In a swimming pool, a little, frail girl embarrassed by my curious looks explained: 'Sooo cold it is... that's why I am shivering. I'm not scared of the deep.'
It was not sooo cold of course but hearing that on a June morning in Delhi was music to my ears.
My friend from Shimla laughs teasingly on the phone. 'And here it's so beautiful that I wish I were a poet. The mornings are winterish, afternoons springlike and evenings rainy. Three seasons in a day. Add to them those drifting islands of mist, and the melancholic mausam you would talk about is complete.'
I listen and sigh. I know the weather report from the hills is meant to make me realise the utter poverty of my existence in the plains. It's in good humour, of course, but I feel worse because I consider it true.
Rains in the mountains stir memories.
"My best moments? When we would sit at the window with a Sherlock Holmes (okay... Jane Austen) book in hand; and we would look at the endless rains while a Lata Mangeshkar song (O sajna barkha bahar aayee...) played on the radio and ma would be making chai and pakoras in the kitchen." That's my sister's ode to rains.
A friend of mine from university days, who was suffering from excessive poetic aches, would call it Kabhi Kabhi Ka Mausam. Its nickname 3-KM also meant that it deserved at least a 3-kilometer long walk.
This mysterious and a tad sad weather was best spent taking long, purposeless walks on the lonely, winding lanes full of Pinewoods and Deodars; or, sitting in the smoky restaurants for endless hours waiting for the rain to take a breather.
'I love rains because ever since I can remember it has been my everyday duty to water our pretty big kitchen garden. When it rains I sit quietly in the verandah and thank the raingods that we live here!'
Sentiments of a college-going girl who grew up in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, which due to its peculiar geographical location is among the top few rainiest places in India. The town set up by the British sits right at the feet of the majestic and imposing Dhauladhar range of Himalayas. So peculiar is this location that from July to September every time you emerge out of Dharamshala's 20-odd km periphery, you are surprised to find it's not raining.
Dharamshala has more rains in certain seasons than Cherrapunji in Meghalaya (literally meaning cloud's abode), which used to be one of the rainiest zones in the country. The monsoon winds don't hang around for too long in Cherrapunji nowadays because of the vanishing forests.
"But sometimes mama doesn't let us go out," says my 6-year-old nephew in sheer exasperation. He hates umbrellas and raincoats and loves running wildly in rains with as few clothes as any respectable neighbourhood would permit.
I have known people in my village who could foretell rains by the bountiful signals mother nature provides: restless wanderings of monitor lizards, screaming fowls and quails, noisy and quarrelsome goats and sheep, sparrows rolling in the mud, and even peculiar shades of wild plants.
I still remember a few rainy folk songs that my grandmother would happily sing for us during the rains. Her favorite season, however, was when the rain and sun came out together. This magical combo mostly also brought with itself one of nature's most beautiful creations: the rainbow.
'Rains mean romance. Period,' says another rain lover who after years of cowardice and predicament dared to ask his collegemate out for a cup of tea on one fiercely raining day. They took shelter in a restaurant called Ashiana in Shimla and are living together happily ever since.
It's been raining quite frequently in Kolkata this season. A dear chatfriend whom I have never seen tells me excitedly about how the rain came just in time to wet her while she was on her way back home. 'Call now, else I would pray no rains come Delhi's way,' she warns, and I think how enviable is her age!
Like all the best things that only belong to the wretched time zone called the past, that Kabhi Kabhi Ka Mausam also sounds unreal now. You have to have an extra sense to notice the subtle nuances of the weather in the cacophonic metropolitan life.
Rains, lately anyway, evoke images of misery and chaos in cities.
The Indian media led by television news with its propensity for sensationalism at times makes the great Indian monsoon look like some evil monster.
It has a lot to do with the media's predominantly city-based target audiences for whom rain indeed brings more suffering than solace.
But that's still a depressing and snobbish view of the magical, whimsical and unpredictable monsoon that tickles our imagination, fills our rivers, sustains our flora and fauna, and nourishes our farms.
This lopsided view also ignores the great Indian farmer who longs for a good monsoon so that he can fill our plate with all those grains and pulses that we eat without much gratitude.
The second week of June nears. It's hot and humid in Delhi. It will take a couple of weeks before the monsoon winds--which anyway are not particularly fond of the capital-- arrive.
I am reminded of two of my favorite poets who come from different continents and lived in different centuries. The wandering Japanese haiku master Issa writes (though it's impossible to translate him): Crossing the hanging bridge/Singing a song/Spring rain.
And the recluse and self-exiled poetess Emily Dickinson in one of her letters to a friend says: 'It's a sorrowful morning... The wind blows and it rains; into each life some rain must fall...'
One joyous, one gloomy. But both spellbound by rains.
first published:June 13, 2006, 10:38 ISTlast updated:June 13, 2006, 10:38 IST
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A couple of days after the monsoon winds kissed the Kerala coastline it rained in Delhi. The unexpected showers came with a dust storm and dipped the mercury by a cool 5-degree Celsius.
In a swimming pool, a little, frail girl embarrassed by my curious looks explained: 'Sooo cold it is... that's why I am shivering. I'm not scared of the deep.'
It was not sooo cold of course but hearing that on a June morning in Delhi was music to my ears.
My friend from Shimla laughs teasingly on the phone. 'And here it's so beautiful that I wish I were a poet. The mornings are winterish, afternoons springlike and evenings rainy. Three seasons in a day. Add to them those drifting islands of mist, and the melancholic mausam you would talk about is complete.'
I listen and sigh. I know the weather report from the hills is meant to make me realise the utter poverty of my existence in the plains. It's in good humour, of course, but I feel worse because I consider it true.
Rains in the mountains stir memories.
"My best moments? When we would sit at the window with a Sherlock Holmes (okay... Jane Austen) book in hand; and we would look at the endless rains while a Lata Mangeshkar song (O sajna barkha bahar aayee...) played on the radio and ma would be making chai and pakoras in the kitchen." That's my sister's ode to rains.
A friend of mine from university days, who was suffering from excessive poetic aches, would call it Kabhi Kabhi Ka Mausam. Its nickname 3-KM also meant that it deserved at least a 3-kilometer long walk.
This mysterious and a tad sad weather was best spent taking long, purposeless walks on the lonely, winding lanes full of Pinewoods and Deodars; or, sitting in the smoky restaurants for endless hours waiting for the rain to take a breather.
'I love rains because ever since I can remember it has been my everyday duty to water our pretty big kitchen garden. When it rains I sit quietly in the verandah and thank the raingods that we live here!'
Sentiments of a college-going girl who grew up in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, which due to its peculiar geographical location is among the top few rainiest places in India. The town set up by the British sits right at the feet of the majestic and imposing Dhauladhar range of Himalayas. So peculiar is this location that from July to September every time you emerge out of Dharamshala's 20-odd km periphery, you are surprised to find it's not raining.
Dharamshala has more rains in certain seasons than Cherrapunji in Meghalaya (literally meaning cloud's abode), which used to be one of the rainiest zones in the country. The monsoon winds don't hang around for too long in Cherrapunji nowadays because of the vanishing forests.
"But sometimes mama doesn't let us go out," says my 6-year-old nephew in sheer exasperation. He hates umbrellas and raincoats and loves running wildly in rains with as few clothes as any respectable neighbourhood would permit.
I have known people in my village who could foretell rains by the bountiful signals mother nature provides: restless wanderings of monitor lizards, screaming fowls and quails, noisy and quarrelsome goats and sheep, sparrows rolling in the mud, and even peculiar shades of wild plants.
I still remember a few rainy folk songs that my grandmother would happily sing for us during the rains. Her favorite season, however, was when the rain and sun came out together. This magical combo mostly also brought with itself one of nature's most beautiful creations: the rainbow.
'Rains mean romance. Period,' says another rain lover who after years of cowardice and predicament dared to ask his collegemate out for a cup of tea on one fiercely raining day. They took shelter in a restaurant called Ashiana in Shimla and are living together happily ever since.
It's been raining quite frequently in Kolkata this season. A dear chatfriend whom I have never seen tells me excitedly about how the rain came just in time to wet her while she was on her way back home. 'Call now, else I would pray no rains come Delhi's way,' she warns, and I think how enviable is her age!
Like all the best things that only belong to the wretched time zone called the past, that Kabhi Kabhi Ka Mausam also sounds unreal now. You have to have an extra sense to notice the subtle nuances of the weather in the cacophonic metropolitan life.
Rains, lately anyway, evoke images of misery and chaos in cities.
The Indian media led by television news with its propensity for sensationalism at times makes the great Indian monsoon look like some evil monster.
It has a lot to do with the media's predominantly city-based target audiences for whom rain indeed brings more suffering than solace.
But that's still a depressing and snobbish view of the magical, whimsical and unpredictable monsoon that tickles our imagination, fills our rivers, sustains our flora and fauna, and nourishes our farms.
This lopsided view also ignores the great Indian farmer who longs for a good monsoon so that he can fill our plate with all those grains and pulses that we eat without much gratitude.
The second week of June nears. It's hot and humid in Delhi. It will take a couple of weeks before the monsoon winds--which anyway are not particularly fond of the capital-- arrive.
I am reminded of two of my favorite poets who come from different continents and lived in different centuries. The wandering Japanese haiku master Issa writes (though it's impossible to translate him): Crossing the hanging bridge/Singing a song/Spring rain.
And the recluse and self-exiled poetess Emily Dickinson in one of her letters to a friend says: 'It's a sorrowful morning... The wind blows and it rains; into each life some rain must fall...'
One joyous, one gloomy. But both spellbound by rains.
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