For Once, Let the Rains Never Stop

What happens when it rains torrentially?

The answer depends entirely on where the rain catches you. Rain is never the same rain for everyone. It is a nuisance for one person, a memory for another, a danger for a third, and sometimes, if life is generous, it can be a small private experience. When rain fills Mumbai’s reservoirs, people breathe easier, because water cuts may disappear.

In Mumbai, rain does not merely fall. It arrives with an opinion. It enters railway stations, office shoes, taxi meters, WhatsApp groups, civic complaints, and sentimental monsoon songs. It does not ask whether you are ready. It begins, and soon the city is rearranged.

If you are travelling by Mumbai local train, an umbrella is not really an umbrella. In heavy rain, it is almost useless against water. The rain comes sideways, from below, from the elbow of the person next to you, from the platform roof, from the gap between train and platform. But the umbrella still has a purpose. It becomes a walking stick, a crowd management device, a mild weapon, and a declaration of intent. You use it to enter the compartment, protect your small territory among seventy-two determined citizens, and get out before the train leaves with half your body inside.

If you are driving, rain becomes suspense. You enter a lane thinking you know it, but in ten minutes the road becomes a brown, silent river. The car ahead stops. The car behind honks, not because it can move, but because honking is the last form of hope available to a trapped driver. The wipers work sincerely, with little effect. You switch off the engine, or keep it running nervously. Some old song begins on the radio, the kind you liked but never had time to hear properly. A voice from college enters without permission. Outside, water rises around the tyres. Inside, memory rises faster.

If you are walking, romance must wait. Walking through knee-deep water in Mumbai requires complete attention. You look for the next safe step. You remember every warning about open manholes. You watch the person ahead and decide whether to trust his judgement. You hold your bag high, your phone higher, and your dignity somewhere behind you. Every step is a negotiation with the invisible city beneath the visible one. A bus conductor shouts the destination as if the bus were a ship.

Then there are journeys where rain becomes theatre. On the Deccan Queen from Pune to Mumbai, the ghats turn almost excessively green. Waterfalls appear where yesterday there were only rocks. If you are lucky, truly lucky, you get a seat in the restaurant car with that famous omelette toast in front of you. It tastes of steel plates, hot tea, impatient waiters, old travel, and the belief that the world is still manageable. Across the aisle, you see a face from another lifetime. An old friend appears between Lonavala and Karjat. For a moment you are travelling from now to then.

Airports are less poetic, but they have their own rain drama. The flight is delayed, then further delayed, then “awaiting operational clearance,” which is aviation language that now everybody knows. People become angry, then performatively calm, then hungry. The coffee queue becomes longer than some domestic routes. After twenty minutes, the paper cup feels earned. Around you, everyone is stranded. The businessman, tourist, family with sleepy children, and student going abroad for the first time all look at the departure board with the same helpless respect.

On a beach near Canacona in Goa, rain becomes elemental. You should not be walking there, but you do to show of your bravery. The sea is no longer decorative. It is muscular, restless, almost angry. The waves arrive like arguments. The clouds move fast, dark and low, as if carrying news from Kerala to Mumbai in a hurry. Coconut trees bend but do not surrender. Your umbrella, if you have one, is a foolish urban object in a landscape with no use for manners.

And then there is Marine Drive, Mumbai’s Queen’s Necklace. The sea rises and throws itself against the tetrapods with unnecessary drama. You find refuge at Pizza by the Bay. A table near the window becomes a prize. Outside, Marine Drive blurs into silver and grey. Inside, there is warmth, noise, wet hair, and the smell of beer, cheese, and rain-soaked clothes. The sea keeps talking. You do not interrupt.

There are quieter interiors too. An office where nobody leaves because nobody knows whether the trains are running. A watchman near the gate with rolled-up trousers and a tired torch. A tea stall that becomes a public institution for information, sympathy, and theories about passable roads. In an old building, the lift stops working and everyone remembers the staircase. Neighbours exchange candles, buckets, phone chargers, and rumours. A retired gentleman announces that in 1974 the rain was worse. Nobody verifies this, because every city needs senior citizens to maintain historical exaggeration. Two dogs in the same building do not bark when they meet. The rain, for those long hours, makes us less efficient and perhaps more human.

For those who live under weak roofs, plastic sheets, tin extensions, temporary walls, and borrowed corners, torrential rain is not romance. It is an examination. Will the roof hold? Will the drain overflow? Will the bedding remain dry? Will tomorrow’s wages be lost because today’s rain entered the room? It is easy, from a safe balcony, to call rain beautiful. But in the city’s fragile homes, rain tests the quality of inequality. Water finds every weakness. It enters where governance has not. For some, rain delays a flight. For others, it destroys the night.

The best rain, however, is the rain that catches you at home. You are alone. It is evening. The lights are soft. The city outside is wet and distant. There is no train to catch, no flooded lane to cross, no airport announcement to obey. You pour yourself a stiff Glenfiddich on ice and stick to your loyalties.

Then Paula calls from upstairs.

Paula, one of the familiar celebrities of Bombay Jazz Club, does not call to discuss work, traffic, flooding, or whether the rain has stopped. She calls with a more dangerous proposal.

“How about doing a jam session?” she says. “I want to sing some jazz. This rain inspires me. Will you accompany me on the keyboard?”

There are invitations one should not overthink.

You move to the keyboard. The rain continues outside, keeping time on the windowpanes. Paula begins softly, perhaps with an old standard, perhaps with one of those melodies that belong only to late evenings. You find the chords cautiously at first, then with more confidence. The room changes. It is no longer a room. It becomes a small monsoon club, with one singer upstairs, one reluctant keyboard player below, and the rain as the percussionist.

You play. She sings. Outside, the city struggles, remembers, leaks, waits, laughs, and survives. Inside, for a few minutes, everything is exactly as it should be.

You both fill ice with Glen. Another round. Now she gets the right voice and the keyboard does not miss a chord.

And when you live such moments, you feel that for once, let the rains never stop.