The Humidity of Laughter

The air before a storm has a specific weight, a thick, metallic velvet that presses against the skin. I remember the smell of dry earth turning to mud, that sharp, rising scent of relief when the first heavy drops finally hit the dust. It is a taste of iron and ozone, a cooling sensation that travels from the soles of your feet up to your throat. When I was small, we would run into the downpour until our clothes clung to our ribs like a second, colder skin. There is a frantic, beautiful rhythm to that kind of play—a wildness that ignores the shivering of the body because the joy is simply too loud to be contained. We were not thinking of the rain; we were becoming the rain. How does the body hold onto the memory of a storm long after the clouds have drifted away and the ground has turned to stone?

Shovan Acharyya has captured this exact feeling of release in his photograph titled Meghmollar. The energy in the frame feels like the first breath of a monsoon, damp and electric. Can you feel the rain beginning to fall as you look at them?