Nothing at all.

Someone once told me that there was a word that could fix everything. “Jellywurbleponkyboo... at least, that’s not it, but it’s quite close,” he said. “And when you find it, all your troubles are over.”
The doctor said he had something that sounded like ‘asparagus’. Asparagus. I always confuse it with broccoli somehow. I think I mixed them up in a recipe once. It tasted funny, but I think that was because the person I was talking about emptied a packet of baking powder in it when I wasn’t looking.
Anyway, that was a long time ago.
And the coffee was getting cold. I hate black coffee. But another person I once knew used to say it was about the only thing that wasn’t killing you slowly in this world. Turned out he was lying. But I still walk all the way to The White Swan and take my old seat by the window and order a cup every third Saturday of the month at six. It helps keep the monsoons away.
And when the rains come down anyway, little sparkling crystals of fire sprayed across the cracked frosted glass that used to have two painted swans arching their fragile necks across the frame of the doorway once and is now as empty as the old hat stand beside it, I ask for an ash tray and pour the last little bit of the coffee into the ashes, watching it swirl around the grey lumps that wither away at its touch.
I’ve always hated the rain. Ever since I was little and my sister would run into the fields shrieking with laughter at the first sight of those huge grey masses of clouds rumbling in, over the green horizon. Her hair would fly out, jet black swinging braids, behind her and catch the first few invisible drops of rain that fell from the heavens before she reached the scarecrow that stood in the middle of the cotton fields.
My hair was always an aching dull brown.
And the skies are always grey now. Even when everyone else says they’re blue. I can always tell. If you look through the clear glass of a window or at a silvery mirror opposite your window, the blue fades to dull grey and that’s the real colour of the sky. Not what you see. Grey like the smoke that used to rise up from the jute mill that they built over our farmland.
I’ve always loved that colour. It used to mean ‘change’ before but now it means ‘life’. Because I don’t want any change anymore. That used to be all my life was about once. When I woke up in the morning and looked out the little circular window at the last dull stars and before I fell asleep on the damp little pillow that always smelt of mustard oil, I used to pray, not to God because I didn’t think that was allowed, but to the world, in general, “let everything change… change… change.”
And one day everything did.
And I thanked someone and set out to find the perfect word that would fix everything. Only, I haven’t found it yet. I used to think it didn’t really exist. Not for real. But now I know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting for someone who really needs it. I don’t.
Because I’ve never really loved the rain.
And “jellywurbleponkyboo” will always be that perfect word for me. Because it didn’t change anything either. It only made change something I didn’t need anymore. Like my old wooden rocking horse. One day I’d got up and chopped it up for firewood because suddenly I knew that I had no need for it.
It made me realize the same thing about change. My father did, I mean. When he died a few hours after saying that to me.
It was just another of those things you like holding on to. That I liked holding on to. Only they don’t really mean anything. Nothing does, really.
Nothing at all.