Romancing the rain

Mumbai has been unbearably hot and muggy over the past few days. An occasional rain shower has done nothing to alleviate the Mumbaikar’s weather woes, though it has given him – or her, since I am a her, as you will know by now – something to grouch about, as happens every year until the temperature drops a little and people get a new crib to whinge on. It gets worse every time, they complain, wiping the sweat from their commuting-weary brows and waving the afternoon tabloid in front of their faces in a vain attempt to cool off a little. And then they complain about complaining, saying that it is all very well to complain, but that they need more to their arid – for a short while longer only – lives than to complain.

Sigh.

To cut the endless story short, it rained last night. Just as Father and I were clearing up after dinner and Small Cat was vociferously reminding us that it was time to play, not to fritter away time in the kitchen, there was the ominous rumble of thunder. It had been growling on and off all evening, ever since I had walked in the door hot, sweating and vaguely bad tempered because of the guilt of being later than I normally am in getting home, but Father had not believed me and I dismissed it as being too far away to bother about closing windows and making sure no water got in the cracks. And when I told Small Cat about the possible storm, she looked at me, burped and went back to chasing a dried pinto bean around the living room.

But by the time I was ready for bed, the storm had arrived overhead. The momentary brightness of the sky that we saw at irregular intervals had evolved into being strong flashes of brilliant lightning that streaked downwards, seeming to hit buildings, the surface of the sea and the hills just beyond where we lived. Hot on the heels of the lightning came the thunder, the crashes rolling into each other even as they drummed like the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic and Zakir Hussain at his frenzied best combined with Vikku Vinayakram and Rick Allen (the Def Leppard drummer, for those who don’t know) doing their thing in a particularly passionate moment in a full stage concert. The rain battered down on the fibre-board awning above the windows and the wind rattled the glass of the windows and whipped the plants into endlessly mad whirls of foliage.

I lay in bed watching the storm through the sheers. The sage green of the net gave the bursts of brightness beyond them an unearthly hue, as if nature was being sucked into the sky to form a homogenous blend of colour and leaves that shone with a strange, eerie light. Every now and then I would close my eyes as lightning blasted through the air, often with a startling crack and the thunder pealed bass over the hills and into the sea. At some stage I got up, opened the windows a wee bit and took a deep breath. There was a wonderful freshness to the air, wet earth and cool wind, the acid tinge of water from the canal across the highway and the sharpness of electricity singing the trees.

And in the morning, the world was clean and new. Gulmohar petals clung to the cars downstairs, while the yellow of cassia flowers littered the awnings below mine. Puddles glimmered in the brilliance of the morning sun and Small Cat stood on tiptoe on the air-conditioner to peer out of the grill at the pigeon shaking out wet feathers on the roof of the apartment under us. It was almost time for the rainy season and the world was starting to get ready for it.