The first time

I was there the first time it happened.

The smell had been in the air for a while. It was almost as if the atmosphere had had a little too much of it, the type when you know you are a tad too drunk, but not yet lost a sense of control of the amazing feeling you are having. Oh yes, the air around my house was drunk on moisture, no puns intended. The weather was pleasantly threatening, the type which makes you want to go the tallest terrace around, spread your arms, and feel the elements, feel alive.

And then it arrived, without a warning. With all the obvious signs, hovering around for days and not just hours, you would assume the surprise element to be smaller, compared to what one witnessed at the fury with which it lashed on one’s windows. For a moment you are mesmerized, in another, you open the windows, smell in the earthy fragrance rising out of acres of land parched over weeks of scorching heat, and let the water drench you with one burst of westerly winds. It seems that it is not only living species who wait for rains to arrive in Mumbai, for when it does, it feels like such a well coordinated symphony, you are inclined to agree that God must have smiled when he/she saw all his denizens take in the first Mumbai shower. Yes, the first rain of Mumbai can elicit quite a poetic reaction, even amidst the non-littérateur among us. 

Now, monsoons arrive every year, and each year, I was at some place or the other to witness the first rainfall of the season. But somehow, nowhere has it seemed as perfectly scripted as in Mumbai. Maybe it is to do with the fact that there are no pre-monsoon showers seen here over the course of April and May when other parts of India do. Maybe it is to do with the fact that summer becomes so unbearably hot by the end of May that it almost feels like divine redemption when it finally rains.

And when it does, boy does it pour...like it’s the last time it’ll ever do!