Hate, Love, Rain

I hated rain. 

During my growth years, the onset of the “monsoon season” in India equalled the start of the academic year. Those were dark, grey days, literally and otherwise. I did not like school. Not one bit. The education dished out was not meant for me. The soul was burdened with the weight of woe and the school bag. Umbrellas were a luxury and the raincoats were designed for Cindrella's dwarves rather than a chunky, fast growing lad. My school took “mass education” literally – 5,000 brats hummering away made it difficult to stand out in class and recognised as a budding genius. Unless you sat on the first bench and kept raising your hand all the time. All in all the combination of rain and a curriculum designed to turn the student into a drivelling, gibbering snorter made me wonder if Nietzsche actually had a point. 

The manic tremolo of raindrops on the awning over our windows at home is a sound I will never forget. It disturbed my sleep, my meals, my studies (such as they were) and was a background VFX that I can do without today.

Moving to man’s estate I finally got the chance to experience rain as a gift from the gods and not as a dam(p) nuisance. My love affair with rain was kindled in Paris, where the autumn rain helped me effortlessly dish out maudlin musings and robust food and wine pairings. London was wet through and through but the vision of huge Union Jack umbrellas, beers and scotch eggs in a cosy tavern just north of Swiss Cottage, vast swathes of rolling green fields glistening in the rain and hot tea in a village called Little Slaughter with lightning and thunder for company as the world stood still are some of my best memories of the city and the country. And West Africa is a byword for rain of course – it probably needs a separate post!

Unlike Paris and London and to an extent Amsterdam, Mumbai in the rain is not the best of places to be out of home in. The mud, the smells, the overflowing drains and on select days the tide in the affairs of (Mumbai) man, which when taken at the flood, leads to your shoes and trousers (and more) getting damaged beyond repair! Not to mention water-borne illnesses! Do not for a moment get trapped by lurid descriptions of roasted corn / spicy snacks / hot tea outside in the rain. These are mere projections of a weak mind.

The infamous Mumbai floods of 2005 convinced me it was time to move to a place where “rain” is chimeric – heard of in song and lore perhaps but rarely seen. Dubai happened fortuitously but with my usual impeccable sense of timing I landed there on its Annual Rain Day - when I believe the camels are decked up and let loose to frolic in the drops of rain while the natives roll up the windows of their Rollses – and was stuck at the airport for 3 hours.

However in the decade and a half since I have basked in sunshine through the year, with the memories of grey monsoons during school days like an old wadi in the desert - lifeless and dry. How I now crave for a flood to fill up that wadi! (for a glimpse of dubai in the rain check out my 1st ever blog post: dubai rain

I love rain. I am at my happiest when indoors with a cup of the steaming and a good thick novel (no Bookers please) at hand, while the heavens above open up. There is something about the sound of rain, pelting down on rooftops, tippering on leaves, that makes me sigh with a sense of what could have been, of unfulfilled desires and wishes (unkind folk who suggest that the sigh is really a wheeze are wet behind the ears). The occasional lightning and thunder are value additions which uplift the soul. And sometimes scare the beejezus out of me due to volume and intensity.

At these times, I like to think that the Guv’nor is up and about with a wee dram, about to tell me one of his lawyer stories.

And I am sure he would agree with the revered sage Baxicius’ advice on how to handle rain: Better to be wet inside and dry outside.