Falling Asleep to Rain | A Monsoon Memory Sleep Story

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Welcome to no Rush Now. I'm Dee. This is a podcast for sleep, for rest, for those moments when you need the world to slow down just a little.

Each episode is a gentle story told slowly, with nowhere urgent to go and nothing dramatic to resolve. Just quiet moments from everyday life here in Australia, woven with memories of India.

As we move through each story together, you'll experience effortless mindfulness. You may find yourself noticing your own breath, or feeling your shoulders relax, or drifting into sleep halfway through.

This is just a gentle place to land at the end of your day, so find a comfortable position, let yourself settle, and let's wind down together. There's no rush now. Tonight it's raining. We'll step out onto the veranda and listen. And that listening will carry us somewhere else.

Back to childhood summers in Mumbai, to monsoon thunder and a grandmother's arms. This is a quiet story with no unexpected twists, just rain and memory and the particular comfort of being held. Lets begin. It started raining.

I hear it before I see it, that first patter against the roof. Hesitant, almost testing the ground, I put my cup of tea down and walk to the back door, Slide it open, step out onto the veranda.

The air has changed already, cooler, heavier somehow, carrying moisture that wasn't there an hour ago. I stand at the edge of the veranda, just under the eave, close enough to feel the first spray of it on my bare arms.

The gum trees at the end of the yard are catching the rain now, their leaves tilting, releasing that smell, sharp and green and clean. Eucalyptus mixed with something else. The dry earth, finally getting what it's been waiting for.

Petrichor, they call it, that smell of rain on dry ground. I breathe it in slowly, just noticing, not naming it beyond that first quiet recognition. Just hear this smell, this moment.

The rain builds, not fast, just steadily heavier, drop by drop, until the sound becomes a kind of gentle roar against the tin roof above me. I lean against the veranda post, the wood cool and a little damp under my palm, and I just listen. There's a rhythm to it if you pay attention.

Not a beat exactly. Rain doesn't keep time like that, but a texture, sometimes thicker, sometimes lighter.

A gum leaf somewhere catches a heavier drop and it lands with its own separate sound, distinct from the rest. I close my eyes for a moment, just listening.

There's something almost hypnotic about it, once you stop trying to pick out individual sounds and just let it all blur together into one long soft noise. My shoulders drop a little. I hadn't noticed I was holding them up near my ears until just now.

The rain doesn't ask anything of me, it just keeps falling, steady and unbothered, and there's something in that steadiness I find myself wanting to borrow.

I stand here for a long while, doing nothing else, not checking my phone, not thinking about tomorrow, just this, the rain, the smell, the cool air on my skin, and somewhere in that stillness my mind drifts backward the way it does to another kind of rain. In another place I would have been seven, maybe eight, spending the summer holidays with my grandmother in Mumbai.

The heat before monsoon was a different thing entirely, thick, still, pressing down on everything. There were no apps back then to tell you what was coming. You just learned to read it.

The way the sky turned that particular gray green, low and heavy, the way the air went still and then suddenly restless, a wind picking up out of nowhere, cool against skin that had been sweating all afternoon. My grandmother always seemed to know minutes before it started.

Quick, she'd say, already moving toward the veranda, the clothes, and we'd rush out together, pulling the day's washing off the line strung along her veranda, saris and shirts and cotton towels still warm from the sun, damp fabric bundled hastily into our arms.

I remember the urgency of it, the only urgency in the whole story, really, racing the first fat drops a little as we hurried back inside, arms full, just making it through the door before the sky properly opened. Once the washing was safely piled on a chair, she'd move through the house unhurried again now, closing shutters one by one.

It's coming, she'd say, not with alarm, just as fact, the way you'd note that dinner was nearly ready, and then the first crack of thunder, loud and enormous, the kind of sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, rattling the window panes, and I would go straight to her, pressing myself against her side, her cotton sari soft and cool. She never told me not to be scared, she just let me be there, her arm coming around me easily like it was the most natural thing.

That's just the clouds talking to each other, she'd say. They've got a lot to say this time of year.

The rain would come properly then, not a gentle Australian drizzle like this, but sheets of it, loud against the roof, so loud you'd have to raise your voice to be heard over it. I remember watching it from the window she'd left open a crack, the water bouncing off the road outside, forming rivers along the gutters.

Within minutes the power would often go a flicker, then darkness, and my grandmother would simply reach for the candles she kept ready on the shelf by the door. She always kept them ready this time of year, and light one unhurried, the small flame steadying in the still humid air.

We'd sit together on her bed, the candle between us, and she'd keep making tea somehow, even in the dark, the stove lit with a match, the small pot rattling gently as the water came to a boil, ginger and cardamom, the smell of it filling the room, mixing with the smell of rain coming through the window and wet concrete and something electric in the air after the thunder. She'd pour it into two small cups, careful even in the low candlelight, steam curling up and catching the flames glow.

I'd wrap both hands around mine, the warmth seeping into my palms, and she'd do the same, her rings clinging softly against the ceramic. We wouldn't talk right away.

We'd just sit there, sipping slowly, listening to the rain hammering away outside, the candle flickering slightly whenever a gust pushed through the shutter slats. Every few minutes another crack of thunder would roll through and I'd feel her arm tighten around me just slightly, just enough, before easing again.

Another crack would come closer this time it always seemed, and I'd flinch and she'd just tighten her arm around me a little, not making a fuss of it. Count, she told me once, between the light and the sound that tells you how far away the storm is.

So I would, watching for the flash through the shutter slats, counting under my breath, 1, 2, 3, until the thunder rolled in. She said it was the light and the sound traveling at different speeds, though I didn't really understand it then.

I just liked having something to do with my hands and my breath while the thunder happened, counting instead of just waiting. Some nights the storm went on for hours. We'd just stay there on her bed, drinking tea by candlelight, her telling me small stories.

Not really stories, just observations, things she remembered from monsoons long before I was born. A tree that used to flood their old street, a neighbor who fed the stray dogs from her window every rainy season.

Nothing dramatic, just her voice low and steady, matching the rhythm of the rain outside.

She told me about the year the water rose so high on their old street that people paddled small boats between the houses just to reach the shop for milk and bread. She told it like it was nothing unusual, just the fact of that particular monsoon, the way you'd mention what you had for breakfast.

I remember asking if she was scared, and she just shrugged, that small easy shrug of hers. Water goes down Again she said, it always does. I didn't understand then how much comfort there was in a sentence like that. I do now.

Eventually I'd get sleepy leaning into her, the sound of the rain becoming less frightening and more like a blanket over everything.

She'd shift so I could rest against her properly, and I'd fall asleep like that sometimes, the thunder still going but distant now in my ears, folded into dreams.

In the morning everything would be different, the heat broken, the streets washed clean, steam rising faintly off the road as the sun came back, the city smelling new. Back here on my own veranda, the rain has settled into something steadier now. No thunder tonight, just this long, even fall.

The gum trees are dripping, each leaf releasing its own small trail of water. Somewhere a magpie calls once, briefly, before going quiet again, tucked away from the wet.

I stay out here a little longer, letting both rains sit together in me. The loud, dramatic monsoon of my childhood and this quiet Australian one to night.

Different countries, different sounds, but somehow the same feeling underneath it, that particular comfort of being sheltered while something bigger happens outside. I think about my grandmother's arm around me. I can almost feel it now, if I let myself, that steadiness, that unhurried calm in the middle of noise.

I didn't know back then that she was teaching me something, just to stay, just to notice, just to let the storm be loud while you stay inside it. The rain hasn't stopped, but it's slowing, the gaps between drops growing longer.

I step back inside, sliding the door close gently behind me, the sound of the rain muffling slightly softer now, more like a hum than a roar. I don't turn on any lights. I just stand for a moment in the dim room, listening. There's something in me that feels hell tonight.

Not because anyone's arm is around me, just because I remembered what it felt like to be held. And that memory is its own kind of shelter. I make my way toward bed, the rain still falling gently outside my window, a steady, undemanding sound.

I climb in and pull the blanket up and let my eyes close. I walk slowly down the hallway, not bothering with the lights, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.

Instead, the rain follows me, muffled now behind walls and glass, just a hush in the background of the house.

I pause at my bedroom window for a moment, watching the last of it fall past the street light outside, each drop catching the glow for just a second before disappearing into the dark. My body feels heavy in the good way now, loose, unhurried. Somewhere I imagine my grandmother is still there in that home, in that monsoon.

Lighting a candle, making tea. Her arm ready for a small girl who's afraid of thunder. And somewhere here in this quiet room, I'm still that small girl too.

Just for a moment, held by the sound of rain. Held by the memory of her. The rain outside softens further. Barely a whisper now against the glass. There's no rush. There's no rush at all.