Monsoon Season. By Obi

It is monsoon season Kathmandu, but that does not mean anything to Saro in the humid oil-swamps of Ogoni where potable water is a myth, but it is monsoon season and hopelessness for Bitani in the cold Rohingya refugee camp located in the outskirts of Bangladesh.

And it's hunger season in Rann, where a smile is a luxury that Aisha finds only in the reflection of her face in the watery corn soup that comes once a day. But Kurmi, the Shudra boy don't have that once-a-day smile, its comes whenever the Brahmins empty their bins on the sidewalks of New Dheli and this does not happen daily.

It is no different in the hinterlands of Nima and the alleyway of Cholera stricken Yemen, it is the same where ever you find men. But it is perhaps unimaginable in South Sudan where Jemma finds no use for a smile, she just wants the bombs to stop raining, she wants to fall asleep to the whistle of crickets and not to hysterical laughter of machine gun fire.

In Eastern Gouter, El khabi wakes up to the sounds of drones and huge fumes that shades the beauty of the rising sun and cloud any memory of happiness he ever had.

There are a million more unheard stories of the travails of children in the ruthless streets of war torn cities and the dilapidated homes of poverty ravaged villages, but the silence of the quiet was all it needed to start and that is what have kept it going. We can’t afford to be silent on someone else's battle because we are fighting your own war, the earth is large enough for seven billion winners.


Monsoon (which is a tropical rainy season when the rain last for several months with few interruptions) is used as a metaphor for tears in this piece.