For Bombaywalas the monsoon is an important event. Since we don’t have any marked seasons here we cannot go into nostalgic rhapsodies about winter gajak and summer fruits like our friends up north. But we become focussed and intentful like warriors as the rains approach, and then spend the months from June to September discussing the weather, with the same minuteness people discuss relationships.

It starts end of May - we start sighing about the humidity, we huff and we puff and cast ourselves on office chairs and couches like returning adventurers every time we return from outside - baap re, the humidity is crazy. In June we start obsessing about those small smudgy clouds that are in the mid-distance and fantasising about what we’ll do in the rains. Then the monsoon comes and we instantly start cribbing about it.