Tag Archives: monsoon

Quarantine Musings #11

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Monsoon in Mumbai feels so eerily different this year. Each year after bearing the scorching heat of the summers, we find ourselves longing for the rains. This year the longing phase was so abrupt.

Of course, this may not be the actual onset of the monsoons, it might just be a by-product of the Nisarga cyclone (which I had mentioned in my previous post Quarantine Musings #9 )- which quite conveniently has dodged (and saved us!) away from the city to other parts of the state.

We have been receiving these pre-monsoon showers for a good four days at a stretch. And yet we already have the hashtag #MumbaiRains trending on Twitter!

As local trains aren’t running anymore (except for essentials), in light of the current lockdown guidelines – I wonder whether we would still be hearing news of waterlogging on the railway tracks, like each year?

Monsoons remind us Mumbaikars of bhajiis and vada pavs and garam garam (hot) chaai (tea). This year instead of buying it from those roadside stalls, shops and tapris, we’ll have to savour them by cooking it up inside our own kitchens. Now that should surely be a healthy change!

Wishing you all a Happy Monsoon!

— Suri

What are Quarantine Musings? Just some random, trivial, light-hearted (or maybe even deep?) thoughts that pass through my mind during these lockdown days.

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Quarantine Musings #9

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What would you do if someone tells you that you only have a couple of hours to live? – Me? I don’t think I would do anything different, other than being grateful for everything I am blessed with.

Don’t worry, things are fine over here as of now. We are expecting a cyclone in some hours, on top of us living in the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in our country. Monsoon has apparently arrived earlier than expected. Yesterday morning we woke up with the pleasant petrichor of the early morning – first – rain of the season. It’s cloudy since yesterday, which is kind of a sudden change in the climate after a really hot summer in May. Take care, folks!

— Suri

What are Quarantine Musings? Just some random, trivial, light-hearted (or maybe even deep?) thoughts that pass through my mind during these lockdown days.

Thunderstorms

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Monsoon is Coming.. (now read it again the same way Jon Snow would say, ‘Winter is Coming‘.) *

Scary, eh?

The arrival and departure of monsoon are the two times of the year that I find the scariest. The rains comes and goes all with it’s musical thunder and the eerie lightning.

To tell you the truth, it’s not the lightning that bothers me. It’s the seconds after the lightning… the long seconds of anticipation and dread of how loud or how long the thunder would last. Sometimes the thunder would even act as a timid friend, staring sheepishly from behind it’s curtains of clouds but making as little gurgling (yes, ew!) noise as possible. And at other times – when we least expect it – it will come out as a sly and cunning enemy and roar as high as it could.

Ah, how I hate the thunder! The enmity goes back a long way down the memory lane. Maybe someday I would talk about it. But not today. Today I want to face it. It’s thundering even now, even as I write this blog post. It’s just a shy, gurgling though, but I’m sure the volume will increase. Monsoons are arriving here in Mumbai (India) and scaring me as always, each year, on it’s onset and while it leaves.

To make myself feel better in such a situation, I try to make up funny stories. I imagine the Gods up there fighting over petty issues like, ‘WHO ATE MY CANDY??!!’, and then getting pissed out about it so just shoving or bumping things here and there, like sometimes when we’re angry we slam the door too loudly or push the chair or table harshly around, the same way. I try to imagine that it’s nothing more than that. Just the shoving of some chairs, no big deal.

But this is so ridiculous and it sounds so funny, even in my head. I know even a third grader won’t be assured by this story.

It’s 3:00 a.m. and I know that I must sleep, but I can’t. I’m thinking about the thunder, the lightning and the monsoons. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate them all. I love monsoon when it’s quiet, when it’s quietly raining. It’s a very lovely, romantic season. I kind of like the lightning too. But speaking of thunder, I only have a hate – hate relationship with it.

Well, I’ll try to sleep now, before the thundering gets any worse. Off I go…

Good night! 😀

Do you guys have similar fears about thunder? If yes, how do you face them? Let me know. 🙂

– Suri

* a Game Of Thrones reference