The Rain

There was a brief sotto voce rumbling of distant thunder. I looked up to realize that the rains have arrived. Our lab has huge windows, which are usually covered up by these industrial grade pulldown curtains which I have come to loathe. Sometimes, however, in the early evenings you can see the sun go down somewhere just over the horizon; and the sky turns every hue of crimson and red as if the setting sun had told had come up with a particularly risqué joke.

The rain means something special to those people who live or lived between the tropics. For most of us it signifies relief from the killing heat of summer. On a more prosaic note, it means the difference between a good crop and penury for all too many of my countrymen.

But, I do not wish this to turn into a political diatribe. There are enough people spewing vitriol (and oil) at the moment without me having to add to them (I am looking at you Joel Stein).

Rain, as I was saying is special to me. I always view (or have viewed) rain as cha-pakoda-adda weather. Perhaps, I should explain that. Cha is tea. Not the refined milkless-sugarless tea that I usually drink. Cha is a milky, sweet concoction served best in tiny earthenware pots called “bhanrs”. A “pakoda” is a deep fried mixture of onions, chillis and sometimes giant peppers coated in chickpea flour (besan). It tastes of heaven. Adda is what we Bengalis are perhaps forgetting to indulge in (there has to be a correlation between the decline of adda and the rise of heart attack rates and divorces). Ok, adda is a strange mishmash of discussion, mixed with a dash of debate, flavoured with old fashioned gossip and rounded off with some very tall story telling. It is a very Bengali thing. Most other Indian ethnicities are waaaay more hard working than us, and have never discovered the joys of adda. I have been told that apparently there is something approximating adda in the coffee shops hidden away in the bazaars of Istanbul and Cairo. If I ever get to visit these great cities, I will let you know if people there, do indulge in adda.

Our man Nandi refers to this kind of rain as ‘suicide weather’. Hmmmm.

I finished watching this wunnerful fillum called ‘Wake Up Sid’. It has Konkona Sensharma who is, in my humble opinion, one classy lady. Up there with the always delectable Nandita Das. Beautiful performances flesh out this fillum, even from the actors with bit parts. In fact, especially from them. And, of course, the fillum revolves around the rain.

Which brings me to the fact that I am going out to enjoy some of the rain. Bye.