night, it seemed. Adu started chasing the goat across the rice fields. The hot and dusty winds, interspersed with huge droplets of rain, could not diminish the sprouting spirit of the young heart of Adu.
As she reached the edge of the field, it started raining heavily and the storm was steadily intensifying. The door creaks were inaudible in the thunderstorm. The lightning stroke the ground here and there. Now, Adu became frightened as time passed.
Reaching back home in this tempest was next to impossible. The atmosphere had extracted all its heat, and then all its warmth and now it was cold.
Adu sat beneath a shade naturally created by the inclined leaves of the banana trees. She was clasping the goat with her frightened shivering hands. The banana leaves were swaying strongly. After half an hour of continuous downpour, the storm finally ended. The setting sun was again visible. Adu always wondered, how water destroyed its own shape and vaporised into thin air only to come back to the same place where it started from.
Adu stood up, her clothes wet. The goat was also eager to get back inside the village doors. All the while, it was only because of this goat, that Adu had the courage and hope. She took the goat in her hand and walked over the mud and crossed the vast expanse of the rice field and reached the village. She left the goat tied to a wooden shaft outside her house and entered. She took a bath, cleaned herself of all the mud and clay. She took some rest and then after three hours, her mother woke her up for dinner.
She came and as she was hungry, she ate the delicious mutton her mother had cooked. She took a bowl of milk from the kitchen and went outside the house to give it to the goat, who provided her with the moral strength to survive a storm. She was heartbroken and petrified to see that the goat was missing from the shaft. She asked her mother, what happened? Her father said that he had taken it to the butcher to sell it off. With a part of what he earned he bought some mutton for the dinner.
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