Is one bright and sunny day too much to ask?

I HATE the monsoon, period!

It’s been raining and raining and raining for the past four and a half months. And this is why I am so sick of the rains-

- The monsoon sky, listless, pallid ashen grey, the color of death. It’s so depressing, this melancholic blanket of grayness, so thick you may even begin to doubt the existence of the sun. And you can’t see the moon or the stars at night. I miss looking up at the night sky and thinking ‘hey, there’s Orion the Hunter!’, that being the only constellation I can recognise.
- The muck, the dirt, the potholes, the all encompassing dampness and clammy feeling, the wasted Sunday spent evading the mold attack.
- Petty neighbors picking petty fights over petty nothings. This is not unique to the rainy season, but for some strange reason it gets pronounced then.
- The rain gods have something against me. Why would it otherwise rain only when I happen to be on my way home or to work? Why would it rain hard and heavy enough to soak me to my skin only when I am not carrying my raincoat? Why would it stop raining just after I have decided to stop and go thru the tedious and tiresome process of putting on my raincoat? Any idea how embarrassing this is when your long distance ride takes you in your semi-wet-clothes-covered-with-an-almost-dry-raincoat glory into a part of the city which in the height of the monsoon is miraculously as dry as the Sahara itself and everybody looks at you like you came out of a circus?
- ‘I used to pee that much when I was pregnant’- exclaimed a fellow colleague the other day, naturally overawed by my frequency in visiting the loo. ‘It’s the damned rain’ I retorted. The rain is not good for my bladder.

And this is why I can bear the monsoon, reasons other than the most obvious one being that I really don’t have a choice-
- The recurring daydream of stormy weather outside and me inside in a cozy window seat, curled up with a warm quilt, a good book and piping hot adrak wali chai & kanda bhaji for company. Heavenly bliss or what?!
- The rainbow.
- The greenery- the shades and tints of green, so soothing, so gentle. On the rare days when the sun shines and the monotonous gray gives way to pockets of blue sky with tiny fluffy white clouds and huge fluffy blue-black ones, it’s a lovely picture that Nature paints- the myriad hues of green against the backdrop of the sky. Add to that the brown of the tree barks and the red of the earth, you get a picture so sublime, its worth all the four months of incessant rain and muck and potholes and the grand whiny inconvenience.
- Mom admonishing me everytime I start cribbing, "Think of those poor farmers!" By which she means, of course, think of poor us when the prices will shoot through the roof.

Why can’t it rain at night? It should rain at night- nice and heavy. In the morning it should be clear and sunny – everything squeaky clean and fresh. Wouldn't that be just neat? *long drawn-out sigh* If I were to be sent to the gallows right now, my last wish would be a sunny day.

Foot in mouth and other diseases

I might be overdoing this 'common saggis' thing, but seriously, here are some things Urja and I do that are the same without any conscious attempt to imitate:

1) If there is only one bump/ pothole on an entire expanse of smooth, freshly laid road, we are bound to find our way into/ over it like moths find their way to light.
2) We end up jumbling the simplest of sentences....regularly :' 'there is no one by this number on this name here' (that gem is Urja's)
3) No one should read our chat conversations.....not only does our spelling get atrocious when we are typing, it's sometimes not even a word (e.g. wo9rk8ing = working)
4) Keys, wallets, cell phones and scarves are from the family of things that are meant to go invisible when with us. (We once spent about 40 mins searching for a key on a busy-ish Pune road, that was well, safely resting in Urja's purse.)
Urja: I can get quite restless at such times, which, sadly for people around me, happens often as I the proverbial absent minded professor. I used to drive my former roomie, whom we'll call Arpita coz that's her name, up the wall constantly. Aarti, I am going to be grateful to you forever and a day for not getting exasperated at me that day. You are the best!
5) Murphy is our great, common friend...... if we step out together dressed fabulously on sunny days, that one BBC (Big Black Cloud) will pour only on us.
6) How we keep tripping over our own feet, more often than not this happens when we are at our cautious best and the chances for embarrassing ourselves are maximum.
7) We are forever bumping into tables & chairs, cupboards & overhead cabinets and all other furniture, whether protruding or not. Big deal, you might say, after all people keep bumping into furniture all the time. We bump into walls of our own houses as well. Motor coordination? What was that again?
8) This incident took place during the days when wearing the helmet was not yet made mandatory. Or was it? I dont remember exactly. But I had a brand new helmet and wasnt really used to either wearing it or lugging it around. Venue- another busy-ish road in pune. Time- just about right to go home. I dropped Aarti off at the cake shop (monginis) and after a whole lot of blah-blah-yak-yak we said our goodbyes. I put on my helmet and suddenly the world around me went black. It took me a whole 30 seconds to realise that I had pulled the helmet over my head the wrong way- my ponytail was hanging out of the opening meant for my face. I could hear the muffled sound of Aarti's laughter. Even today I cant believe I did something so idiotic.
9) That one time when Aarti (it was you, wasnt it?) used a fork and knife to eat a pizza. And with such enthusiastically concentrated effort that the knife flew out of her hand and landed with a clang on the floor between two table. Venue- Pizza Hut. Witnesses- the entire staff and a hundered million other people besides.

This list could be endless, as the two of us realised, and we are going to spare you the baring of the Clumsy Souls. And though we share our clumsiness, I must confess we share much much more........What more can a friend ask for than a true soul to share embarassing moments with?

A 'denting' visit

Could there be a position more hopelessly embarrassing, more helplessly vulnerable than reclining on the dentist’s chair with one’s mouth wide open? Or a pain more blinding than the one caused by all the awful apparatus that those dentists use? Or a glee more malicious than the one on Her Highness The Dentist’s face as she shows you her work which looks like nothing but royal carnage inside your mouth?

Didn’t I read somewhere recently that a dentist invented the electric chair? It must be true.

P.S.- Oh yes, I am still very much here, alive and kicking in the virtual world, making most of the limited time. They are talking of a restricted internet access vis-a-vis total ban. I am, needless to say, rooting for the former.