Opportunities Today : July  2008 Issue

Mumbai Rains

 

Mumbai is a city of opposites. One supposes most cities are. But in Mumbai the differences are obtrusively acute. Its levels of prosperity and poverty are at their macabre extreme. It is as uncultural as it is commercial.

Commerce and Culture seem to be mutually exclusive. And Mumbai is India's commercial citadel. Even nature in Mumbai is poised that way. Its rainy season are in two separate halves. From the middle of June, the monsoon wakes up in all fury, and goes on for three months consecutively, almost ceaselessly. Its wild showers are as exciting as its drizzles are a phenomenal bore. After these three soggy months are over, the sun blazes away pitilessly for nine endless months. The summer, a horrendous season, is a season of heat and dust. The heat makes you desperate and you think you are on a sizzler.

Even though the rains don't diminish the heat to comfortable levels, they transform Mumbai piquantly. During the blazing months you see Mumbai as a concrete jungle and nothing but a concrete constellation. But the rains draw out its hidden beauty, at least in pockets and in nooks and corners. Suddenly you start noticing the rain washed trees. They put on a lovely dark green cloak. In the non-rainy season the leaves are covered with dust and look unhealthy. Their vibrant green withdraws and fades. During the rains, on account of the presence of moisture in the air, the city is enveloped in a dim haze (dim because the sun is screened by the clouds) and this lends enchantment to the city. And at night fall, with the streets and buildings illuminated on, the city is transformed. Beauty and glamour blend, like in a beautiful film actress. Is it any wonder that Mumbai is the film city of India? As a film center its popularity is next to Hollywood.
 
One of the glories possibly its greatest glory of Mumbai is the encircling Arabian Sea. The city lies in its passionate embrace. In the sunny months the sea is placid and a serene self. Its emerald green at noon changes into a bluish grey as the sun wears out with a crimson farewell. But the sea becomes a wild beauty in the rains. It chafes at the shores with a rare fury and it is a sigh for the gods. It lashes, it withdraws, rises again, rolls and plunges into another mighty lash. Its frolic is also magnificent.

The rainy season in Mumbai reminds us that Mumbai must have been an exquisitely beautiful place once upon a time. But man, the ugly and indiscriminate predator that he is has plundered and ravaged her beauty. However, because of her great charms all is not lost. In the blaze of the sun, the traces of her beauty recede into hiding but the rains bring out some of her original charms. Let us hope that the sensible citizens of Mumbai would do something to resurrect some of her earlier charms.

Not all Mumbaikars may be alert to the lovely transformation that takes place in Mumbai during the monsoon. But all of them pray for rains and adequate rains at that. If it does not rain adequately during those crucial months, then the lakes don't get full. Mumbai depends on the lakes for all its water supply. Even in the best of times Mumbai's water supply is woefully insufficient for its citizens. And without enough rains or with a weak monsoon there would be disaster in the city. Fortunately the rains rarely let us down. The Mumbaikars’ dependence on rain is a matter of life-and-death. He never complains about the distress and disruption caused by the rains sometimes. Mumbai's rains can be very nagging and pestilent. Sometimes it rains so heavily that you get a glimpse of a deluge. Trees are uprooted, buildings collapse, people die. The rains demonstrate that they have all the three dimensions of India's Trinity - the ability to create, the ability to protect and the ability to destroy. Rains are a great experience in Mumbai.

-Rambler

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