It's Raining, Man...

Saffy says that given the amount of time she spends these days staring up at the sky, she might as well take up meteorology as a second career. 

“You very free, lor,” her best friend Sharyn told her the other day when she walked into Saffy’s office and found her peering up through the tinted windows.

Saffy whipped around, frantically waving her hands. “Can you not say such things so loudly, please?”

Sharyn shrugged. “Yah, what. Every time I come in here, you never work, one! Got dat time, remember, you were sitting at your chair, going cross-eye! You say you were exercising your what, ah? Your pelvic muscle!”

“Ugh,” Saffy said, turning back to the window to stare up again. “You can blame Amanda for that. She was so into her Kegels, she made us all do it. Jason says he’s still doing them!”

Sharyn glided up next to Saffy and looked up. “So, what are you looking at?”

“Rain clouds!”

“Today where got rain? Is so hot!”

“I’m trying to train my internal barometer!”

Sharyn sighed. “Aiyoh.”

A few weeks ago, someone in Saffy’s yoga class gave her a book called ‘Inner Engineering’ by Sadhguru. “It’s quite life-changing!” Marissa said as she thrust the orange covered book into Saffy’s hands. 

Later that evening, Saffy says she wished she could give Sadhguru a make-over. “I think if he trimmed his beard a little, he’d be so much cooler!”

“The man rides a motorcycle all over India, Saff,” I said. “You can’t get any cooler than that!”

Saffy turned astonished eyes on me. “How do you know this?”

“I watch all his YouTube videos. I think he’s the coolest dude I’ve never met,” I told her. “He’s so smart and explains heavy metaphysical and spiritual stuff in simple language. My sister became a vegetarian after watching one of his videos!”

Which is how that evening in bed, Saffy found herself turning the first page. She could only get through two pages. “It’s so intense!” she reported the next day. “I loved that he started page one with a joke though!”

“Oh, Sadhguru is full of jokes,” I said in a way that seemed to indicate he and I were squash buddies. 

That night, Saffy read another two pages. And the following night, another two. Each morning, she would stumble into the lounge room, goggle-eyed. “My God, the things that man says! And how he says them! I seriously can’t wrap my brain around any of it! But I also can’t stop reading!”

During the day, she’d catch herself thinking about her relationship with other people, and situations. After one office meeting, Sharyn asked, “Ay, you sick, ah? The whole meeting, you smile and not say anything. Marcus from accounts WhatsApp me and say you very scary!”

Saffy blinked. “No, I was just thinking that none of this matters at all. All this angst is just a reflection of my externalities and has nothing to do with what’s going on inside.”

Sharyn stared. “Yah,” she said eventually. “Confirm, you sick.”

And then, one night, Saffy got to a passage in which Sadhguru said he has tuned his inner consciousness to such an elevated state, he is be able to tell if it will rain.

“Can you imagine?” she said the next morning at breakfast. “That’s just totally mind-blowing!”

Amanda was unimpressed. “There are weather apps for that kind of thing!”

“Yes, but still! That’s real skill!” Saffy’s eyes shone.

For a week now, she’s alternated between sitting with her eyes closed concentrating on tuning into her inner barometer and staring up at the sky for any sign of rain to check if the bright blazing blue sky above correlates with what she’s feeling. 

“So, how? Can feel rain or not?” Sharyn asked the other day. She’d just marched back to the office from Lau Pa Sat and had to disappear into the bathroom to mop up her sweat and dry herself off. 

Saffy pursed her lips. “I can’t feel anything!”

“Of course not, lah!” Sharyn sighed. “I no need read your book, I can confirm got no rain! These few day so hot, where got rain? If Sadhguru was here, he also tell you the same ting!”

Far from being discouraged, Saffy perseveres. Even when she announces that it won’t rain, and there’s a thunderstorm two hours later, she’s convinced she’s on her way to becoming a human barometer. 

“It’s just a matter of practice,” she told Amanda who told me privately that it’s a good thing Sadhguru never wrote a book on levitation. 

“Can you imagine?” she asked.