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Thursday, June 10 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

The scorching summer heat blasted 

my entire body as I opened the door 
to my childhood bedroom that had 
been frozen in time. After I froze in 
single-digit temperatures for the first 
time ever during my first semester of 
college, the uncomfortable, sweltering, 
Hawaiian air was comforting due to its 
familiarity; it felt like home.

My family had added new cabinets to 

the kitchen and painted the bathroom 
bright orange while I was gone, but my 
bedroom was exactly as I left it. The 

video game posters I bought in eighth 
grade remained pinned to the wall that 
I haphazardly painted blue in tenth. On 
my bookshelf, my elementary school 
summer reading books sat next to the 
Shakespearian plays I always nearly 
fell asleep reading. A framed Pokémon 
drawing made by a friend in sixth grade 
rested on my dresser beside my high 
school diploma. Collared shirts that my 
high school’s dress code required us to 
wear filled my closet. Even though I 
spent the last few months away from 
home, the placement of every mundane 
object was etched into my memory.

This bedroom was like an extra 

mental storage space for my memories. 

Any time a memory became lost in 
my jumbled consciousness, I could 
look at an object and almost relive 
all of the cringe-inducing, heartfelt 
or devastating moments. This small, 
square bedroom was also my sanctuary, 
whether I was trying to sneakily play 
Pokémon under the covers without my 
parents catching me or staying up until 
3 a.m. trying to finish a lab report. My 
childhood stuffed animals stared at me 
blankly, never judging me or expecting 
me to contort my personality to fit 
in with the crowd like I often felt my 
peers did. I was most free when I chose 
to lock myself away in my room.

Yet, walking into my bedroom felt 

as if I was disturbing a space that had 
retreated into a deep slumber. I sifted 
through old T-shirts from colleges I 
rejected and photos of people with 
whom I no longer keep in contact. I 
still hold the memories attached to 
each object, but I’m beginning to feel 
like this bedroom no longer knows 
me. I have no physical mementos of 
my first-year college experience and 
my internal growth in my nest of shiny 
objects. This room, with its old college 
essay drafts gathered in a pile on the 
ground, belongs to a version of myself 
that no longer exists. Everything in this 
room remained exactly where I left it, 
but I have changed. For the first time, 

my bedroom has not evolved with me.

After living away from home, I’ve 

gained more of an appreciation for the 
mundane. However, I know I cannot 
bring every single object with me into 
the next phase of my life. Walking 
back into my old bedroom felt like 
time traveling to the past, but now I’m 
looking toward the future. One day, I 
will leave this room for the final time, 
and I will not take my broken kendama 
or my scouting backpack with me. 
When that time comes, I will not be sad 
to let go of these relics of my childhood. 
Just like the old version of myself that 
is long gone, I think it soon will be time 
to bury this time capsule for good. 

Like most kids, I used to hate 

the rain – the gray skies, the slight 
emptiness in the roads due to the 
forecast and the sharp chillness all 
before the first droplets fell. I would 
get this pit in my stomach, an ominous 
feeling that made me nauseous. I 
disliked everything about the rain. 
The earthy smell when I first walked 
outside right after the storm. The 
continuous sound of the droplets 
hitting the roof. But what bothered me 
most was the thunder. 

Every storm, I’d go and sleep near 

my mother, and turn to her asking 
her to stay awake. She’d ask me if I 
was alright and I would respond with 
a simple “yeah,” too embarrassed to 
tell her I was scared, but she knew. 
Nightmares, storms or just scary 
thoughts always led to me asking her 
to stay awake. But she would listen, 
every night, and try her best to stay up 
until she accidentally closed her eyes 
for too long. Then it was just me, alone 
with the thunder.

Every 
possible 
frightening 

scenario would unfold in my head. 
The lightning would hit the house or 
the basement would flood, or worse: a 
tornado, since rainy season is tornado 
season. The power would go out, 
turning off my bright blue night light 
from Ikea and the red 3 a.m. written 
on the display of our alarm clock from 
the early 90s, and I would be left alone 
in darkness alongside the ear-splitting 
thunder. My mind continued to race 
until I finally fell asleep, exhausted 
from thinking too much. 

A few years later, my parents, 

brother and I had made the long flight 

to visit our family back home in Tamil 
Nadu, India. We were welcomed 
with warm genuine smiles from my 
grandmother and aunt along with the 
heavy thunderstorm amidst 98 degree 
heat. The 30-minute taxi drive home 
felt like hours with rain constantly 
pouring down the windows. Our 
suitcases tied to the top of the car 
absorbed every drop of water, leaving 
some of our belongings wet. The 
storm continued with heavy rain 
throughout the night and scattered 
thunder and lightning. 

After reaching the flat, the 

downpour only got heavier, but being 
a little older, I was not as scared as I 
used to be. Although I wasn’t terrified 
of the thunder, it still bothered me, 
spending long nights awake due to 
the mix of the loud storm and jet lag. 
While I couldn’t fathom the thought 
of thunder and lightning as positive 
occurrences, my aunts, cousins and 
grandmother were not even the 
slightest bit phased by the storm; if 
anything, they saw it as a good thing 
and were grateful. The dry, drought-
like heat of Chennai was temporarily 
suppressed 
with 
wetness 
and 

humidity. My aunt would leave the 
door to the ground-level balcony 
open so the uncomfortably hot flat 
would become slightly cooler. A sense 
of relief grew inside of me as the heat 
in the room became bearable.

My grandmother sat in the living 

room fanning herself with that week’s 
newspaper, while I played with my 
toys and watched the only English 
movie playing on TV, Planet of the 
Apes. The rain made the environment 
feel relaxing but at the same time, still a 
little uncomfortable. The same feeling 
of “the calm before the storm” arose 
except we were halfway through the 

storm, which always resulted in a 
common power outage. Even while 
quickly overheating to the point of 
sweat puddles surrounding me from 
the absence of air conditioning and a 
working ceiling fan, I found comfort in 
the sense of community these outages 
brought. With power, everyone was 
off doing their own thing, cooking, 
working or watching TV. But with 
the outage, everyone quickly came 

together. They’d walk into the living 
room with a slight sigh and a quick 
comment: “current pochu” (Tamil 
for “current went”). My aunt would 
go around lighting the candles in the 
flat and the small flame would light up 
the room just enough to see the color 
of her sari. We would talk nonsense 
while sitting on the couch, waiting 
for the power to return. My cousin 
would throw in a few harmless jokes 
about how I would sit with my feet off 
the ground to avoid the small lizards 
that constantly ran through the flat 
or about how I didn’t like the dark in 
order to lighten the mood and distract 

me. My aunt would nudge him telling 
him to stop teasing me and everyone 
would laugh. Then abruptly, the lights 
would turn back on, the conversations 
would end and life would continue 
just like that.

After coming back to Michigan, I 

was grateful the storms here weren’t 
as violent as they were in India. 
Life went on until we reached the 
first storm of the season, and I was 

surprisingly fine with it. I reminisced 
about the time I spent in India, where 
everyone felt relieved when it rained 
since the air was normally dry and the 
family came together and made jokes 
and told stories. The rain brought us 
all together. Thinking back to this 
sense of togetherness brought me to 
finally view the rain positively, the 
same way I did there. 

A few times, my family and I were 

able to experience a storm during our 
road trips. The lightning would flash 
and my mother would quickly order 
us to close our eyes and not look at 
the bright streak in the sky since she 

would always say the light is too 
bright for our eyes to handle. I would 
smile and nod as she said that, while 
directly staring at the lightning 
streak with dangerously wide-open 
eyes. I didn’t want to miss the slight 
purple hue that filled the sky, the 
beauty that I always seemed to miss 
since I closed my eyes and hid under 
the cover at the first sign of a storm 
for so long.

The 
best 
part 
of 
most 

thunderstorms is when friends or 
family are talking to a group and a 
sudden burst of thunder interrupts 
them. We all look at each other 
smiling but in slight disbelief of the 
thunder being that loud. Someone 
comments “Woah” or “That was 
loud” and the rest lightly laugh right 
before resuming the conversation 
exactly where it was left off. The 
thunder was like a break mid-
conversation. Not only does it break 
our conversation, but it breaks 
everyone in the vicinity of the storm’s 
conversations as well. We all hear the 
thunder at the same time, see the 
lightning at the same time and likely 
react to it at the same time. It’s like a 
forced connection between us all. It’s 
as if the thunderstorm was a break 
from regular fast-paced life itself, a 
midlife interruption, where we all 
pause for a minute and look around, 
before resuming back to our normal 
life the way my family in India does 
every storm. 

The thunder is loud, the rain makes 

the grass messy and the storm can be 
scary. But without the scariness and 
ugliness of the storm, there would be 
no purple hue lighting up the sky, no 
coolness in the air around my aunt’s 
flat and no brief moment of extra 
connection between us all. 

Time capsule

The calm of the storm

ANDREW NAKAMURA

MiC Columnist

ROSHNI MOHAN

MiC Columnist

Design by Marina Sun

