There was something strangely exhilarating for Shalini about riding through flooded streets in a Jeep. As the vehicle pushed forward, her friend Angela navigated the standing water with steady confidence, sending shimmering sprays arcing past the passenger window. The sight stirred something rare and tender in her.
It felt like joy.
That feeling mattered more than she could explain. The past few years had dismantled her life in ways she never anticipated, leaving her carefully rationing her energy and her hope. Cruising through the familiar lanes of the beach island she once moved through so freely was no small event. Outings like this had become scarce, almost mythical.
She wouldn’t describe herself as reclusive, exactly. But seeing her outside these days would have felt unusual, even startling. It meant she had managed to trade comfort clothes for something presentable. It meant she had gathered herself after a morning that may have begun in tears.
The tears had softened with time, but stepping out still required intention, preparation, and gentle inner coaxing. Angela, aware of the terrain Shalini had been navigating internally, didn’t clutter the space with casual talk. She allowed silence to exist, giving it room to settle between them like a shared breath.
And in that quiet, as the Jeep rolled over the rain-soaked road, a rainbow appeared.
It was whole and luminous, arching across the sky without interruption. They both paused, absorbing it without words, until Angela finally voiced what hung between them.
“This feels like a sign that better days are coming.”
Shalini nodded, wanting and needing fort hat to be true. Not only for their storm-weary community, but for herself. She longed for reassurance, for meaning. Surely something so arresting wouldn’t appear without purpose. Surely life was preparing to turn.
In that moment, a small opening formed inside her, a tentative allowance for hope.
Angela dropped her home soon after, wrapping her in a long, grounding hug before she stepped back onto her driveway. As her feet touched the sand-dusted stones, Shalini noticed something unfamiliar stirring within her: the possibility of ease.
But ease did not arrive.
The following morning, she woke with an expectation she couldn’t quite name. She moved through her routine, studied her reflection, waited for something to feel different.
Nothing did.
The losses remained exactly where they were. Her father was still gone - irrevocably. No insight had descended overnight. No sense of closure had followed her to sleep. What remained was the stark understanding that some fractures in life do not heal neatly.
There was grace, she reminded herself, in the way their final conversations had unfolded, light, gentle, even affectionate. Love had moved between them, imperfect but alive. And yet his sudden absence had shaken the family’s foundation, displacing her sense of safety. Overwhelmed, she had withdrawn, much like a creature retreating inward to survive an unexpected freeze.
And then there was the future - wide, undefined, and waiting. For years, her identity had been anchored in raising her children. Soon, that chapter would close. She had tried to imagine a new path through writing, through building a mindful and compassionate community, but grief had dimmed that vision, draining its momentum.
As she looked at herself now, she saw uncertainty reflected back. Five decades marked her face with soft lines of joy and strain, silver threading through her roots. Time was evident, yet she felt strangely unseen, as though the world had continued without noticing her pause.
What now? She wondered. What now, rainbow?
Beneath the sadness and fatigue, another emotion surfaced.
Anger.
How dare that moment offer her hope? How dare it invite belief only to leave everything unchanged? She felt deceived by her own willingness to trust beauty.
And then, quietly, something settled at the edges of her awareness, a truth steady enough to interrupt her despair.
She understood, finally, what a rainbow was not.
It was not a promise. It was not a guarantee of improvement or relief. It did not arrive to fix anything.
A rainbow exists simply to reveal; to take what is already there and, briefly, wash it in colour. It does not undo the storm or dry the rain. It alters perception, not reality. And in doing so, it offers a momentary widening of vision.
Perhaps that was enough.
Perhaps healing was not about waiting for circumstances to transform, but about learning how to remain present with life as it is. Perhaps it was about allowing grief and wonder to coexist, without insisting that one cancel the other.
The rainbow had not come to rescue her. It had come to invite her to see - her life, her pain, herself and through a gentler lens.
So she let it teach her.
That she was still here.
That awe could visit even in sorrow.
That uncertainty did not banish beauty.
That light does not vanish in darkness; it bends, refracts, and appears in unexpected forms.
And maybe hope was never about being saved. Maybe it was about choosing to continue, even without clarity.
So Shalini chose to keep going.
Not because she knew what awaited her.
Not because she trusted everything would resolve.
But because light still existed, complex, fractured, and luminous.
And she was willing to keep looking for it.
In the rain.
In the in-between.
And within herself.
