The Mumbai Monsoon

For the past three and half years of my life, I have thoroughly dreaded this awful time of year, the Mumbai monsoon. A normal 1.5 hour car or auto ride to office in the morning, takes 2.5 hours and let's not even get started on how you plan to go back home in the evening. The "high and mighty" attitude of the auto and cab-wallahs are legendary during the rains. You're left to beg, borrow and even steal rides from unsuspecting commuters.

The entire city comes to a standstill. Vehicles crawl along at snail's pace and trains just give up. Despite these difficulties, Mumbaikars never fail to upload a million dreamy pictures of the rains on their social media accounts. Each romanticized picture of the rain, would drive me mad. "What is wrong with these people?", I would wonder.

Middle-aged aunties "forget" to open their umbrellas in the middle of a torrential downpour, the sabzi mandi-wallahs are busy haggling prices with the neighbourhood aunties and the samosa-vadapav wallah is busy selling his freshly fried dose of jaundice, to hungrier than usual customers, who believe in "Thoda chai peete hai, aur baarish ka mazaa lete hai, garma garam kaanda aur batata pakode ke saath". It's business as usual, while the city literally melts into the sewers.

For someone who carries an umbrella even on a hot sunny day (I'm a Malayalee from Chennai, hence the umbrella, don't judge me), I find it very odd to find aunties, uncles and children taking slow lazy walks in the torrential downpour. The odd aunty and uncle even invest their time in scolding me, for accidentally poking them in the eye with my half broken umbrella. "Abhi baarish thodi hai, bandh karo chaate ko. Paagal ladki!", they yell.

Last November, I decided to take a break from the routine office rigamarole and began working from home. I now enjoy the "beauty" of the rains, by sitting in front of my half french window. I sip on my cup of warm morning coffee and watch the world go by. Excited children, morning walkers and Yogaholics, splash around in the puddles of muddy brown water, formed inside a gigantic rectangular park right opposite my apartment. Their energy levels somehow spike up during the rains. The walkers, walk even faster on the slippery red tiled park pavement, the Yogaholics laugh even louder at the end of their body-wriggling session and the kids are just jumping around, splashing water into everyone's eyes.

I suppose there is something magical about the rains, despite it's numerous pitfalls. The cobwebs in your mind begin to lift, you begin to appreciate the confines of your cozy home a little more and perhaps the poet in you comes to the fore. 

Mumbai rains, you have to experience it, to understand the madness. It's more dramatic than the saas-bahu soaps, more tragic than Romeo and Juliet's love story and more magical than Tinker Bell's fairy dust.