The monsoon is finally here – and I couldn’t be happier.
There is no better feeling than when, after sweltering through ground-breaking heat for months, you wake up to the sound of a thundershower and hear raindrops beating against your window in an incessant rhythm that sings its way into your very soul. The sweet sound of the season’s first rain, heralding the start of the monsoon, is the best kind of morning alarm, and not surprisingly it had me tumbling out of bed and running to the balcony so that I could witness it first-hand.
The monsoon is always something that I look forward to (don’t come at me with talk of clogged roads; I simply refuse to let mundane concerns ruin the romance of the rains) but this year it came as a particular relief. Temperatures had been touching the mid to high forties with a distressing regularity and leaving home had become akin to stepping into a hot oven which wouldn’t just bake you but burn you to a crisp. So, the ten-degree drop in temperature that the rains brought was particularly welcome.
As I stood on my balcony, inhaling the magical smell of petrichor (the scent the dry earth emits when rain hits it for the first time) and luxuriating in the feel of raindrops dropping on my head, I found myself transported to monsoons past and all the fun times I had had during them.
My earliest memories of childhood revolve around the monsoon. I remember my mother stripping me down to my frilly white underwear and letting me loose on my verandah as the rain came pouring down. She would clog the drains that led off it with pieces of cloth so that the water accumulated until it was up to shins. The giddy excitement I felt as I skidding around in the few inches of water, screaming in delight, lives on in my head so many decades later. As does my searing disappointment when she finally decided that I had had enough and dragged me away to dry me off. Left to myself, I would have wallowed in my private ‘swimming pool’ forever.
Perhaps it was this that triggered my love of the monsoon. But, for as long as my memory goes back, I have adored this time of the year. The magic of the horizon as it turns grey, then black; the majestic sound of thunder; the lightning flashes that electrify the sky; the gentle pitter-patter of raindrops; the freshly-washed look of the trees after a shower; I love it all.
And then, there are the food memories. Monsoon in our household always meant hot steaming bowls of khichdi with oodles of desi ghee floating on top, paired with a mustard oil-enhanced alu chokha for lunch. Tea would be accompanied by assorted pakoras, sprinkled with a generous dusting of chaat masala. And sometimes, as a special treat, we would get spicy shingaras (no, there are nothing like north Indian samosas) with syrupy sweet crisp jilipis (no, nothing like the north Indian jalebis) hot from the kadhai of the local mishti dokan.
So, I guess it’s no surprise that my first instinct when it rains is to deep fry. Unfortunately, pakoras are not my forte so I end up making Mumbai-style kanda bhajiya which my husband loves. If I am feeling lazy then I just take out a packet of frozen alu tikkis from the freezer and shallow fry them, slathering them with green chutney or maybe even ketchup. The masala tea of my childhood has been replaced by a steaming hot cappuccino, courtesy my new-fangled coffee machine. The only childhood monsoon staple that has survived into my adulthood is the khichdi, which I rustle up the moment the sky threatens rain.
Alas, it’s no longer possible to strip down to my underwear and wallow in my self-made ‘swimming pool’ as I did as a child (mustn’t frighten the neighbours!). But I do the next best thing. I leave my umbrella behind and head out to the neighbourhood park for a walk, revelling in the feel of raindrops enveloping me in their misty beauty. I walk until I am soaked to the skin.
There’s no mom any more to summon me back and dry me off. So, with great reluctance, I force myself to turn back home – until the next shower beckons.
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