The language of the city during the monsoons
The city can be cold and impersonal, where every person is cruelly reduced to a statistic—just one among the teeming population of settlers. It’s not often we get to enjoy the pleasures of simpler times. But one season that helps you appreciate life in its infinite glory is the monsoons.
You wake up to greet a beautiful morning. There is a slight nip in the air and the rain washes the earth until everything is fresh and new. Lush and green. Unspoiled. It’s as if the city reveals to us a hidden facet that we didn’t know she had. Like a shy bride on her wedding night, she gives us an indication of things to come. The gentle downpour cools the temperature around by perceptible degrees and washes the land—the buildings, houses, trees, yards, roads, and playgrounds, until they exude an almost country air. The earth gives off a heady scent of freshness that is comparable with the best hillsides and plains.
If you close your eyes, you could be transported to a land of red earth and pouring rain— of megha and varsha—of women clad in red saris with straw baskets on their heads, walking through a thin causeway in the fields. That the city can conjure up such images is refreshing—warm and rustic images in contrast to gray urban ones. Of love and bonding—welcoming with open arms as opposed to aloof and forbidding—two opposite poles.
The city that talks to us all-year round uses a harsh tongue—of blazing summers that show no mercy—Heat and dust that invoke images of barren deserts. But the monsoons make it easier to comprehend the language of the city, which is essentially the universal language of love and companionship. It’s exemplified by the mother who lovingly holds an umbrella over her little boy’s head while dropping him at school. Or the elderly husband who gently nudges his lifelong companion away from a vehicle that’s about to splash water all over her.
The monsoons draw a line extending from one heart to another—one that transcends borders, whether cultural, racial, economic, or political and gets to the heart of the matter—to raw, exposed feelings, mangled cries in the night, tearful farewells of departed souls, human pain, deep suffering, extreme emotion, trauma and despondency. And helps dissipate some of it into a more manageable bundle, one that is not so heavy to bear on the often frail human psyche. This is the language of the city. And if you listen carefully, you will understand what she is saying.
The city can be cold and impersonal, where every person is cruelly reduced to a statistic—just one among the teeming population of settlers. It’s not often we get to enjoy the pleasures of simpler times. But one season that helps you appreciate life in its infinite glory is the monsoons.
You wake up to greet a beautiful morning. There is a slight nip in the air and the rain washes the earth until everything is fresh and new. Lush and green. Unspoiled. It’s as if the city reveals to us a hidden facet that we didn’t know she had. Like a shy bride on her wedding night, she gives us an indication of things to come. The gentle downpour cools the temperature around by perceptible degrees and washes the land—the buildings, houses, trees, yards, roads, and playgrounds, until they exude an almost country air. The earth gives off a heady scent of freshness that is comparable with the best hillsides and plains.
If you close your eyes, you could be transported to a land of red earth and pouring rain— of megha and varsha—of women clad in red saris with straw baskets on their heads, walking through a thin causeway in the fields. That the city can conjure up such images is refreshing—warm and rustic images in contrast to gray urban ones. Of love and bonding—welcoming with open arms as opposed to aloof and forbidding—two opposite poles.
The city that talks to us all-year round uses a harsh tongue—of blazing summers that show no mercy—Heat and dust that invoke images of barren deserts. But the monsoons make it easier to comprehend the language of the city, which is essentially the universal language of love and companionship. It’s exemplified by the mother who lovingly holds an umbrella over her little boy’s head while dropping him at school. Or the elderly husband who gently nudges his lifelong companion away from a vehicle that’s about to splash water all over her.
The monsoons draw a line extending from one heart to another—one that transcends borders, whether cultural, racial, economic, or political and gets to the heart of the matter—to raw, exposed feelings, mangled cries in the night, tearful farewells of departed souls, human pain, deep suffering, extreme emotion, trauma and despondency. And helps dissipate some of it into a more manageable bundle, one that is not so heavy to bear on the often frail human psyche. This is the language of the city. And if you listen carefully, you will understand what she is saying.
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