“And the rains fell like pearls on the leaves and the flowers…”
I am looking out into a Calcutta street, a cup of coffee in my hand, restaurant lights soft over my head. It has been wet the last few days and gray, like the backdrop in Rohita Agarwal’s canvases: probably if you spend some time out in the open, even the smudged bindis would come off: and the leaves are washed clean, the car-tops glistening; the sound of tyres on wet streets wafts through. And I realized that Masaji, who was staying with us for the last few days, on a visit, with his impaired hearing, could no longer hear the softer sounds around our worlds, the mornings with their birds crying raucous on the mango tree nearby, the grinder in the kitchen or a child crying alone in a room.
His world was so much lesser for this.
I yearn for rains in Bombay. Bandra. The entire sea in front of me used to have its surface pinpricked continuously and the horizons met just a stone’s throw away in a milky dirty haze. Often it would rain for days and Devang and Tanu and I would go out and shout at each other and make wet faces at each other. We would go for walks with a large purple umbrella that opened at the click of a button like a flower blooming in a second. We would walk for a distance squeezed into each other, desperately trying to save our shoulders from getting the drip of the rain, and there was much pushing and pulling and jostling. And then suddenly, someone would close the umbrella altogether!
Devang would go dancing in front of us. It was always towards the dead-end we walked. HDFC quarters, Sales tax staff building, the building in which Rao sab had a flat, the building in which we had seen a flat in our six-month search for a house, and then the left turn where the embankment beside the sea started.
Tanu loved the bhel of one bhuriwala on that road. She would walk all the way, often alone, to have his bhel. There was another man, right at the end of the narrow path of the short cut to the Bandra bazaar, who made divine sandwiches. He made three layers, full of hari chutney, tomatoes, kheera and his own masala. And you stood beside him, holding paper plates, and taking in enormous bites, watching people go to and fro from the market on their little tasks; sometimes you had to shift a little to let someone pass through into the lane behind you.
We never did these things in a planned manner, but while coming back from a trip for fruits or such like, often just before dinner, but it was just the three of us, so it was okay.
But the best place to be in Bombay during rains was Marine Drive. The waves rose over the edges of the wall and fell on the walkway. The strong wind would blow hair, chunis and little children in all directions. But holding fort, steadfastly, would be the bhutta-wala, under bright blue plastic sheets, roasting the bhutta until they became deep yellow with a lot of black burnt corns. He would smear it with a(half, yellow, spotted) lemon daubed with salt and red spice and give it so hot that it would burn the mouth when you bit in.
And then, wet and cold, you would run back to the car, get into the seats, dripping all over the seat-covers, and warm inside, eat the bhutta, and watch the incredible fury of nature in the peace of your little haven…