Cannes award-winning actor Anasuya Sengupta on what the monsoons in Goa have taught her

Let it unfold, I thought.

If city life had hacked at my finest impulses and given me heartache, the Goa monsoon proverbially washed over me, making me desperately honest with myself. They pushed me into wet, lonely corners where I had no choice but to come face to face with myself, with only thunder and lightning as my companions.

If the aim of life is to live, there’s nothing quite like a coastal monsoon to demonstrate that. To witness each leaf, each blade of grass, each wilting flower, each croak of a frog come alive made for profound life lessons that I imbibed while sitting on my verandah with my cat, sipping on a cup of coffee that refused to stay hot.

Seeing the power of nature in full force, left no doubt in my mind that we are all one, we are all creation. Face to face with the love and fury around me, in my garden, in my cat’s eyes even, I slowly started understanding that I too, am something of a miracle. In those dark afternoons and thunderous evenings, I grew in a way I hadn’t yet realised I needed to. I felt encouraged to do anything, even the impossible, especially the impossible. If I had been walking around with my eyes partially closed, I started to open them now, wider and wider. And my ears followed suit, as did my nostrils, my eyes, my mouth, skin, heart and soul. If the aim of life is to live, there’s nothing quite like being alive.

When the rains come… oh, when the rains come… every moment is golden, without so much as a peek from the sun. There is a restriction on one’s general mobility once the rains set in, in Goa, especially for someone like me who rides a two-wheeler. This brings my world closer to me, almost next to me. Literature, music and paint brushes then fill up my days.

When we finally manage to see the world through such a lens, it’s hard to miss how rich it is. It helps us forget ourselves, and I found that there’s no better gift for an artist. Watching decay and growth work hand in hand, destruction and creation, too; made it obvious to me that rage and healing can and should exist together.

Actor Anasuya Sengupta’s sketches

Goa is grey in the monsoons. Yet you can’t miss the greens, and sometimes the purples, too. Sunsets are rare, but every now and then there comes a sunset so regal, it burns like a gem, blasting through the sky in every colour you could think of. Blankets of grey giving way to this riot of colours — is it anything short of sorcery? And if it is, there’s possibly a sorcerer, too? And if there is, surely They have imagined all this to perfection, an illusion strong enough for us not to question. And if They lead by example, shouldn’t we, the unquestioning audience, follow their lead and dare to imagine?

Goa monsoons fuel my imagination. Conversations on rainy afternoons with a close friend become even closer, because if you don’t sit really close you won’t be able to hear each other. It is often in the cradle of these friendships that creative energies are renewed. I am a lucky girl, surrounded always by friends who are not only good friends, but artists I admire. In the backdrop of torrential downpours, we grew together, not in the way of a strategy, necessarily; but just by learning to listen more. Instead of running away from a world that is often bursting at the seams, I found a strength to accept it. And, perhaps,together with some friends, the hope to change it.

The anticipated leaks in roofs are typically tackled at the end of summer, but some ‘drips’ are inevitable. These drips keep changing through the season, everyday there’s a new spot that’s dripping, while the older one has magically stopped — a condition that makes me laugh. The downpours certainly don’t spare most of Goa’s overhead electrical wiring. Power cuts are synonymous with the rains. Often, we will hear a distant thunder and know that we will lose power within 15 minutes. Sometimes it’s the other way round. Of course, there are inverters to counter this. Occasionally, it will rain for days on end, with the overhead wires laying blasted and torn, making it impossible for the workers from the electricity board to show up for repairs. This is when the inverters stop working, too, — a condition that makes me laugh even more.

On clearer days, we will pack a picnic and go to the quarries or waterfalls. Sometimes, just on long winding walks. On other days, cut off from friends, electricity, Swiggy orders and WiFi, we are left to be inventive. Invention and imagination work hand in hand to weave any fiction that I want to weave, think any thought that I want to think.

I find bass notes in claps of thunder, and snare rattles in the squeaks under my bike wheels. I hunt out hidden dance floors inhabited by small numbers, everyone drenched from the rains, dancing to get dry, dancing to survive.

Her sketches of her home in Goa

Goa monsoon is the biggest party in the sky, and the loudest dance of birth and growth. Goa monsoon is a lesson in solitude and in the power of friendships all rolled into one. Witnessing and experiencing this for the last few years has been life altering, in fact essential. Life inhabits grey spaces. And sometimes green and purple, too.

Let it unfold.