Monsoon

Its official, the monsoon season has begun. Yesterday, after walking out of Seven Seas Mall with Karan, Brina and Rachel, it was probably about 110 degrees, and felt more like 120. We walked to the AIESEC office, and then set off to explore a nearby temple. About 5 minutes into our walk there were some ominous clouds rolling in, but it seemed as if we had enough time to go and look at the temple before any storm came, so we continued on. Only about 1 minute later a massive gust of wind blew in with dust flying everywhere, trees whipping around… it seemed like the apocalypse was coming. We realized our previous estimate of a few hours before the storm was horribly incorrect, and hustled into a rickshaw to go home. We were buffeted the whole way by stinging sand, I couldn’t even open my eyes. At one point a herd of cows ran in front of us (that’s how you know it’s bad, if the cows are actually running) and almost hit us.

At this point the temperature has probably dropped around 30 degrees to ~80 and the first fat drops of water are coming down. Me and Karan get back to the house just in time to close the windows and have the power go out on us (great no fans now). It starts a torrential downpour and we go up on the terrace and run around in the rain for a bit (feels great, the first time I hadn’t been hot in as long as I can remember). We look over and a whole family of monkeys has taken cover in another neighbor’s balcony, and there’s a crazy old lady throwing mangos at them to try and run them off.

Finally the rains start to slow down to a manageable patter… but its getting dark and still there’s no power, so our host family offers to drive us around the city some more. I cant stress how amazing it is to sit in a car with A/C, it makes me feel like a king. We drive all around the city to look at the flooding that’s happened, and the majority of the problems that we see are just the result of a lack of any identifiable drainage system. A half of every road is now designated to foot-deep puddles that cause even more traffic mayhem than usual.

When we get back to the house the power is still not on, so its up onto the roof we go to sleep. Because there’s no fan, and it’s now a good 85 and humid inside, the only sane option is to sleep on the terrace.

I can safely say this is the most I’ve felt like a true Indian here, sleeping on the roof after a long day of being battered by the first of the monsoons. Home sweet home.