Running from the rain

(I wrote this for the paper I work with. I kinda liked it. Hence it finds its way here....)

I feel a bit like Mrs Macbeth, even though the weather is making me look a little more like one of the witches on that blasted heath that Shakespeare spoke of. My hair is frizzing beyond even the control of the stern ministrations of my hairdresser and the kitchen towels are not drying even after being double-spun in the machine. It is damp – nay, moist – within and without and the atmosphere hangs heavy in my very existence.

There’s something in the air tonight, oh, Lord! And that something is not just Phil Collins’ squeaky-smoky voice, but the monsoon. Like the good Mumbaikar that I am, I wait not-too-patiently and watch the sky from my bedroom window, but there has not been any tangible sign of that cloud that people chase from its first appearance off the Kerala coast to its descent over the mountains of the northeast. Nary a raindrop in sight, not in my sights, at least. When I am lying in my bed, spreadeagled to catch every waft of the coolth from the airconditioner, I hear an occasional drop bouncing off the chhajja and spring up to peer through the olive green sheers…nope, that is just the AC from upstairs dripping.

I am not really sure why I want the rains to arrive. Maybe it is because, with my usual stickler-ish-ness for keeping to schedule, it is supposed to, therefore it must. Maybe at some deeply existential level I am being my vaguely eco-aware self and realise that to get the crops growing and keep the farmers from dying the rain is essential. Maybe it is all a matter of that cycle of life thing that those animal folks sang of. Or maybe it is just that the season of hot and more hot is getting really boring and I need change.

Frankly, I am not a rain person. I hate the smell of sheets not drying and the green stuff that grows on slippers that got damp in a puddle. I hate the feel of dankness in the hot air and the stickiness of floors that never dry. The time that my small car actually floated a couple of inches off the road in many feet of dreadfully dirty water – that happened last year – is something that will always haunt me. It was not the fact that we were pretending to be a boat, but the fact that not having solid ground under me aggravated my vertigo and actually made me, who hates getting her feet dirty, long to splash in a few puddles.

For now, I do not have too much to worry about. The potholes are being filled, with promises if not with asphalt, the roads are being concretised – or at least dug up for the process – and my new car has been rust-proofed and Teflon-coated to minimise damage. In my world, things are all set for the onslaught of the monsoon. All I need is that first downpour. And while I wait for Nature to do its thing, I watch the drip from the airconditioning system above my desk in the office.