we are like this only

It's all over the front pages of newspapers in Delhi today. One big monsoon type rain and the kind of havoc it created in the 'National Capital'. This is a city where more has happened to improve living conditions in the last few years than in any other city in India. the metro is up and running, there is a series of fly-overs to move traffic along faster than before, there is an expressway...New buildings are coming up at the speed of light. And yet, at the first instance of the kind of thing that is supposed to be a daily occurrence during the monsoons, the city comes to a grinding halt. Why this has to happen year after year I have no idea. Surely the municipality knows that rains are a feature of the monsoon, and that therefore they have to get the drains cleaned out and compleet whatever perishing digging-up the roads works they have taken up before it comes pouring down. But why should they bother? They are more concerned with fighting with other departments or pointi...

As I've said on my other blog, the monsoon is one of my favourite seasons. There really is something amazing about it, and the monsoon touches the extremes of moods, from the dramatic (torrents of rain) to the awe-inspiring (thunder, lightning, winds and rain) to the bathetic (trickly, drippy rain - as if the cistern is leaking again). India being a largely pastoral society and that too, one with subsistence farms and lack of sophisticated farming methods, the rain is truly the farmer's friend, if it comes at the right time. And rain has always been celebrated here, from classical music - Raaga Malhar - to a number of folk and movie songs. There is even a famous story about how Akbar's beloved court singer Tansen was challenged by jealous rivals to sing a Raaga which would result in him being surrounded by flames if he sang correctly, and how he taught his daughter to sing Raaga Malhar which of course brought down life-giving rain at the right moment. I suppose it isn't...