Rajiv sat by his window, staring at the monsoon clouds gathering above the city. The smell of wet earth rose from the streets below, mingling with the aroma of filter coffee on his table. His laptop screen glowed blank before him, the cursor blinking with quiet impatience. He was a writer by profession, but today he felt like a hollow shell of the man he used to be. Words evaded him. Ideas teased him like shadows at dusk. Nothing was tangible. Nothing felt alive.
He opened his leather-bound notebook and scribbled a single word in neat cursive: Brainstorm.
It was a word he had always admired. His English teacher in sixth grade had written it on the blackboard in giant chalk letters and explained that brainstorming was a way to unlock ideas hidden deep within the folds of one’s mind, like pulling treasures from a sunken shipwreck.
Rajiv closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, trying to pull up sunken ships from his own ocean. Memories flickered: his father reading him detective novels by the lamp when power cuts blanketed their village; his mother weaving jasmine garlands for the temple, her fingers fast and sure; his sister dancing under the mango tree during sudden rain; and his old school friend Aditya, who taught him to dream with stubborn defiance even when their village mocked them for wanting to study literature instead of engineering.
He smiled. That was it. Brainstorming was not just thinking hard. It was feeling hard.
He opened his eyes and began writing rapidly.
In another part of the city, Tanvi sat in her glass-walled office, the floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panorama of monsoon-darkened skyscrapers. Her team of five sat before her, laptops open, styluses twirling between fingers, coffee cups half-drunk. As Creative Director at India’s top advertising agency, she was expected to conjure brilliance at will.
But today, the room was silent. Heavy with unspoken frustration.
They had to create a campaign for a new NGO that rehabilitated street children through music. But every slogan felt fake, every storyboard cliché.
Finally, Tanvi stood up. “Close your laptops,” she said softly.
Her team glanced up, confused. She walked to the whiteboard and wrote:
B R A I N S T O R M
“Forget the brief for a minute,” she said, her voice firm yet nurturing. “Let’s talk. What is the first thing you think of when you see children playing music on the street?”
“Hope,” said Aditi, the youngest team member.
“Freedom,” said Jay, tapping his stylus on the table.
“Pain,” said Priya, frowning. “Because they have no home.”
“Joy,” said Karan. “They play with all their heart, as if nothing else exists.”
Tanvi underlined each word. Then she wrote them again in large letters, encircling them in bright orange marker.
“See,” she said, pointing at the board. “Brainstorming is not about searching for words. It is about searching for truth. What truth can we tell here, that no one has told before?”
Aditi’s eyes welled up as she whispered, “That they are more than street kids. They are untrained prodigies whose music carries stories of their ancestors, their hunger, their dreams.”
Tanvi’s eyes gleamed. “That’s the truth. That’s the campaign.”
In a university lecture hall in Delhi, Professor Kumar wrote Brainstorm in big black marker on the smart board. His students looked up sleepily from their laptops. The afternoon was humid; the fans buzzed with tired monotony.
“Who can tell me what brainstorm means?” he asked.
“It’s… um… when we think of ideas quickly?” said Shikha, her voice uncertain.
“Yes. But it is also much more.” He paused, turning to the window where neem trees swayed in the breeze. “To brainstorm is to allow the mind to rain freely. To pour without judgement. It is to let the winds of possibility uproot the stagnant trees of routine. During a brainstorm, you are not allowed to say ‘this is silly’ or ‘this won’t work’. Everything is allowed. Because the silliest idea often holds the seed of genius.”
He paused, seeing his students smile faintly, their eyes awake now.
“Do you know,” he continued, “that the first brainstorm that led to electric light bulbs was ridiculed for years? That the brainstorm behind flying machines was dismissed as fantasy? That the brainstorm behind the internet was mocked as childish science fiction?”
He smiled at their stunned silence.
“So today,” he said softly, “let us brainstorm about your life. If you could be anything, without fear of failure or society’s ridicule, what would you be?”
One by one, hands rose. Writer. Astronaut. Wildlife filmmaker. Stand-up comedian. Poet. Human rights lawyer. Someone whispered, “Happy.”
Professor Kumar underlined the last word thrice. Happy.
“That is the ultimate brainstorm,” he said. “The one idea worth chasing all your life.”
Back at his window, Rajiv wrote late into the evening, as thunder rolled and the aroma of rain drifted into his room. He wrote about an old banyan tree that had seen kingdoms rise and fall, and about an orphan boy who sat under it every evening with a battered guitar, playing tunes he could not name. He wrote about a village girl who painted on mud walls with burnt matchsticks because she couldn’t afford brushes, and about a bus conductor who wrote poetry on ticket scraps.
The story flowed like monsoon streams down cracked village roads.
Read more – الكنز الذي لا يُرى
When he finally leaned back, he realised what his teacher meant long ago.
Brainstorming was not an exercise. It was a way of life.
It was the courage to allow chaos to swirl within, to embrace messy possibilities without editing them in fear. It was rain and thunder and lightning. It was soil cracking open to let seeds breathe. It was the mind remembering it is not a prisoner of logic, but a creator of worlds.
Rajiv closed his notebook and sipped his cold coffee with a quiet smile. Outside, the monsoon clouds cleared to reveal a saffron dusk sky. The brainstorm had passed, leaving behind a river of words that would flow into his novel, his life, and perhaps into someone else’s dreams tomorrow.
