rain

Long ago -- what seems like years and years ago now -- I vaguely thought the monsoon was an unpleasant thing. I don't know why. It was just a intuitive assumption. I probably thought the word "monsoon" sounded scary. It does rhyme with "typhoon". I knew it had to do with torrential downpours, and naturally assumed it was something people dreaded.

It is just the opposite. I didn't need to be told this explicitly. The deadly afternoon sun was happy to teach me. Just one typical day in May in Bhopal and you will understand within minutes that anything at all that interrupts the pain of that sun is cause for celebration. And if it involves getting drenched in cool water falling from above, that's even better. Beyond comfort, the monsoon is extremely important for agriculture and delays in its arrival cause much anguish among farmers in this part of the world.

Today it rained for the first time. The sky has been teasing us with strange winds and random drops of water for a few days now. This afternoon I was passing in and out of sleep in my bed when there suddenly came a wind so strong and loud it woke me up. There was deep, rolling thunder, too. And then suddenly the roof tiles became like drums. I bolted up and pulled back the mosquito net to run outside.


The water hit my face immediately -- it was being blown in sheets through the clinic. The air smelled like plant and dust. It was the most comfortable I have felt since arriving here three weeks ago. I looked out towards the clinic's garden to see one of the guards striding triumphantly through the downpour with both arms raised in the air, fingers pointing upwards like he had just made a touchdown. Very uncharacteristic for him. From the other side of the terrace I could watch the "street" (not the best word, but I don't know what else to call it), where rain-soaked, shrieking children were running up and down and twirling each other around while their more world weary parents made adjustments to roofs made of tin, wood, and sheet plastic weighted down by old tires.


For lack of anything better, the French girls and I celebrated with a shared packet of instant coffee and dry cookies from the "corner store" (again, not the best name for it, but it will have to do for now). This is not the monsoon. We don't think it is, at least. It's not supposed to come for another month. This is probably just a rogue caravan of storms. It's has already been raining every day in the Northeastern States (Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, etc.), Bangladesh, and Kolkata (Calcutta).

There are also negative consequences to the monsoon, of course. Many hillside and mountain roads become dangerous or impassible because of landslides, and so many people die from flooding in certain places like Bangladesh that the whole world hears about it. Drinking water supplies are inevitably tainted by overflowing sewers and run-off, creating spikes in waterbourne diseases, cuts and scrapes don't heal very easily in the humid air and are more prone to infection, and it becomes almost impossible to dry any laundry. For now, though, all anyone can think about is how good it feels to watch the dark clouds go to battle with the sun and to feel their cool, wet victory run down our cheeks and our necks.