Mumbai ki pehli baarish!!!

Everything has a first time for me in this city… pehla friend group, pehla birthday and now pehli barish :-)

I am so fond of rain but somehow very scarred of the rain in Mumbai. I had watched on television before three yrs in 2005. Other than the Mumbaites, not everyone would remember the 25th July’s rain that continued for more than 24 hrs. But the new comers in Mumbai are definitely apprehensive about it. We have been complaining about the summers for the last there months. Now another session of complains begins- but this is not about the heat- this is about the rain.

Sometime I find this city really crazy. But the best part of the city is its crowd that keeps moving 24/7, 365 days a year- no matter its April’s summer, August’s rain or December’s winter. But one thing I must admit that Bombay grows over you. Once you area apart of Mumbai, you would not like any part of the country, for that matter any part of the world. I see lot of people in Patni, most of them prefer to live in Mumbai over Chicago and New York. I have come across many people from south as well as from the north part of India who would aspire to go to USA ansd settle down there. But I have never heard it from a Mumbaite. They love the city the way it is.

This year monsoon was supposed to hit Mumbai on 10th June but it started raining five days before it. 5th June ’08, in the morning when I started for office, I could feel the cold breeze. I was sure that it had drizzled in some part of the city last night. The day went on fine with a great weather. I remember talking to Anup in the early evening on the pleasant weather. In the next hour when I boarded the bus, it was cold outside. We have crossed most of the distance when it started pouring. For a moment I was so happy; after all saal ki pehli bearish aur uss main taazi mitti ki khushboo.

But in another few minutes looking at the speed of the rain, I was thinking why it started raining. Most of the folks in the bus were not carrying umbrellas. When we crossed Powai, I was actually waiting for the rain to stop as my house was another 15 minutes distance. There was water running on the new fly over but there is no difference in the no. of people traveling on it. Not everyone was in a bus, car or rickshaw but everyone was welcoming it. In fact the people on the bikes & bicycles were enjoying it in true sense. What impressed me was that Bindaas attuitiude – as if this heavy rain doesn’t make any difference to their lives.

Today morning it started again - guess the rain in Mumbai follows the official timings; it starts the moment we start going to work and again when we come back. But it hardly made any difference today. I had seen the bindaas attitude of Mumbai crowd yesterday and probably I had adapted it too. I got up in the morning and saw it was raining but I knew that it’s not gonna stop any of the activities in my whole day’s to-do list. I reached office and checked my emails and the first thing I did was writing this blog :-) another work got added to the to-do list of this Friday. So the morale of the stroy is that Mumbai is a Great City with Great People and Great Rains :-)