Rains are here...

And we have rains in mumbai...earlier than predicted and bringing with it the gross misery of a city that is always underprepared for any amount of rains. I returned home last evening after a brief 30 min showers on the first day of monsoon and saw kids playing in waist high dirty water on the main road!!! and panicking drivers manoeuvering to avoid both kids and water.

I love rains!!back home our village is a picture of serenity after rains. Gleaming , freshly washed asphalt,the bushes and trees looking green and clean, and the occassional cicada and hoardes of frogs croaking from their hidden dens. Wonder what they do during summer?
Anyway..back to rains.. monsoon has this uncanny knack of pouring exactly when you are out on the road...on the way to school...during the lunch break and invariably, ten minutes before the school bell rings....
By the time we reach the last leg of out travel and walk home from the bus stop, it usually becomes a drizzle. I do not remember ever having opened an umbrella during a drizzle, esp when returning....there will be puddles to jump on...and clean the sandak slippers. We would stand under the bigger trees and wait for the wind to shake off the drops from the leaves.
On holidays we would pester amma for bhajji while watching the rain lashing outside and wash down the various fried vegetables with steaming chai. How i miss those days...

Of course i bought myself a new umbrella and a bright raincoat for V and mentally prepared for the rains. I even took V out for the first shower of monsoon...he inaugurated his raincoat and i did my umbrella...and we just stood savouring the rain.
Somehow the rains here seem to be a different animal altogether! I can't seem to associate all those pictures i portrayed earlier with rains here..I am worried about traffic snarls, trains getting delayed, about flooding on the roads, contigency plans ( TB thinks i am going paranoid- i tend to
agree most of the times). And what i saw yesterday seems to fit into my worries perfectly well.

At office we are back to spending the first twenty minutes dicussing travails of travelling in monsoon and sharing our daring experiences of just trying to get home....

Despite all this..i love rains and hope that someday i will live in a place that lets me savour rains as they are.