The advent of the monsoons
Year: late 1998
Sometime between the end of August and the beginning of sweet September, the pre-monsoon rains were building up into a storm across the city’s western sky.
Walking toward the frame of tinted windows that bordered the lower side of the great hall, Arinvan saw that the sky was full of rain. It was a great joy for him to see the desolate sky rumbling with the potential possibility of torrential rain. White fluffy clouds turned menacingly dark and heavenly sparks flew everywhere. The entire expanse of the beautiful Hussain Sagar Lake was enveloped in a cold mist. Tesser Towers looked several shades darker due to the complete absence of sunlight in the skies. It began to drizzle at first and the next instant the rain clouds got angry, very angry, and brought down their heavenly contents over the whole desperate land like a great typhoon. The inky-dark lake was no longer there; a swirling mass of white mist has taken its place now and how. And before you know it, the heavens were once again throwing sheets of rain that hit the windowpanes fast and furiously, just before they shattered. It spilled and spilled for an hour and then some more.
Arinvan struggled to locate the monolithic statue of the Buddha standing upright amidst the beastly dark gray waters of the lake from where he stood in the lobby on the east side of the fifth floor of his office building. it was invisible. From where it stood, it offered a panoramic view of the entire D-shaped lake, the Collar Road in the foreground and the Tank Bund Road stretching somewhere far away in the deepening haze of dark monsoons and casualties.
Soon it will be a deluge everywhere. The rain gods were not done yet. They wanted more. But for Arinvan it was a welcome change; never mind facing a bit of difficulty on the streets, walking through the flooded roads and all. The promise of rain and cold winds far outweighs any difficulties that it almost always entails. So welcome home, dear rain. Please don’t go soon!
I slid the slatted window back onto its shelf. The torrential rain and howling winds soaked much of my shirt and the top of my pants. Realizing my mistake of opening the window to look outside, I hurried to the bathroom to use the hot air hand blower to dry my wet shirt first. Then, walking back to my hut, I waited for my colleague Manpreet Singh to arrive. I started to feel a bit apprehensive about how he was going to drive (my red Honda) home when my schedule ended at 3:00 pm I was already starving; lunch was high on my agenda. I was so looking forward to doing it. Today, I arrived early at 7am and by 3pm I was expecting Manpreet to open the glass door to the living room and gallop in and start his tour of the cemetery until 11pm as per our scheduled time.
Think of him and he is right there, dripping with rainwater, wet to skin and bone, his thick boots a little slippery; His shoes looked unusually jet black that day, probably due to the rain and even shining like stainless steel. He trudged toward our beloved boardwalk: our watering hole. His tightly woven brown Pagdi wrapped around his head that gave him an anonymous conqueror look also got wet from the Monsoon rain.
“Ek mint… main abhi ayaa (I’ll be there in a bit)” Manpreet suddenly announced and walked away from our shared cubicle.
“That ha…” I said and instantly craned my head to see him running into the men’s room!
Maybe you felt like using the hot air dryer to dry your shirt and pants. One can do exactly that by standing at an embarrassing angle directly under the dryer with one’s waist raised up to the inch-long rectangular mouth of the hot-air dryer. Beware! The hot air dryer is a felt-touch apparatus. You need to keep the wait up, keep it steady, not moving too much so the damn thing keeps blowing hot air on your clothes. The thing, when done with patience, can be very helpful to you if your pants are wet and you want them blow-dried (whatever that means!), plus of course it can be followed up whenever you want dry your wet hands. Caution: Do this carefully when no one is in the bathroom, as you could cause someone to start your act!
Jaadu Hai Tera Hello Jaadu
It kept raining for a little over an hour. Another hour of rain and the city streets will be gone! In fact, they may already have! Great! How nice! Instead of roads, we’ll have long, meandering pools everywhere. That thoughtful!
Driving around town becomes a bit of an adventure in itself when it comes to wading through knee-deep dirty rainwater and playfully banging your wheels into hidden puddles. Even though traffic was light on that day in September 1998, you don’t really have the advantage of not getting splashed with mud during the monsoons, do you? Well, even that is welcome! Anything for the monsoons.
The monsoon season is one of the most anticipated seasonal changes of the year. Everyone greets him with resigned joy and wonder. One gets to experience a special kind of affinity for his brilliant fury: one of Mother Nature’s own, his bountiful grace. The monsoon rains make a big difference to the lives of all living things in this part of the world. It is a time of abundance: not only abundant water, but also expectations of life-sustaining good times to come with water in constant supply.
Somehow the sweet smell of rain seeped through the open windows someone opened at the far end of the great hall, a few feet from where we were sitting. Revanthi Rakani was humming the newly released song from the Hindi movie Ghulam: “Jaadu hai tera hi jaadu, jo mere dil pe chaahne lagaa” and she was working on her computer. Working with Revanthi and Raufia Begum before they finally moved to the Satyam Technology Center in Badaourpaly was one of the best experiences of our lives.
That day I went home drenched with monsoon rains on me, even my black wallet in my back pocket was drenched and the notes inside turned to mush. Sometimes, thanks to the monsoon rains, I like everything wet; in fact, I don’t care at all! I came home all wet. I loved.
I love the rain, I do.