How to sing in the rain

After hoping and praying and cajoling the heavens, the rains are at last here…But now that they finally are, Mumbai’s once again waking up to their flip side. It’s all very well when one sits at home with a good book (or a good FIFA game!) and a steaming coffee cup (or whatever be your fix) to watch the droplets frosting up the window panes.

But if it’s a work day — to face clogged roads, bad drainage, traffic and travel jams… just the whole inconvenient wetness of it all — not great on the nerves.

I think our relationship with the monsoons can be summed up by the apt U2 number: I Can’t Live — With or Without You: We pray for the rains when they’re not around, water woes and receding lake levels provoking near-hysteria, but when they do arrive all we do is cry at the sludge catching our footwear, at the dirt thrown up as the passing car splashes the pathway puddle all over us, at the monsoon maladies that invariably surface like clockwork around this time, at the delay in our perfectly mapped lives, due to this weather.

I too was party to the moody blues, down with a severe cold and not thrilled at the state the weather had got me into. But then it occurred to me, instead of working self up so at what, afterall, cannot be controlled, why not simplify — live in the moment, enjoy what’s being given? Epiphanies can come at the strangest time, this one came as I watched a cartoon with my toddler about a panda who was told by his wise tutor that ‘today was a gift, that’s why it’s called the Present.’

And so, to appreciate the rains, for they are a gift, last year was warning enough of the same, a list of things that can make the monsoons work for you:

1. A good book/movie/TV show never fails. Especially if you’ve decided the rains are a perfect time for a family/friends get-together and reliving old memories.

2. FIFA of course… since the matches are at night, watch the reruns in the morning on a rain soaked Sunday. All that eye candy shouldn’t fail to bring the sunshine to your face.

3. Cook! Your favourite meal for your significant other might notch up those monsoon brownie points?!

4. Listen to music/paint/visit your favourite art gallery, understand how the masters made the monsoons work for them. Or travel, if you can get away, to a picturesque-in-the-water location.

5. Finally, my favourite — Make work play: when you’re ferrying your little ones back from school and the puddles are enormous and irresistible to little feet, don’t stop them splashing in — join them!! You’ll be surprised at how soon you’ll be able to spot the rainbow once you’re stamping out the days little injustices with gumboots and gusto, à la your little mini-me(s)!