It's never nice to be sick. The fever, the headache, the flowing nose, the itching throat. It tends to give this horrible, restless, well, sick feeling. I had never thought this is how my first Bombay monsoon would begin. I thought it would involve sitting at Marine Drive in one of those filmy corners, getting soaked in heavy rains. Watching the water fall into the ocean. Or the sea is it? I think it's the sea. So watching the water fall into the water body. Getting poetic over a cup of cutting chai. I thought it would be about beautiful umbrellas flying in the wind, about raincoats and gumboots. And lovely walks in the rain.
Well I did think about the awful traffic jams and I did dread the floods. I had seen one too many pictures of people wading through knee deep water with umbrellas turning hither tither. I wasn't blind to the unromantic side of the rains. No, not at all. But I didn't get much opportunity to explore any of that because the streets soaked and flooded and dried again as I sat at work. I sometimes heard the pitter patter from the bathroom window. But no getting wet, no hot chai, just the coffee machine in an air-conditioned space. And that's how I thought the monsoon would pass.
But destiny and mosquitoes had something else in mind. Who has been able to predict these two ever-capricious entities? One bright morning, it could have been evening, but for the sake of prosaic convenience I would stick to morning. So one bright morning, an under-fed greedy mosquito resolved she must treat herself to some hot juicy blood. And at that moment, I presented myself, smelling perhaps of yet-undigested gobhi ke pakodas, unsuspiscious of the danger surrounding me. One crisp bite, a slight itch and the damage was complete.
A couple of mornings later, I woke up with an uneasy feeling. I thought it was the weather. But little did I know it was the bacteria, or virus? But little did I know, it was the unhealthy microrganisms reproducing in my blood. Shamless I might add. And before I knew it, I was gripped with all those things. The headache, the flowing nose, the itching throat. The horrible, restless, sick feeling. Sigh!
It was going to be disastrous. Being stuck at home, taking actual sick leaves from work. Sigh some more! I was cursing my luck on the way to the doctor's when suddenly, without warning, it began to rain. Not tiny droplets of benign rain. Heavy outpour of expression long contained. Banging on the windows. Celebrating. Dancing on the streets. And then I came back home and sat and stared at the Bombay rains. With a cup of homemade chai. And suddenly, it wasn't so disastrous anymore.
