I have a lot of fond memories of monsoon. When I visited India as a kid, I'd come over summer vacations, and invariably my family would stay through the summer monsoon. When it rained, a cool damp breeze would circulate through my grandparents' fifth-floor apartment, settling in the plaster walls and the marble floor. Afterwards, my sister and I would wander out to the neighborhood garden, where the neon yellow and orange flowers gleamed wetly, like cars after a wash.
In "Shantaram," the writer recalls villagers greeting the monsoon with a celebration.
There are times in the past when I've thought of renting an auto and wandering around Delhi for a day in the rains, taking pictures and video. I haven't done it yet - maybe at some point I will. I'd get the skinny construction workers huddling under the flyovers, the schoolkids splashing merrily through the puddles, the frustrated-looking office workers holding newspapers over their heads and constantly checking their watches.
There's no denying that monsoon holds a strange place in the Indian heart. Without it, large swathes of this country would starve. A deficient monsoon can topple governments and bring villages to their knees. The monsoon's advent, every year, is meticulously tracked and breathlessly predicted by the India Meteorological Department, from their headquarters out on leafy Lodhi Road.
Theirs is the romantic picture of monsoon. The reality can also be infinitely harrowing.
It is a regular event, but one for which the municipal governments of India remain largely unprepared. In Mumbai, it's common to see government workers loosening massive drain covers at early signs of rain, but in Delhi, there are no such precautions. Every year, arterial highways flood, and Delhi's famous roundabouts turn into parking lots as police try, helplessly, to direct unmoving traffic.
By the time I walk from my house to the Metro station, ten minutes away, I've gotten slimy, greasy mud all over my shoes. The stores here sell special plastic shoes intended for monsoon season, since leather and fabric are swiftly defeated by the rising muck. Pools of fetid water collect everywhere, and in a display of classic Indian ingenuity, people will often build pathways through particularly flooded areas using loose bricks and pieces of board. Getting from Point A to Point B becomes an adventure, a little like an obstacle course.
Like any hardship, monsoon seems to bring out Delhi's (otherwise absent) collective spirit. I still remember one particularly bedraggled afternoon when I was standing on the street, thoroughly soaked and a good mile from home, when an elderly Sikh gentlemen stepped out and beckoned me into the shelter of the gurdwara next door. Another time, a passing cycle rickshaw detoured through a knee-high flood so he could transport me from an open street to the refuge of the nearby Subway.
I remember the auto driver who took me and another girl home, a trip that normally takes thirty minutes, but on that day took three hours due to flooding that had slowed traffic to a crawl. Unlike many others of his tribe, he didn't once complain, and when he finally left us at our destination, he didn't ask for a rupee above the price that appeared on his meter.
It's in moments of joint misery, oddly enough, that the unpredictable but near-boundless generosity of Indian people tends to appear. We are a frenetic, resource-strapped, and heterogeneous country, but I guess the ups and downs of monsoon are one thing we all have in common.
In "Shantaram," the writer recalls villagers greeting the monsoon with a celebration.
There are times in the past when I've thought of renting an auto and wandering around Delhi for a day in the rains, taking pictures and video. I haven't done it yet - maybe at some point I will. I'd get the skinny construction workers huddling under the flyovers, the schoolkids splashing merrily through the puddles, the frustrated-looking office workers holding newspapers over their heads and constantly checking their watches.
There's no denying that monsoon holds a strange place in the Indian heart. Without it, large swathes of this country would starve. A deficient monsoon can topple governments and bring villages to their knees. The monsoon's advent, every year, is meticulously tracked and breathlessly predicted by the India Meteorological Department, from their headquarters out on leafy Lodhi Road.
Theirs is the romantic picture of monsoon. The reality can also be infinitely harrowing.
It is a regular event, but one for which the municipal governments of India remain largely unprepared. In Mumbai, it's common to see government workers loosening massive drain covers at early signs of rain, but in Delhi, there are no such precautions. Every year, arterial highways flood, and Delhi's famous roundabouts turn into parking lots as police try, helplessly, to direct unmoving traffic.
By the time I walk from my house to the Metro station, ten minutes away, I've gotten slimy, greasy mud all over my shoes. The stores here sell special plastic shoes intended for monsoon season, since leather and fabric are swiftly defeated by the rising muck. Pools of fetid water collect everywhere, and in a display of classic Indian ingenuity, people will often build pathways through particularly flooded areas using loose bricks and pieces of board. Getting from Point A to Point B becomes an adventure, a little like an obstacle course.
Like any hardship, monsoon seems to bring out Delhi's (otherwise absent) collective spirit. I still remember one particularly bedraggled afternoon when I was standing on the street, thoroughly soaked and a good mile from home, when an elderly Sikh gentlemen stepped out and beckoned me into the shelter of the gurdwara next door. Another time, a passing cycle rickshaw detoured through a knee-high flood so he could transport me from an open street to the refuge of the nearby Subway.
I remember the auto driver who took me and another girl home, a trip that normally takes thirty minutes, but on that day took three hours due to flooding that had slowed traffic to a crawl. Unlike many others of his tribe, he didn't once complain, and when he finally left us at our destination, he didn't ask for a rupee above the price that appeared on his meter.
It's in moments of joint misery, oddly enough, that the unpredictable but near-boundless generosity of Indian people tends to appear. We are a frenetic, resource-strapped, and heterogeneous country, but I guess the ups and downs of monsoon are one thing we all have in common.
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