Wet and wild

Just this morning the newspapers reported on the weather with unusual coherence. The monsoon is not over yet, not until the 30th of September, the Met office insisted, and the papers detailed where it would be soggy over the next few weeks. Don’t put your raingear away yet, everyone was quoted, but most of Mumbai takes that lightly – after all, after July 26 last year and a few other days this year, no one believes the weather people any longer. And it was a case of Murphy and one of his strange laws once again. With hardly anyone carrying an umbrella, it poured and still continues to do so as I bash away at my keyboard.

I was caught in the first of the storms – a series of which has been crashing over the city – this morning, all my plans gone totally awry. I had just finished having my hair done and trimmed, a neatly glossy curtain that is so unlike my natural growth swishing wonderfully down to the middle of my back. I paid at the front desk, gave my stylist a hug thank you and was pushing open the heavy glass door to exit when the heavens started the drum section rolling. There was a violent blast of thunder, bookended by a few intense flashes of lightning that sparked weirdly across the pink-tinged darkened noon skies. Even as I hesitated moving more than a toe over the threshold, the clouds let go and it POURED. I retreated, wise and unwilling, especially after an hour or so having my head bashed about and anointed by various presumably very expensive unguents.

My stylist refused to let me go. You get wet, I don’t care, she obstinately stated, but you leave your hair here. (It was a strange morning, as you may understand.) Since my hair and the rest of me are sort of rather attached to each other, I decided to let discretion play the better part of ruining my ’do and waited. It took about ten minutes for the rain to let up enough for me to consider walking in it. But there was another small problem to deal with – since no one believed weather reports, no one had brought along an umbrella! We scrounged around and I finally was lent a brolly by one of the staff, who knew me well enough to know that I would return it post haste. I sloshed my way to my car and started the drive back to work, returning the umbrella.

Of course, as with all things Murphy, when we drove away from the salon, the sun was shining brightly with nary a cloud in the sky.