Station Announcement:
"Passengers chasing echoes of old storms, please note: the thunder you follow may lead you back to yourself."
The first time Arun heard thunder after meeting Arjun mashu, he didn't hide under the bed.
He stepped outside.
The sky above Kadalimukku had gone that deep, bruised purple that always came before the monsoon remembered its temper.Wind ran ahead of the rain, tugging at coconut leaves, making the laundry lines dance.
Arun stood barefoot in the yard, the earth damp and cool, his shirt sticking to his back.He tipped his head back and watched the clouds pile up like heavy luggage on a platform.
"Basil chettan must be watching this from the hospice," he whispered."Thunder is his favourite."
When they were younger, Basil had told him that thunder was just the sky rearranging its furniture."Never be scared," he would say. "It's just moving things so the rain can find its way."
Now Basil lay on a floating hospital, thin and recovering, and Arun was the one left in the house that suddenly felt too big.
Another crack tore across the sky.Arun smiled despite the ache in his chest.
"Alright," he said to the clouds. "Let's race."
He ran down the lane toward the canal, the wind pushing at his back, the first drops slapping his arms like encouragement.
He didn't really know where he was going.Only that the thunder was coming from that direction — somewhere near the school and the water and the place where everyone important seemed to end up these days.
Arjun had told him that morning, "Come to class even if it rains. Learning should outlast weather."
So he went.
The small school stood with its windows open, light spilling from inside like warm breath. Rain clanged softly on the roof sheets.From outside, he could hear voices chanting verbs in unison.
"Come in, Arun," Arjun said when he appeared at the doorway, soaked. "You're on time for the storm."
The other students turned to stare — new boy, thin, trunk-brother of a legend.Arun gripped his notebook tighter.
"Everyone, this is Arun," Arjun said. "He's part of our Rainlight family. Show him where we keep the good chalk, or else he'll leave us for a better school."
There was a ripple of laughter. Tension lowered like a lifted curtain.
A girl with plaited hair and sharp eyes patted the bench beside her."Sit here," she whispered. "I'm Meera."
He sat. The room smelled of wet clothes and chalk dust — a smell he already loved.
On the board, Arjun wrote in neat letters:
TODAY'S TOPIC: THUNDER
"Definition?" he asked.
Hands shot up.
"It's loud," Meera said. "Like Amma when I spill oil."
"Electricity fighting clouds!" another boy offered.
"Angry gods," someone muttered.
Arjun shook his head, smiling. "Many definitions. Today, let's give it one more: Thunder is the sound of air making space for rain."
He turned to the class.
"What does that mean?"
Arun raised his hand without knowing he would.
"It means… something big is coming," he said. "Something that needs room."
"Good," Arjun replied. "Very good. Sometimes, the noise in our lives is just our hearts making space for what's next."
The idea sat in Arun's chest like a warm stone.
He liked this class.Here, questions didn't feel like accusations.
After lesson, when most children had run off to help at shops and stalls, Arun stayed behind, lingering near the trunk at the front.
Basil's trunk.
He ran his fingers along the painted boat on its lid.
"You can open it, you know," Arjun said gently, erasing the board.
Arun shook his head. "Already did. At home. It smells like his sweat. Amma cried for hours."
Arjun put down the duster. "Does it make you angry?"
"Yes," Arun said, too quickly. "At the Gulf. At the job. At the… people there."
"At Basil?"
The word twisted.
"No," he said. "He just wanted us to eat more than rice water."
Arjun nodded. "That is a big want."
Arun looked up. Rain slid down the glass like transparent fingers.
"What if I… just don't go anywhere?" he burst out. "What if I stay here and still nothing changes?"
Arjun leaned against the desk, thinking.
"Then you must learn to change the place," he said softly. "Not by leaving it, but by understanding it so well it cannot ignore you."
"How?"
"That's why you're here," Arjun replied. "To find out."
Days built themselves into a rhythm.
Arun woke before dawn to deliver fish his mother cleaned, the smell clinging to his hands no matter how hard he scrubbed.He attended Arjun's lessons in the afternoons, tracing words until the chalk nubs stabbed his fingers.
In the evenings, he sat by the trunk and read Basil's old notebooks.
Inside, he discovered worlds.
Phrases circled, underlined twice: "I will learn enough English to speak to anyone in any place."Spelling mistakes corrected, then proudly re-corrected.Drawings of cranes, not the birds but the metal ones, lifting imaginary beams into skies.
One page held a word written over and over.
RETURN.
Arun stared at it until the letters blurred.
What did return even mean, if you came back different?If parts of you never found their way home?
He began keeping his own notebook, thinner, trembling.
On the first page, he wrote:
I followed thunder to class today. It was loud. But mashu was louder, in a soft way.
One afternoon, Arjun wheeled in an old computer, the monitor heavy and yellowed.The children gathered around like it was a shrine.
"This," Arjun announced, "is our window to other windows."
He plugged it into a power strip patched together with more hope than engineering.The machine whirred, coughed, and blinked awake with the stubborn dignity of old technology.
On the screen appeared a simple interface with a title:
OFFLINE MINDS – RAINLIGHT SERVER
Arun read it aloud, tasting each word.
Arjun grinned. "A friend of ours made this. Her name is Leena. And another friend, Sara, helped us bring it here. So even when the internet disappears, some knowledge won't."
He clicked.Up came folders labelled Math, Stories, Science, Life Skills.Another folder held audio lessons. When he opened one, a woman's voice filled the room — clear, patient, explaining how rivers were living systems.
"Who is that?" Meera breathed.
"Another teacher," Arjun said. "Far away, but also here. That's the magic."
He turned to Arun. "Why don't you choose today's topic?"
Arun's mind raced.
What would Basil have chosen?
He clicked a folder marked Journeys.
A list of lessons appeared. One title glowed:
"Lesson 1: What is Home?"
Arun selected it.
A new voice spoke — this time a man's, rich and slightly amused:
"Home is not only where you begin. It is also where you understand why you left, and why you chose to return."
Arun froze.
"Who is that?" he whispered.
Arjun smiled slowly.
"That," he said, "is Basil."
Arun's throat closed.
He listened as his brother's recorded voice continued, explaining in careful, slightly accented English how home could be a person, a street, a smell; how the Gulf had taught him hunger of many kinds; how his dreams had not been for escape but for expansion.
The lesson was simple, imperfect — Basil sometimes translated Malayalam in his head and forgot to hide it — but it was alive.
Arun stared at the screen, at the tiny sound waves jumping as his brother spoke.
"He sent these before he left for the last time," Arjun said quietly. "We stored them here, waiting for… this moment, I suppose."
Arun wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.
"I can still learn from him," he whispered.
"Of course," Arjun replied. "The best teachers keep teaching even when they're tired, or far away, or… in between places."
The rain outside intensified, drumming its approval.
That night, thunder woke him.
Not loud, just insistent.
He slipped out of the house quietly, careful not to disturb his mother's sleep.The sky flashed, turning the world white for a heartbeat.
He walked toward the shore where the canal widened, watching lightning lick the horizon.
Something in his chest felt too big for his ribs.
He thought of Basil's recorded voice, of Arjun's soft certainty, of Sara on her boat bringing light to the edge of endings.Of people he had never met — a woman in another city writing code by lamplight, a man in a workshop carving stories into wood, a journalist catching all of it in words.
He didn't know their names, not all of them, but he felt them like distant thunder — proof of a storm somewhere, moving things so the rain could find its way.
He raised his arms to the sky, letting water soak him.
"Alright," he said quietly. "I'll follow."
He didn't know yet that the path he'd chosen by following thunder would carry him through classrooms and canals and cities; that he would one day speak to crowds about labour rights and migration; that he would become the kind of man his brother had wanted to be but never had the time to.
For now, he was just a boy, standing in the rain, making a silent promise.
But promises, like thunder, have long echoes.
The next day, he arrived at class early.
On the board, before Arjun came, he wrote in shaky English:
TODAY'S TOPIC: RETURN.
When the teacher walked in, he paused, reading the word.
"Who wrote this?" he asked.
Arun lifted his hand.
Arjun's eyes softened, as if some old ache had just unfolded its fists.
"Good," he said. "Then you will help me teach it."
Outside, thunder rolled faintly, far away but coming closer — a reminder, a metronome, a herald of rain.
Arun smiled, gripped his chalk, and waited for the sky to speak.