Just another monsoon in God's own country. Spinoza said, slice it thin as you like, there are two sides to a story. Kerala's monsoon story is no different.

I love the monsoon rains. Still do. The good vibes of it, you feel in the body. Some stray tears too.

Monsoon times are also times of death and disaster. I remember an elderly boy from our street, Ubhayamargham in Mannarkkad. One rainy day he told his mother he was going to swim with his friends. Said he'd be back for breakfast. He never came back. My grandmother used to tell us, that poor mother went insane. Every day, she made dosas and waited for her son. There are many such stories in Mannarkkad. Lived ones.

All this came to mind when a road in Alappuzha showed up in the news. Water on both sides. A bus down the middle, going somewhere. Not a photograph staged for effect. Just another day for whoever was on that road.

There are two kinds of adventure. One is chosen. It has a return flight. It comes with a caption. It ends, and you go home, and the ordinary resumes.

The other is not chosen. It is getting to school, to work, to the hospital, on a day the monsoon has decided otherwise. No metaphor to retreat into. Just the next necessary thing, and the water in the way of it.

I studied in a government village primary school, Thenkara. During the rains, our teacher would arrive early and send some classmates home early. They had a small river to cross before their house. Water does not wait for the bell.

They left first. On the way out, they called back — Nale kanam. See you tomorrow.

I did not know it then. That was the lesson. Not the one on the blackboard. The curriculum yields to the monsoon. To nature. The monsoon does not yield to the curriculum. Nobody called it defeat. It was just nale kanam. Try again tomorrow.

Nale kanam was never a promise that tomorrow would be easier. Only that we'd show up for it, if we survive today. Not hope. Hope wants a good outcome. Nale kanam doesn't ask for one. It just gets on the bus.

The bus driver turns the ignition, not because the water will recede, but because the hospital shift starts at eight. The child holds her school bag above the current, not because the river will be gentle, but because tomorrow's lesson is waiting.

Because nale kanam is spoken by the living. It's the survivor's word. What about those for whom tomorrow never comes? The boy who said he'd be back for breakfast, and wasn't. His mother had no nale kanam left. Only innu thanne — today, right now — repeated in the steam of the dosa batter and the empty chair.

That bus on the thin black line, water on both sides. Nothing dramatic. No applause. It doesn't know it's resilience. It only knows it has somewhere to be. That's why nobody notices. The remarkable, done every day, stops looking remarkable to anyone but the one still doing it.

Dharma. We translate it as religion, or moral duty. The root is dhri — to hold, to sustain, to uphold. That bus upholds the passenger. The road upholds the bus. None of it asks for a blessing. That's the journey of the ordinary. Not a search for transcendence. Just the plain structural fact of showing up, so the world doesn't come apart.

We don't applaud the heart for beating, or the lungs for breathing. Only when they stop do we know what they were worth. Same with that ribbon of tarmac. The day it disappears under water, the day the bus can't pass, the day nale kanam becomes nale illa — no tomorrow — that's the day we'll see the ordinary was never ordinary at all.

Let the tourists keep their return flights. Their captions. Their photographs. That bus driver, those children, that teacher — they know something else. Nale kanam is not a story to tell. It's a rhythm to keep. And keeping it, in the rain and the mud and the rising water, is the only adventure with no exit. Because it is the exit, the entrance, and the road, all at once.