The city in which I live has no weather. It simply has a climate. It is hot and wet in summer. It is hot and wet in the monsoon. It is hot and wet in the winter. Conversations about the weather therefore tend to be conducted in a low moan of misery.
“Hot, no?”
“My God, you’re telling me. If April is like this, what will May be like?”
There’s another variation of this conversation.
“Hot enough for you?”
“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”
Which is why I was amazed at how much time and attention people in other parts of the world could spend on the weather. Then I came to Boston in the winter.
The day I landed, the skies were blue, an impossibly beautiful cerulean. Fat-sheep clouds bumbled about near the horizon. A sheepdog breeze blew but it was chilly, not cold.
Jet-lagged, I went to sleep and woke up to a winter wonderland. I got out of bed to have a bath.
This is normal Indian procedure but now I had to dry myself. I will spare you the anatomical details but in the city in which I live, there is not much point drying yourself. For one, you will be wet again very soon. For another, dry is a myth. Nothing is dry. Nothing stays dry. So a quick sweep down with a gaamcha will do.
Here it is different. Each inch of skin must be patted down so as to ensure some modicum of comfort.
Then comes the layering. First the banian, then the t-shirt, then the shirt. Now the underwear, the longjohns and the jeans. Then the jacket and the gloves and the cap. I set the cap upon my head and realise that I have not dried my hair. But now the cap is wet too.
Miserable, I step out into a world…
Oh shoot, that scarf thing. How does one tie a scarf. I wrap it round and round and round until I look like a fire hydrant and I give up and…
Painted in grey
Miserable, I step out into a world from which all colour has been leached. I send friends photographs of my walk to Wellesley College and they ask: “Are these in black-and-white?” No, they are in grey. The snow takes all and the snowlight takes the rest of the colour. Crunch crunch underfoot. My nose is dripping now. When I get to the college I pick my nose. Things have frozen in there it seems. My fingers come out bright red.
You did want colour, no?
As a child, I dreamed of snow. I wanted so much to play in the snow. I wanted to make snow angels and snowmen. I wanted to arm myself with snowballs and build snow forts. I wanted snow because I did not know how powerful snow is and how cruel.
Two days after I arrived, blizzard warnings were out. More weather. The local department store was filled with people buying up the place. I bought too but with somewhat greater care. After all, I was only three days in the US and dollar prices were still making my teeth hurt. The college website told us that it would be closed and urged us to be careful. I was careful. I sat inside my room and watched the snow outside.
Weighing in
Each snowflake is small. A snowflake, the Internet tells me with its usual authoritative air, weighs in at 0.02 gms. That’s not a lot of avoirdupois in there. But many millions of snowflakes make a snow drift and many a snow drift can stop a city.
Quiet things snowflakes, each individual, each completely different, or so we have been told. (I have often wondered how anyone knows.) They have therefore nothing much to do with each other. Atomised and kept apart, a snowflake would not bother a sparrow. Together, when they act with one fell purpose, they can stop a city.
I want to be a snowflake, I think. I want to know I am part of something bigger than myself but I want to be myself too. I don’t want to give up the obtrusions and protrusions of my identity to fit in.
And then the snow was behind us.
The sun came out. A weak sun, a pretend sun, no relative to the sun my city endures like a bad marriage, waiting only for moments of grace. This was the sun of Impressionist painting, a mellow yellow, a lemon drop sun. My city has a Van Gogh sun, roiling, raging. This city has a Courbet sun, warming, burnishing. But it will do. It makes a difference. I walk a mile every morning to college. On the left side of my face, the sun is warm. The right side of my face is freezing. The right side of my face wants to be the left side of my face.
But this is New England weather, someone told me. And the next day, it began to rain. There are many kinds of rain. My city gets one kind. It is diva rain. It shows up when it wants to. It stays away when you expect it to turn up. It comes down in torrents and brings the city to a halt. But it is warm rain.
This is cold rain.
Cold rain is different. This is an invasive rain that seeks only to run down your neck. You did not think your neck was warm until the rain ran down it. Now you know your neck was warm. You were not grateful for a warm neck and this rain is here to remind you of that.
Night.
The roads are glistening wet and the cars go by with the sloshing noise of cars cutting puddles into road-waves. Road-waves have only one function in the universe: to underscore the difference between the have-cars and the have-only-legs. Road-waves are meant only to splash pedestrians. There is no name for pedestrian rage. You are a poor forked thing on the wasted heath. You have no metal carapace and so your rage is of no importance.
Night and mystery rain.
Mystery rain does not fall. It manifests. The roads are wet. The trees are wet. You put up your umbrella. There is no sound of raindrops prevented from falling on your head. There is silence. You close your umbrella. Now your hair is wet. There must be rain. You put up your umbrella and walk, walk, walk. You are wet. The umbrella is dry. This is mystery rain.
I miss the snow.
The author tries to think and write and translate in the cacophony of Mumbai.
