My oldest memory of the monsoon rains.

One of my oldest memories of the rainy season also happens to be one of the few memories I have of my Dad. Strange... how memories are. Apparently as one grows older, they say one can recall the past more vividly than what happened a couple of months ago. Yet here I am with a handful of memories of my Dad - memories that I have, and not what someone has related to me - and as much as I want to cling to these few memories.... most very mundane, yet much-treasured, I find that over the years they have been kind of fading. I guess if I shared them, talked about them, they would remain in my recall. But like I said, these memories are very mundane - a snatch from a regular day... very valuable to me, yes. Like there's the time my Dad acceded to my persistent pleas to ride with him up front in our new Fiat car. I was, perhaps five years old at the time. There were no seat belts for safety in those years (early seventies in India). Well, as luck would have it, there was an errant motorist, which forced my Dad to slam on the brakes. Of course, I hit my chin on the dashboard, a shade too harshly. Daddy was mad, I think in retrospect at himself, for giving in to my whim. He parked the car, and put me in the backseat. See what I mean... nothing out of the ordinary - who would find it remotely interesting... but it is oh-so-valuable to me; and I am gradually forgetting these snippets from my life... with my Dad.

Coming to that uneventful rainy day... Well it was kind of eventful... because the rains had stalled the city of Bombay (it was Bombay then!). A four lane busy street and the rocky beach separated our apartment building from the Arabian Sea. That morning when I woke up, and peered down from the balcony of our seventh floor flat, there were buses, and cars standing in the middle of what was the street when I went to bed the previous night. It seemed like the Arabian Sea had decided to stay while on an overnight visit, and was practically knocking at the gates of our building. The geography of  Bombay, (okay, Mumbai), both natural and built, has made it conducive for the city to... get clogged, not with humans (which is a 24/7/365 thing), but with the contents of the South West monsoon clouds. These waters have been capable of  locking down the metropolis and rendering it immobile (remember the floods of 2005). Well, that bleary morning of June of '72 (perhaps) I was having more success in getting the sleep out of my eyes than the city in getting water out of its streets. I ran down seven flights of stairs (I never had the patience to wait for the elevator) deaf to my Mom's verbal reminders (orders) to brush my teeth, et al. The water level almost reached up to my four feet height. The water level at our gate was just a few inches, and then it was several inches of slush. I edged as close to the gate as I could without getting my feet muddy. I wanted to get in the water, but I had no wish to navigate the gooey slush. From my vantage point, I saw the driver of a stranded double-decker BEST bus throwing up his hands in despair; taxi drivers trying to maneuver their vehicles through the the standing water to, I don't know, somewhere. And, then I saw my Dad, his pants folded up to his knees, he was guiding the stranded cars into our building, and the building next to ours. I think this was before his body began to display evidence of the cancer ravaging his cells; for I remember him standing a few feet away from the BEST bus, his lush black hair (not the post-chemo wisps) neatly-combed in his usual back-brush, his erect six feet two muscular physique in an off-white bush shirt (short-sleeved cotton shirt) dominating the waterlogged street. I remember standing there with my index finger being nibbled on by my teeth, and watching the cars, taxis, the double-decker, and the people. It wasn't raining but the people who had flocked from the nearby buildings to 'watch' the show had those ugly black umbrellas in their hands. The sky was overcast, but with a light grey and the sun made an appearance doused in translucent white every now and then.Most importantly, I remember my Dad..

Needless to say, this is one of my more treasured monsoon memories.

Whoosh.... thud

When it rains like it does when the monsoons are 'normal' it is akin to the heavens opening up a reservoir. And with all the grey eclipsing the sun for weeks together, new lives begin to thrive - both flora and fauna. Fauna are, of course, the insects and bugs of all shapes and all miniature sizes. The flora is the algae that grows like a lush translucent (not to forget the slimy) green carpet on anything that is smooth, especially concrete courtyards and steps. Back in my childhood home, our entire front yard had been converted from green to concrete just to avoid the muddy swamp it became during the rains. This, of course, made it ideal for the algae. Walking from the front door to the gate, about 20-25 feet, was a daily challenge because of the high probability of slipping. Every Sunday morning our maid would douse the more slick areas with bleaching powder to arrest the algal growth and for some friction for our shoes.When I think of the rain, and our algae-covered yard, I think of my dog, Cleo.

We had two dogs - Sweetie and Cleo. Sweetie was the older one - very dignified, suave, smart, confident and a holier-than-thou take on life. Cleo was just the opposite, she was a klutz, a shade (actually several shades) dumb, with the saddest and most pleading eyes possible; and being around Sweetie.... well it was too much to live up to. Coming to the algae-coated concrete front yard and Cleo:

Every time a stray cow walked past our gate when Cleo was sitting on the grill-enclosed front verandah looking at the gate, she would go into a barking frenzy. And if the grill was open, she would rush to the gate in a simultaneity of speed (that would put greyhounds to shame) and woofs. The poor stray cow would try to hobble away as fast as her hoofs could carry it. Cleo would still be relentless - she would stick her head out through the gate and bark out, "I see you -  I see you". Now picture this - a rain-soaked morning, a concrete yard made slick with algae, an open grill on the front verandah (normally kept open in the morning hours with the maid at work, and for the dogs to walk around the yard), Cleo sitting on the front verandah her head between her paws looking at the gate, and... a stray cow dares (ahem!) to saunter past our gate, and my doggie's ever-watchful eyes. No sooner does Cleo spot the cow that she springs into action - her barking frenzy begins before she flings her paws onto the algae-covered yard at full throttle. And then...... there she goes... her body inclined at 45 degrees to the ground sliding down the slippery yard at the same speed, her bark half-arrested, and then she hits the gate - thud! Fortunately her little brain has reflexes she doesn't, so her head turns to avoid her velvety nose from coming into violent contact with the gate.This whoosh-thud act gets repeated several times during the monsoons year after year. To Cleo's credit, the stray cows always run away. Sometimes when I am there I have managed to close the grill microseconds before she shoots out. But mostly, before I can finish shouting "Cleo- don't.." she has already hit the gate! And then she walks back with this grin on her face as though she's telling me," aren't I doing a good job of keeping the bovine away?" I tell her" Don't kid yourself - the cows return every morning". If she could do the humanspeak, she would have in all possibility said, "And, I chase them away every time." Sweetie who watches all this with half an eye open and no other muscle as much twitching, would sometimes look at me as though saying, "Seriously!"

When one has lived and grown up in India, the monsoons, the puddles, the flooding, the slush...that precipitation becomes an ubiquitous part of you. When the summer is at its sweltering worst, you yearn for the rains, when the monsoons arrive, you savor the feel of those crisp raindrops on your skin, you enjoy huddling under that umbrella, and that uncomfortable raincoat. But soon enough you begin to curse the slush, the incessant pouring, the clothes that never seem to be dry enough, the temporary flooding of streets and the temporary insanity that ensues. And when the clouds pour forth more than what they were supposed to, you bemoan the washing away of villages, the loss of  life, land, and property. The rains, the monsoons are as much an inherent part of an Indian as its unfathomable diversity.

There are these memories I have of those rainy days - June, July, August and September... I hope to recall them as I walk through this puddle of life - this blog.