Rain Rain!!! Please come soon

When you are sitting in air conditioned office, sipping coffee and complaining the control room to increase the temperature, one hardly realizes the heat outside. Since yesterday was an off and I was out of places to visit, I stayed at home just to figure out how hot it was in Mumbai. It was so hot that I actually wished it was a working day. Damn! What was I thinking? It’s a sin to even think of working on a holiday.

Mumbai, while rating on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest (because it is the lowest), weather wise must be rated 1. It’s never cold here, so you can’t show off your winter wear. It’s too hot and sticky here, so you can’t even stick your head out in the balcony, else you’ll need to take a shower again. It does not rain, but it pours. It pours like a bucket full of water has been off loaded. I hate rains in Mumbai (except for the part that I wait for them eagerly, since the roads get flooded and we get an off).

But last night I was missing rains. I would prefer rains to a hot and sticky day. When it rains in Mumbai, it rains cats and dogs. In fact, in mornings I spend half an hour removing cats and dogs from the clothes I had left outside for drying. It was during this exercise that I also observed that wet clothes are a lot heavier. Perhaps that’s why rescuers find it difficult to lift people who drown in water and get their clothes wet.

Around midnight, the sky starts thundering.

I once had an old uncle who believed that the thundering sky was when God of Gods had a bad stomach. Immediately, we would ask him, “If that was what thunder was, what was lightening?”He never gave us a satisfactory answer to this question.

As the thunder grows louder I can scarcely hear my roommate snoring. I mean, I could still feel the room’s walls shivering…just that her snoring was inaudible. In the initial days of my hostel life I would really sit up in the middle of the night and wonder which one of my roommates is snoring. I didn’t have to wait long, for during one of my “I-am-a-crusader-of-truth” moments, I closed one of my roommate’s mouth and nose for five minutes…and I could still hear the snoring. Finally, I had identified the culprit – it was the other roommate.

Getting back to the rain, I also like to play in the rain, especially when you know that your mom will take care of the dirty clothes. But as I grew and had to live on my own, I preferred not to go in the garden while it rained but to stay in the balcony and enjoy the view (Though I don’t remember when have I ever done that?).

I guess the point I am trying to make here is, even though rains in Mumbai floods the city, ruins your clothes, decays your shoes, brings small- creepy insects with it, spreads infection, and makes life hell, I would still prefer it to hot- sticky- stinky day.