Walls

Today a serious storm has descended. At six a.m. the windows above my bed flew open. Before I could secure them, it had begun to rain, a sudden torrent cascading from the towering monsoon sky. I leapt out of bed to batten down the hatches, imagining that by eight I would be able to go to Gol Park for my Bengali lesson, though from the very start I had an intuition that something significant was going on up in the stratosphere. I have seen a few violent storms before, most notably hurricane Andrew in New Orleans, and it becomes clear why in America they give them names; a severe storm does take...