NRI-Now Residing in India

Monsoon & Mangoes

“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”
~Richard Feynman, adventurous nobel prize winning physicist and prankster (nobel was for physics, unfortunately)… seems like he was an awesome guy all around.

I haven’t posted any real news for over a month, and for no good reason (not much has happenned, but that never stopped me before…). I’ve been meaning to post this for the past week or so, but just finally got around to it, and some of the thanks goes to my friend Shaila, who’s post inspired this one.

It’s (finally) monsoon season in Gujarat. The monsoon is a rainy season, caused by some crazy pressure system that you can read about here, that lasts for a couple months during which it rains almost every day here (sometimes for almost the whole day). One thing that is sort of great here compared to home is that it almost never rains except during monsoon season (someone correct me if I’m wrong), so it would be easier to plan picnics and the like if I was doing that (really missing American summers, especially dining al fresco). On the flipside, the summer here was unbearably hot - temps generally in the 100’s for the past couple of months, so it was really too hot to do much of anything outside. Last week, we finally got our first (heavy) rains of the year, and it was awesome, but it seriously screws everything up because it is raining most of the time. It’s kind of funny, it feels cold now, but the reality is that the highs are still in the 90’s every day (it’s just much cooler than before, no sun and 10-15 degree lower temps in one week). I don’t have an AC anywhere I roam except for my family’s place in Ahmedabad, which I go to every couple of weeks. During the summer, I had a lot of trouble sleeping at night, often opting for the roof of our apartment building because it was a bit colder there. However, that is only good for about 5.5 hours a night… its too noisy at the beginning of the night, and the sun starts rising at about 6.

Here’s what Shaila had to say about the rains:

The weather in Ahmedabad had gradually been getting more and more humid for the past month. Generally the heat here is arid & dry but this past month was different. It would rain and sprinkle a bit here and there, but no proper, drenching, floodworthy monsoon rains like there should be. Two weeks back the humidity hit a peak and it was totally unbearable - the kind of humidity that makes you sweat even in the middle of your cold shower. Then in an instant, God answered the prayer of 5 million people and it poured. Children shed their clothes and ran out into the streets to dance. Old people raised their hands to the sky and thanked the heavens. Rickshaw drives got out of their autos and stood in the rain with their faces upwards. Every time the thunder clapped, people whooped and hollered like we were at a cricket match.

And I did what I had been dying to do since the summer started. I left my phone, wallet and everything else at home and got on my cycle. The rain was coming down in buckets and I wanted to be in it. Sometimes straight. Sometimes slanted. Sometimes horizontal. The wind blew cyclists over, the streets flooded, scooters got stuck and trees fell in the wind. But Ahmedabad, and Shaila, were all celebration and smiles for the first rains of the season.

I cycled around the old city for a couple of hours and watched kids play in flooded streets. Then I picked up Sheel and we rode around together for a bit in the old city and took some pictures. It was incredibly fantastic. The idea of warm torrential rains is completely foreign to most people in the west, but it is an amazing feeling to be in this weather and there is something extra special about the first rains of the season.

Riding our bikes throughout the city was pretty awesome. Here’s a picture of me and Shaila (I put my camera in a clear plastic bag, which is why it looks hazy):

We are actually much more soaked than it looks. As Shaila says, it is exactly as if we had jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed.

The rains feel really good in contrast with the ridiculous heat and humidity that we had during the past month, but they also help you realize how shoddy the infrastructure is in this city (and most other Indian cities). The roads fill up with water because the sewer infrastructure is really bad, and in a lot of rain the sewers back up and pour out dirty stuff rather than drain it away. The slum areas are typically low-lying and the first to get flooded… a waterfront location is a bad thing here. There are often casualties, but moreso there is a lot of disease and garbage floating around… and there are kids swimming in it:

The kids were definitely having a blast.

Mango Mania!

On the dietary side of things, I’ve been eating mangos every day for the past couple of months. I usually get the totapuri mangoes for 20rs/kilo, which works out to about 5 rupees (12.5 cents) each. My relatives buy crates of 10kilos each (50 mangos) every 3 days. (they also have 12 members in their family). They are absolutely delicious and much cheaper than what we get in the US. For a while, I was also having Mango rus (juice) everyday, but I got sick of that after a while. The sad news is that the beginning of monsoon season spells the end of mango season, so I just have one more week or so to enjoy the mangoes! Here’s an relevant and interesting article from the NYT last year: Mango Mania in India

Double Savari
Last bit - direct copy from Shaila:

Sheel and I ride around “double savari” (double passenger) quite often. It’s common in India - I once saw 4 people on a cycle! Sheel is much better at balancing the cycle with two people on it than I am so he usually rides the cycle (I tried a couple of times and we just ended up falling over). He and I will go double savari if we are going out to lunch, for a snack or some tea when I don’t bring my cycle into the NGO office. It’s a ton of fun!

And… the year is coming to a close… but I have so much yet to do, so it doesn’t really seem like it’s almost over yet.

And regarding my laptop… I’m back up and running, but for some reason both of my batteries don’t work anymore, and Dell won’t do anything about it because they are over a year old… so I just have my laptop plugged in all the time.

   ahmedabad, rain, weather    1 Comment