Love, Loss, Loneliness and Longing

The advent of the monsoons

Year: late 1998

Sometime between the end of August and the beginning of sweet September, the premonsoon showers were building like a storm across the western sky over the city.

Walking towards the frame of tinted glass that bordered the lower side of the great hall, Arinvan saw that the sky was filled with rain. It was a great joy for him to see the desolate sky rumbling with the potential possibility of torrential rain. White fluffy clouds turned ominously dark and heavenly sparks flew everywhere. The entire expanse of the beautiful Hussain Sagar Lake was shrouded in a cold mist. Tesser Towers looked several shades darker due to the complete absence of sunlight in the skies. It started to drizzle at first and the next instant the rain clouds got angry, very angry, and brought down their heavenly content all over the hopeless land like a great typhoon. The inky lake was no longer there; a swirling mass of white mist has now taken its place and how. And before you know it, the skies once again dropped sheets of rain that hit the window panes fast and furiously, just before breaking them. It poured and poured for an hour and then some more.

Arinvan struggled to locate the monolithic Buddha statue standing upright amid the lake’s bestial, dark-gray waters from where he stood in the fifth-floor east-facing lobby of his office building. it was invisible. From where it stood, it offered a panoramic view of the entire D-shaped lake, the necklace road in the foreground, and the Tank Bund road stretching somewhere far away in the deepening haze of dark monsoons. and sinister.

Soon it will be a deluge everywhere. The rain gods were not finished yet. They wanted more. But for Arinvan it was a welcome change; never mind facing a bit of difficulty on the streets, riding the flooded roads and all. The promise of rain and cold winds far outweighs any difficulties that almost always come with it. So welcome home, dear rain. Please don’t leave soon!

I slid the slatted window back onto its ledge. The torrential rain and howling winds soaked much of my shirt and the tops of my pants. Realizing my mistake of opening the window to look outside, I rushed to the bathroom to use the manual hot air blower to dry my wet shirt first. Then, walking back to my cabin, I waited for my colleague Manpreet Singh to arrive. I started to feel a bit apprehensive about how he was going to drive (my red Honda) home when my schedule ended at 3:00 pm I was already starving; lunch was high on my schedule. I was so looking forward to it. Today, I arrived early at 7am and by 3pm I was expecting Manpreet to open the glass door to the room and gallop in and begin his tour of the cemetery until 11pm according to our scheduled time.

Think of him and he’s right there, dripping with rainwater, wet to the skin and bone, his thick boots slippery a little; His shoes looked unusually jet black that day, probably due to the rain and even shining like stainless steel. He trudged toward our beloved boardwalk: our watering hole. His tightly woven brown Pagdi draped around his head giving him an anonymous conqueror look also got damp from the Monsoon rain.

“Ek mint… main abhi ayaa (I’ll be in a bit)” Manpreet announced suddenly and walked away from our shared cubicle.

“That ha…” I said and instantly craned my head to see him run into the men’s room!

Perhaps you felt like using the hot air dryer to dry your shirt and pants. One can do just that by standing at an embarrassing angle directly under the dryer with the waist up to the inch-long rectangular mouth of the hot air dryer. Beware! The hot air dryer is a felt touch appliance. You need to keep the hold up, hold it steady, without moving too much so the damn thing keeps blowing hot air onto your clothes. The thing, when done with patience, can be very helpful to you if your pants are wet and you want them to be blow-dried (whatever that means!), plus of course it can be continued whenever you want dry your wet hands. Caution: Do this carefully when no one is in the bathroom, as you could start someone off with your act!

Jaadu Hai Tera Hello Jaadu

It continued to rain for just over an hour. Another hour of rain and the city streets will disappear! In fact, they may already have! Excellent! How nice! Instead of roads, we’ll have long, winding pools everywhere. That thoughtful!

Driving around town becomes a bit of an adventure in itself when it comes to wading through knee-deep filthy rainwater and your wheels playfully slamming into hidden puddles. Although traffic was light that day in September 1998, one doesn’t really have the advantage of not getting splashed with mud during the monsoons, does one? Well, even that is welcome! Anything for the monsoons.

The monsoon season is one of the most anticipated seasonal changes of the year. Everyone receives it with resigned joy and amazement. One gets to experience a special kind of affinity for his brilliant fury: one of Mother Nature herself, his bountiful grace. The monsoon rains make a huge difference in the lives of all living things in this part of the world. It is a time of plenty: not only of abundant water, but also of expectations of life-sustaining good times to come with water in constant supply.

Somehow, the sweet smell of rain seeped in through the open windows someone had opened at the end of the great hall, a few feet from where we were sitting. Revanthi Rakani was humming the newly released song from the Hindi film Ghulam: “Jaadu hai tera hi jaadu, jo mere dil pe chaahne lagaa” and she was working on her computer. Working with Revanthi and Raufia Begum before they finally moved to the Satyam Technology Center in Badaourpaly was one of the best experiences of our lives.

I went home drenched that day with monsoon rains all over me, even my black wallet in my back pocket was soaked and the notes inside turned to mush. Sometimes, thanks to the monsoon rains, I like everything wet; in fact, I don’t care at all! I came home all wet. I loved.

I love the rain, I do.