Singin' in the Rain. Not always a glorious feelin'

It’s been raining wild cats and wild dogs in Bangalore (note the repetition in the use of the word 'wild' for deeper emphasis). The weather is beautiful though the joyfully water logged roads have given many of us insomniac nights. All the same, there are delightful scenes all around. Vehicles have been instructed to append rafts to ‘swim’ into action in dire circumstances. It is fairly common to see auto-rickshaws half immersed in water and the driver emerging to gasp for breath every five minutes. The passengers generally have no clue where they are, because with water filling the roads up to the Toposphere, all of these roads anyway look the same. So they do not come out for oxygen so frequently. They instead practice Pranayama and go to sleep on the rear seats.

Apart from the exuberance shown by vehicles upon getting floatation devices attached, I have noticed a special glee on the faces of kids around my house. On interrogation, one of them attributed it to fascinating home assignments and remarkable project works. Something about the sardonic grin on his face compelled the aspiring detective inside me to decide to cross examine the matter further. A candid chat over filter kapi with the unsuspecting mother revealed that the physically well endowed kid, reporting nirvana in the absorbing home assignments and extraordinary project works; had actually not been going to school for an elongated week owing to discomfort caused to his skin by rain water. A sudden cry from the other room and the mother told me that he has been enriching himself with a variety of video games, because he thinks they are making him sharper and more intellectual. I looked at the pride on the mother’s face, remembered all the times I had conned my mother into believing that my stomach ache could give aliens fed on deep fried cabbage pakodas a complex, and bunked school; and decided to leave her with her innocent bliss and her monstrous child. My heart wouldn’t allow that so easily so I walked with her to the kid’s room and pinched his cheeks to a deep scarlet while he looked at me and his mother at dizzying speeds alternately, before busying himself in the video game requiring rapid shooting of funny looking pink ducks appearing out of blue colored bushes. “This will give him information about wild life, because it involves looking at various body parts of the ducks in detail,” she beamed and I decided to scoot before I killed the kid.

Meanwhile, the rains are still playing hopscotch with us. The vertically challenged amongst us (yeah, you can read ‘me’ here) are thinking of installing leg extensions for ease of hydro-pedo-gliding , and till then getting plastic jeans to save our hapless bottoms. It is not a happy feeling when you find yourself swallowed in muddy frothy liquid concoction every time you dress up in your best business formals and head to office with a delightful swing in your step. And it is also not a happy thought when your maid washes your clothes everyday and hangs it out to dry in the balcony just after you leave for work, with rains hammering on your ill fated umbrella. Yeah, she has been living in this city all her life. Yeah, she can see clouds relieving themselves upon us. Yeah, she knows rain water (or any kind of water for that matter) can wet the clothes. Yeah, she also seems to be sensible enough to realize that clothes can be dried inside the house under the fan. Yeah, she sees that by now almost everything in my wardrobe is hanging out there on the pretext of drying. And yeah, she tries to express interest when I explain to her why watery weather necessitates clothes not be put outside. Yet she insists on doing it everyday. All I can say is that she is weird in a rather inexplicable way.

Needless to say, all the garments I have ever possessed are out there on an exhibition, twice as wet of what the washing made of them; and the day is drawing close when I will have to borrow her clothes to wear.