Susan LaffertyI keep it on my desk. This broken piece of a red clay. What remained after the common clay jar fell off the shelf one day. My one semester in pottery class taught me a lot about clay and kilns. And the fragility of earthen vessels. One small pebble could break apart a potter’s masterpiece as it was formed on the wheel or as it baked in the kiln.
We returned to Delhi the summer of 2012 and all I could see was the dust. It coated every leaf on every tree. It covered all surfaces outside and inside. A thorough cleaning of our apartment yielded little evidence of the hard work. A few hours later I was wiping off another fine layer of the stuff.
The tropical rain was pounding the pavement, flooding the side yard, pouring dense and loud. Riah laughed and said, “We call this a rich man’s rain.” Oh? I looked up curiously. She continued, “On days like this, the poor man cannot work. And when he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid. And when he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t eat and his family doesn’t eat. That’s why we call it a rich man’s rain.”