It’s deep summer—the first of August a whisper away—and the city swelters. The concrete is baked with dog urine and popsicle drippings, the damp air on the subway platform suffocates, and even the children on the bus are listless. I’ve found myself longing for rain—not just a polite drizzle, but a cinematic downpour. A drenching storm. Something to cut the heaviness and clear the air. But maybe that’s because I’m spending so much of my time in India, home of the monsoon. Mentally, that is.
I’m slowly, deliciously, making my way through The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It’s an intimidatingly long novel—over 800 pages. If most books take the reader on a journey, this one offers a month-long pilgrimage. Set across generations in the southwest Indian state of Kerala, the book weaves together the lives of a family as they face political upheaval, illnesses, death, severe weather, and a mysterious “condition” that haunts them.
Verghese’s Cutting for Stone broke me open and changed the way I understood storytelling—and this one feels just as transformative. The characters are appropriately flawed, because they are human, and yet several embody a kind of stalwart integrity, instinctive kindness and the deep wisdom I find myself longing for in today’s brutal landscape.
At the same time, I’ve been dipping into World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a revelatory essay collection that explores the natural world while sharing stories from her life in the U.S.—as the child of Filipino and Indian parents, as a young woman, and as a mother. Each chapter offers fascinating glimpses into an animal or plant—a narwhal, a corpse flower, a cactus, a vampire squid—woven together with memory and metaphor. I find myself Googling the animals on YouTube, I’m so intrigued by her descriptions (and the book’s illustrations) of these astonishing creatures. I watch the ritualistic marching dance of flamingos, their long pink legs strutting boldly down a beach, or the Mexican amphibian axolotls, staring back at the camera with enormous eyes. (Can they really be that cute? Spoiler alert: they are.)
Recently I sat in a lovely Indian restaurant tucked into an unusually quiet block of midtown Manhattan, sharing Jain dishes—Jainism is a religion that happens to have culinary rules that accommodate my allergies to garlic and onions—with my husband and friends. Around us, several large Indian families gathered for a Saturday night meal. In fact, we were the only people in the restaurant not of Indian descent, which I took as a good sign. As I gobbled up a spicy cauliflower appetizer that made my face flush, I listened to the musical cadence of conversation, watched the joy ripple across faces as cousins and uncles arrived, and basked in the warmth of entering another culture, even briefly.
Which is what reading these two books has done–given me “foreign” things to contemplate. Reading them on sweltering Manhattan days, sometimes sitting by the East River while longing to jump in, brings back the topic of rain. In Verghese’s novel, one of the most poignant scenes features the main character’s daughter, baby Mol, who has an unidentified developmental condition that keeps her, as the narrator says, “like a child.” When the monsoon arrives each year, Baby Mol, in make-up, braids and a gold dress, goes onto the front verandah and performs a monsoon dance to ensure continued rainfall while the community surrounds and praises her.
Nezhukumatathil also has essays that take place in the state of Kerala, where she visited her paternal grandmother’s home. She writes about the monsoon:
“You know it’s coming when the butterflies—fiery skippers and bluebottles—fly in abundance over the cinnamon plants and suddenly disappear. A whole family of peacocks will gather up in a banyan tree, so still, as if posing for a portrait. Then the shaking sound begins.”
I pause as I read, wondering what a cinnamon plant looks like, holding the powerful image of posing peacocks in my mind. You know she’s a poet. I soak in her images, delight in her metaphors.
This is my summer of reading—of letting myself rest, recover, and refill after finishing my MFA in June. After turning in a full memoir manuscript, I knew I needed a period of stillness, a time for the muddy pond of my mind to settle before I began to revise in earnest. Not a full stop, but a seriously sleepy pause. So I’m doing what writers do to nourish the work: observing, indulging my senses, and reading deeply.
Most of all, I’m finding my solace in literature. Each book is a life raft, floated to me by the universe during a hard, strange season of life.
In January, my husband and I landed in Manhattan—swept east from California by hope and necessity. He’s living with stage four cancer, and we came for a clinical trial at Sloan Kettering, a Hail Mary treatment after running out of options on the West Coast. Our first New York winter was brutal: frigid winds howling up the alley, snow in our collars, grief and fear wrapped up in our inadequate scarves.
Slowly, as winter thawed into a chilly spring, we began to accept that—for now—this is home.
Let me be clear: I love New York. I grew up in Jersey and spent countless days and nights in Manhattan in my younger years. But after 35 years in California, my skin had grown thin.
And now, as I weather my first East Coast summer in decades, everything feels intensified: the bright light in my room by 6 a.m., the constant humidity, the sirens as lullabies, the press of hot, sweaty bodies packed into moving vehicles.
Of course, there’s also the work we are here for: fighting cancer.
Caregiving is both an honor and a heartbreak. It’s the act of funneling my life force into another, sharing the energy I have left after three years of a cancer battle. Care giving is all I can do some days. And I’m not always doing it all that well. Still, I’m grateful. Grateful to be here, together, sharing a Masala dish, choosing artwork for our new walls, laughing with our adult children, watching another glorious Manhattan sunset from the roof. And talking about the books we’re reading, as we have for thirty-five years.
These two books, in particular, have helped me carry someone else’s grief or wonder for a while—to let their storms soak me instead of my own. I trade my trauma for theirs, and it softens something in me. At the very least, I feel less alone.
So, I’m staying curious. I’m reading widely. And for this week, I’m lingering in India—while rooted right here, on the sticky, sunbaked island of Manhattan.
P.S. As I finished writing this, the skies opened over Manhattan in a true monsoon-style downpour. The universe has a sense of humor—and fantastic timing.
This was posted this week on Substack. If you want to get each post, please consider “subscribing” there (for free.) Here is the link: https://joanellserra.substack.com/
Follow on Instagram: @Joanellserraauthor