Early morning when I left for office, I was wondering how much do I have to drench in sweat in search of a rick. The air was humid, the sky was bright blue laden with thick broken clouds and the earth looked yellow in the scorching sun.
However the scenario was entirely different in the evening.
Suddenly the earth looked grey and the distant skyscrapers turned fuzzy over a veil of rain.
Yes, it rained in Mumbai today-the first pre-monsoon showers. I was happy that my return home will be cooler and pleasant. But the story was entirely different and on my way back home I realised that Mumbai was dishevelled.
First I had struggle to get a rick. The moment it rains in Mumbai, the auto rickshaws and the taxis stop taking passengers. Somehow there is no logic for the same. I was standing on the middle of road, and empty autos were simply nodding their heads and zooming past over the pool of water. Somehow the arrogance of the auto / taxi drivers in Mumbai is directly proportional to the amount of rain we get. Most annoying is the fact that half of the vehicles will simply brush past the pool of water near to you the moment they find you in a crisp ironed shirt. Somehow the economics of not taking passengers on rainy day doesn’t fit my understanding since it is only water that is raining and not money. I wonder whats in store with the onset of the monsoons.
After desperately dancing on the streets in search of an auto I managed to board on-Lucky me!
However the next hurdle was coming soon, the wrath of traffic. My rick was moving like a bullock cart. Most of the vehicles were standing with half submerged tyres and the people on two wheelers were simply doing a balancing act to meander their ways ahead. Interestingly the smoke spewed by other vehicles looked whiter than earlier days. I asked my autowala, ‘ Why does the smoke look so white today?’. He gave me a stupendous reply, ‘ woh toh hamesha white hota hai, aap barish hui hai na, usliye zyada white dikh raha hai (its always white, today it rained hence it looks whiter). I smiled at myself and plugged my headphone. Most of the radio stations were blabbering about the rains. Some were trying to showcase the beauty of the rains and some were listing down the agonies of the mumbaikars due to the short spell. Some local trains were cancelled, people had to ply multiple busses to reach their places, the traffic was congested, some areas were flooded and many more.
On my bullock cart ride, I happened to observe some interesting facets of Mumbai whenever I was stationed near a traffic signal.On one side there was a huge conglomeration of street children under the shade of the flyover and on the other hand there were families traveling in shelled air-conditioned Mercedes and the children of the family waving hands at the on goers. Both were sheltered-one by wealth and the other by poverty. Further, I found some middle aged aunties and uncles trying to dry off the rain from their clothes and on the contrary some young couples enjoying the arrival of the romantic season by drenching on the acid water and hugging each other tightly on their two wheelers- a true picture of perceptional disparity.
A lot of thoughts were emerging with the cool breeze by the time I reached home. Somehow I felt, today i am not drenched in sweat, rather its rainwater-after all god spitted and filled my conditioned mind with emotions of a new season.