Monsoon

The bright yellow sun, which plays with the sequins of the saris and sends arrows of heat between the dusty green leaves of coconut trees is gone. The azure heavens have changed in to a dull pale grey of a disappointing English summer. It is hot and humid. The piles of rubbish in the corner, the sleeping dogs on the pavements,  the sweaty young workers on their chai break,  the cooing pigeons, the  fragrance of the white flowers on the street know that the rain is coming; they want it to come to stop this sweet, sticky, smelly burden of a wait.  The first drop mixes with the workers’ beaded sweat, brings hope of coolness, and a light  fresh breeze.

Then a wall of water comes down. The best thing to do is to go under a shoe repairman’s shack or under a tree.  The dog and the workers accompany you to the shelter. Pigeons become fluffy in the rain, the white flowers are crushed under the raindrops. You wait until you cannot get wetter and start walking to wherever you wanted to reach. It is better to walk since the roads are ‘waterlogged’ and the traffic is as heavy as a wet blanket. 

Nothing moves. The rickshaws have rolled down their little plastic curtains. Their drivers sitting on one leg showing a very dirty left sole are calm, they have waited for Godot quite often, they know this is going to be a long journey.   Their passengers bury themselves in their phones. If you are stuck in a car you are surrounded by the chaos of rickshaws wheezing, red busses ‘bot, bot, boting’ their horns, Tempos swaying with their loads -always a man or two sitting at the back looking unbelievably tired and fed up, vehicle doors opening and a crimson red spit jetting on the street with a 100 % precision.  Wet saris, wet schoolgirls with double hair braids in khaki school uniforms, wet dogs, wet goats, wet cauliflower man pushing his cart, wet blob of hijabs, wet Muslim caps and beards whirl around the car.  Entire wet families on one motorbike including their shopping, babies sleeping in mothers’ arms, older ones sitting in front of their dad the rider converse about daily chores. Water runs in small torrential rivers, everything on wheels honks.  A heartbreaking ghazal fills the car radio, you shiver with the A.C., worn out windscreen wipers give out a periodic swiping sound to the right, to the left, to the right again. Your eyes get tired of this wetness, this buzz, this crowd of people trying to get somewhere like you.  Have read the papers, every single news item about life in India, about celebrities you haven’t heard of before, had inner monologues with your boss and wife and outer monologues with the driver.  Now you want a cup of tea, stretch your legs, want to shout at or attack the man who is pushing in the tinniest gap between your car and the pavement. You wish you were somewhere else.

Beyond the crowd around you, on the pavements, the usual bamboo stick and a blue tarpaulin of a house of the street dwellers metamorphose into little cubes. Every side of the cube is wrapped with plastic covers. Whatever they have gathered as a rag, plastic and waterproof covers a gap, in the evenings smoke comes out of a make shift hole functioning as a chimney. Children in their birthday suits, a thread wrapped around their belly wash their body in the bucketing rain. Their mothers dripping beads of water look at the rain  the edge of the saris pulled down to their forehead, squatting on wet pavement.   A man uses the street wall to pee openly. The traffic does not move.

 Across the road ‘waiting workers’ sit solidly on their bare feet. When it rains this heavy, there is little hope for work. But they still wait. May be some one will come and pick them to flush their drains or sewage pipes clogged with floating one flip of a lost flop, old coconut husks, plastic bags, broken oil burners and palm tree leaves.

  The women workers sit in their bright saris dripping wet waiting until it is dark and time to leave. The streetlights are on now; when they reach home they will make a fire and gather their children gnawing stale Parle biscuits.  On her small fire in a small pot she will dice some potatoes, onions and some indiscriminate vegetables they will eat before falling asleep.

  You roll down the car window for a bit of fresh air. The smell of the burning fire mixes with fried food, wet clothes, warm rainwater and strong incense.   After two hours in the car, listening to the tapping of the water on the roof you wonder why on earth some one thought ‘Monsoon’ was a romantic name for a clothes shop…