MONSOON MUSINGS - 4

I sat down to write this about rains in the mountains as I now stay in Dehradun.

But I am in Mumbai for a few days on business and for last couple of days it has been raining a bit. But this morning, I woke up to the headlines, ‘Heavy Rains in Mumbai’, ‘Low-lying areas water-logged’, western and central railway services hit’ etc. aren’t they too familiar headlines for people who stay in Mumbai, year after year? It looks like the water logging scenario hasn’t changed much.

The schools have been a given holiday today. So, I was looking at the small garden and the big courtyard of this apartment conglomerate where I am staying to see whether any child has to come out to play in the rain. No not one.

OK. Why should I be disappointed? How much the children of today have to cope up with? The subjects and contents to be studied itself are far more than 30 years back. Then you have homework, dance practice, music practice all cutting down into playtime. Finally you get an extra holiday and what are you expected to do? Certainly not going out in the rain and get caught with a nasty cold, which in today’s environment can get all the encouragement to become pneumonia or typhoid. And we all have new computer games, some sent by daddies abroad, waiting to be tried out.

Yet, I couldn’t help rewind 30 years and back then, on a rainy day we with our children would come out from the apartment and just run around in courtyard even as heavy rain lashed out at us.

A few years further back during my first stint in Mumbai, travelling from Mumbai to Kerala during monsoon was a wonderful experience, especially when you go by shared taxis. This was before the luxury buses or Konkan railway had started operating. So, usually we start off at about 6 or 7 am with 5 persons plus driver to Mangalore. Today, the same travel takes about 16 hours but those days with the longer routes, it used to take about 24 hrs. As we were passing through some 20 or 25 km before Dharwad, it started raining very heavily. After struggling for about 10 minutes, the driver stopped the car.

‘We have to wait for some time. Can’t see the road.’ I think we were in some mini forest and it was dark all around and was raining cats and dogs and other possible animals.

We had missed dinner already since were late due to two consecutive flat tyres. The driver had told us that we will have a quick bite at Dharwad.

Then we found that there was a house on the side of the road, more like a thatched room, where someone lit an oil lamp and came out. Our driver picked up an umbrella and went to him.

The driver came back with the information that there was some bandh going on in Dharwad and we would not get anything to eat. Since we will have to anyway spend at least half an hour there, the man had suggested that his lady could cook some rice, and he had some left over sambar, buttermilk and some pickle.

We were all game as we were really hungry.

There was one nervous passenger in the car who was getting married the next day and he had to catch the train that starts from Mangalore at 9 in the morning and we were as such barely making it there on time.

Anyway, we went to the house. The pouring rain has not spared the insides of the house either. However we had hot rice, sambar and buttermilk and under the circumstances the food tasted great!

By the time we finished, the rain also had eased a bit and we proceeded Mangalorewards.

To cut the story short, we reached just about 5 minutes before the train left. We wished the guy to be married all the best and thanked the taxi driver profusely. I was also going by the same train to Kerala.

It is still raining. Information came through the phone that the office is closed for the day – rather it did not open for the day.

So I asked Shish, ‘ would you like to come with me to play in the rain?’

Shish: Oh, what an age to go out and play in the rain! Are you mad?’