Nerve Endings Firing Away

It has happened yet again. It happens each year with alarming regularity and I can predict it in spite of being thousands of miles away. Life in Mumbai brought to a screeching halt — proclaims every city rag after yet another round of lashing rains.

The monsoons arrive each year as a welcome relief from the increasingly sweltering summer and then stay on for four long months like an unwelcome guest, exasperating every tired nerve in our drenched bodies. We all love rains but the limits of your affection are truly stretched if you live in a city not built for rains. Apart from the poetic splashing of waves alongside Marine Drive or Gateway of India, the rest of the city is a swamp, wearing you down. The rains arrive stealthily each monsoon, rarely giving you a dose of its seemingly unintentional fury. It gathers strength slowly, doling out regular doses of big fat droplets. Then suddenly like an uncomfortable pause in a horror movie, everything pauses in mid-action and you stare at the sky expecting the next big flood. But nothing happens for at least a week and you almost wish for a deluge, when in fact you are hoping for the monsoon to resume normal activity.

It usually happens when you have the all-important meeting at office, or the first important submission in college, or that week in school when you most-hated Hindi teacher is on a sick leave. Coincidentally all elements of nature combine — the high tide in the Arabian Sea and the full onslaught of the monsoon in mid-season — wreck havoc. The first casualty is the trains; belonging almost to the Victorian era, the lifeline of the city is snapped. Schools and colleges close their doors immediately sending delighted kids home. Offices grudgingly let their employees go home when the things are at its worst. These are the testing times for the city, as everyone seems to be heading home in the same direction at the same time. Tempers are running high and the rain does little to cool them. Water is rising slowly and you soon are waist deep in the middle of an arterial road.

If you are already home, you learn to forget expecting family and friends to return at their normal hours and instead hope that they are in a safe place where they can spend the night. The safe places are usually the confines of a crowded bus or the stuffy backseat of a taxi. Of course, the ones with tiny ounces of adventurism dare to walk the ten odd miles home. Walk is the wrong term when you are really wading in water of varying depths from dubious sources. The water quality is soon confirmed by some floating shit; it’s a wonder how an epidemic is miles away. You pass some delighted urchins swimming in the water or some enterprising soul who has brought out a canoe (where does he use his canoe otherwise?).

It also can lead to some hilarious incidents. My friend calls me up on my cell from a crowded bus during one such downpour, telling me that it will be another couple of hours until she can make it. After hanging up, I suddenly remember that I can ask her to come to my friends’ place instead to make it easier. The number she calls from is still stored, probably the cell phone of the person next to her. I call up and say “err; hello, can I talk to the person who just called me?” Almost a grunt, he asks me, “Which one, the one in the red t-shirt or the one with the green dress?” I am taken aback, I usually don’t remember the color of the clothes I wear, how the hell can I know the color of my friend’s clothes whom I haven’t seen today. I take a wild guess. “Green dress?” I reply, knowing that she might not want to be seen outside in red. Thankfully, my guess was right. She told me later that at least 4-5 people had asked for his phone, most of them girls so he couldn’t refuse.

Such is the tale of a Mumbai monsoon’s fury.