You want rain?

Hello all,

Here's what it looks like outside my window on this very very WET and dark monsoon afternoon. Water, water, everywhere. It looked much the same last night when I went to sleep around 10:45pm. And of course today, we didn't really even consider braving this to go to college. I haven't seen this kind of rain in a long time or maybe... ever. It'll be bad news if it keeps us like THIS for much longer.
Anyway, so what am I doing at home? I just finished reading another book - Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Remember that fabulous Audrey Hepburn 1961 film? :D

I found it at the American Centre Library of which I am now a member!! It all started last Thursday. Our Sociology class was invited to the American Centre in Churchgate where they showed us this documentary about the workings of the student newspaper at Penn. State University. It was interesting since one of our subjects this year is Sociology of the Media. After that they gave us a tour of their library and I was smitten. Especially because you can make use of it at a nifty price of Rs. 300/= for students! Lucky me, I'm a student!

Libraries and book-shops are my happy places and since book-shops work out to be more expensive, I joined the library! :D Obviously since they're the American Library, most of their books are American but I found that they have a better collection than the British Council Library and also being a member means you can access the online databases that they have institutional membership to. Very useful for my projects. And the general atmosphere is just nice... after you get past the rather paranoid security at the entrance of course ;)

Lots of reading to do. And then of course there are the bundles and bundles of notes that we're given in class to go through and movies to watch and blogs to read...

So yeah. I'm keeping myself busy :)

Mumbai Monsoon Movies!

Last night I fell asleep while praying for rain. Well, I got my wish. It rained alright. Actually rain is an understatement. It freakin' POURED. I woke up to the sound of it and apparently it had been going non-stop while I was asleep... And I was in a HAPPY mood! So I even left a little early so I could walk a while in the rain before my friend Antu, picked me up in an auto and we went to the station. Things were pretty normal. Umbrellas all around. We skipped over the usual overflowing water right in front of the station and became a part of the hundreds of anonymous faces. Our train was jam-packed as usual - full of wet and some grumpy people. My back was beginning to protest due to standing in weird positions with my bag-full of books. And I couldn't really talk to Antu cause of the wall of people between us.

Then we reached Bandra. Still raining. No big deal and then I started overhearing conversations about the rain and how "Grant Rd. is totally submerged". Ah, big deal. Stupid rumours. Paranoid people. And then Antu's phone rings. One of our classmates reached Grant Rd. and was about turning back to Andheri. "Grant Rd. is totally submerged. Knee-deep water. I'm going back home!" Oh she hates the rain; gets really scared when it rains a little.Me and Gauri monsoon-posing in college last Saturday

We should've listened :P Especially when these girls who were on our train from the BMM dept. in our college got off at Dadar in response to a phone call which apparently told them "Classes Canceled!" At this point, alarms should've been going off in our head. Go back home!!

Lol. Anyway, we reached Mumbai Central, just one stop before our stop (Grant Rd.) and saw for ourselves. The tracks were indeed pretty much submerged in water and the trains from Churchgate were running wayyyy behind schedule. So we got off, went to the next platform and waited for a little while. Told the others in the gang not to bother heading to college. Stay home!! And then took a train back.

It was all very exciting for me actually. There's something very comically adventurous about living in Mumbai. Especially during the monsoons. It's comical because after sooooo many years of this manic rain and high-tide combination, after so many floods, so many people dying and buildings collapsing and trains stopping... etc, etc. Mumbai - govt. and municipality - STILL seem to be completely taken unawares when it comes. It's so... FUNNY! :D

Anyway, so that makes it two college-less days this week. (Monday was a holiday for other reasons). I came home and sat around with Antu for a while (we had to wait out the rain and traffic a little before she could catch an auto home) and then after lunch, I watched a movie! A fantastic movie that you need to watch - The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Miss Smith, my maths teacher from school, had told me about the book by the same name (by John Boyne) upon which this movie is based when I met her up in Ooty this summer. Still haven't found the book but the movie was just fantastic. Seriously, you need to watch it.

Movies I've watched recently: The Boy in Striped Pajamas, The Secret Life of Bees and New York

Rain On A Tin Roof

-- The world in black and white. This was taken under "vivid colour" setting on my camera btw! That's just how it looked this morning at around 7:25 am on the highway.

-- Early morning traffic. Nothing actually, the cab driver pretty much zoomed away and got us to college in about 35 minutes and was actually apologising and saying that if it wasn't raining he would've gotten there faster!!
-- Caution! This is my favourite photo of the day. All the blurred lines and just look at that red!

As you may have figured out by now... I went to college today! And I didn't do the normal commute routine (local train, BEST bus, etc.) Sonu, Vini and Sharan stayed with me over the weekend (and we had the most amazing conversations about communism, love, God, friends, music, reservations in India, education, history, movies, Beijing Olympics, sociology, etc. AND of course they worked on their presentation and I got to cook for them, which I L-O-V-E) and they had a lot of stuff and it was raining in the morning so instead of walking to the station with all that luggage, we decided to split a cab which would actually cost us less money and time (as compared to 1st class on the train). It was such a welcome change from my usual commute and everything was so GREY! Most people who need to travel that early are college students and they were all on the train so thankfully the roads were pretty empty and we didn't have to experience Bombay's normal killer traffic. Ha!

The clouds were literally "looming" above and I thought it was quite beautiful and so I took out my camera which pretty much lives in my bag nowadays...

Needless to say, its been rainin' all day... The coconut tree outside on of our classrooms was swaying rather precariously. Let's just say that the monsoon came in all its glory today and it looks like it's going to stay with us for a while...

I'm still blowing my nose but I feel much better now.

Laters,

:D

p.s. READ: Definitely one of my favourite blogs.