Rain! Again!

Last year about this time I posted how I was surprised that the first rains brought an immediate drop in temperature. Amazingly, the same thing has happened this year. Funny how that works. Funny, too, how highs in the low 90s feel comfortable - I'm thinking the 73 outside right now (9PM) is out right indulgent.

Temperature aside, HYD has a funny rain culture. The background: Being in the middle of the peninsula, on a plateau, our monsoon season doesn't compare with the costs. We don't get days on end of deluge and flooding like Mumbai. We don't have 100% humidity even when it's not raining like Chennai. We get the tail ends of both of India's monsoons (north east and south west), making our rainy season (hopefully for the farmers) last from June through September or October. But rains come in bursts like summer thunderstorms in Texas.

I was driving myself home from yoga tonight (double hooray - I've restarted yoga *and* was driving myself during rush hour) when the rain started. With the first drizzle, no change was noticeable. Scooters still clogged the streets, people still walked about. While I saw many ladies carrying umbrellas during the hot months for shade, I didn't see a single person pop and umbrella in the drizzle. My guess is because (a) saris seem to dry pretty quickly unlike jeans and (b) if the drizzle progresses to a downpour, an umbrella is useless except for the neck and head.

Then, the downpour happened. Immediately, scooters pulled to any cover the driver could find. All the pedestrians rushed under any overhang available - a coconut tree, a driveway overhang, a tarp above a chai wallah (tea man). And everyone just waited. Only cars continued, and as I drove home I realized I could see the difference in the pace of life here. A giant pause.

I can't imagine anything causing Washington DC to just pause for 30 minutes. The snowpacolpse seemed to *stop* the city for three days. Regan's funeral or a World Bank convention clogged certain parts of the city. A catastrophe like 9-11 doesn't compare at all. But the evening downpour was just a pause. Twenty or thirty minutes later, all the hundreds of people gathered together trying (probably unsuccessfully) to stay dry would continue on their merry way and the city would spring to life again. Probably not in fast forward, though, to make up for lost time. Just in regular play speed, after a brief pause.