Monsoon Hits Mumbai

Raining in Mumbai

A couple stand on the pavement ready to cross, the man in flip flops, well fitted jeans and a checkered shirt, unbuttoned at the sleeves to reveal brown arms and a watch. His wife wears a peacock blue sari with bangles. There is a relentless stream of obstacles; open sided rickshaws that stink of diesel as they pass, weaving between taxis with the screech of a horn blast. The man steps forward with a smile, from behind a slow cyclist intercepts- dusty, flashing silver in the sun. His right trouser leg has been rolled up past the ankle to avoid the chain oil. Two skeletal cows are parked in the road, their ribs pressed up against thick skin, chewing without thought. Rivers of dirt flow round their hooves. A fly lands on a leathery ear, it twitches; the fly takes off, circles and then lands on the ear again. A stubbly old man sits comfortably cross legged between two big shoulder blades, sharp white bristles against black skin, watching with red eyes.

A fruit seller squats on a bend, sheltering under a tree. He does not cry out; instead he hides from the heat, letting the crowds see for themselves the stacked boxes of under ripe mangoes, bananas and green coconuts. More flies gather, covering the bananas in swarms and making wounds in the peel. A child stands with fat feet in her underwear and a grubby vest. She plays with her hair and looks at the road, then at the fruit trader, then back at the road; men and woman squeezed side saddle onto motorbikes, a juddering truck that shakes as the driver changes gear, brightly painted and noisy, dropping hay from its high sides; polluting. The day gets hotter, the coconuts sell more than the mangoes and bananas. The stones below the boxes become sticky from the milk.

Clouds brood silently, stealthily; unnoticed above the noise of the traffic. It hurts to look up at the sky- piercing with light, too painful to follow the outline of what may or may not be cloud cover, possibly just a fractured smudge on a sore retina, totally colourless. Crows and vultures orbit, incomprehendible black specks, black against dirty white. It gets darker. Mumbai is under shadow, waiting to burst. And then it begins to rain; slowly at first and then quickly heavy, the smells of India become real, alive, awoken from the gutters and kicked up into the air, chakra phool, hara dhaniya, kachra, naaga keshar, smelly rain that rises up from the terracota earth; foreign, sultry, overpowering.

The monsoon gets hevier, the clouds gets darker. Rickshaws slice through the rain leaving behind shadows of drizle, hanging in the air for a second and then collapsing in on themselves, chassing the put-put motors in waves. People rush, throwing tarpaulins, scrambling, ducking into safety. They sit in food bars in rows, smoking cigarettes and drinking sugary tea, spilling out onto the sheltered steps, looking past the corregated overhangs out onto the street. Water flows down in front of them. Brown puddles throth angrily as they flood into each other. A transformation has taken place- the road is now perfect from curb to curb, rising silently in uniform flatness as the the sky roars, the potholes and cracks at the edges hidden below the surface.

This is the opening of the wet season. Three months of rain lie ahead, by early September the clouds should have retreated for the dry winter. Nothing is certain anymore, however. The July rains of 2005 were the heaviest in 30 years, causing flash floods on the over crowded streets of Mumbai. By August the death toll had risen to over 1000. 2006 saw an unexpectedly early start in May, resulting in chaos throughout the whole country. The rain has the power to give life or death. On one hand it comes as a blessing, the hot air cries out for relief as the temperature climbs. On the other it brings destruction, washing out the roads and everything on them, merciless in its pace. Disease flourishes in the humidity, snakes and rats are swept out of bursting sewers. There’s a Salvation Army tucked away behind Maharashtra Street, more of a hospital than a hostel. Travelers lie stacked on bunk beds, catnapping, gazing; the shower-cum-squat toilet is a terrible mess. They give out free curd in big metal bowls. It tastes of cleanliness, a generous lump of white perfection. This is quite possibly, in my desperate state of mind at least, the nicest thing anybody has ever done to anyone.