How many of you like to get wet and play in monsoon??? I am the biggest fan of monsoon and I am sure there are plenty of idiots like me who want to play in the rain.
As a child, during school we would get a rain coat to protect ourselves from rains. But the problem then was to save our bulky school bag from being wet and so it was kept inside the raincoat. Due to this I could not button my raincoat and used to get wet every rainy day, while going to school and while coming back. That was officially get wet and not shouting from my mother.
My mother & I had a very playful kind of relation. She was a strict and disciplined lady. We being her still were afraid of her and even our entire extended family too was also afraid of her strictness. But I used to get away with all the mischief because somehow I bonded well with her.
She wasn’t much educated but she made it a point to ask me every thing about the school and the studies. I used to go round and round around her and narrate all that happened in the school. Tell about Maths and Science and all English poems. I never realised that she doesn’t know a word of English poetry or prose and to her credit, she never showed that while asking about my school work.
My bond with her and almost all children have that bond but there was something different to it in my case, I will describe it some other time. Here we are talking about the rains. The rain coat we had wasn’t bought every rains, it was used for every rain and then packed off for the next year. We grew in size but the raincoat remained the size we bought it; the school bags too were bigger every year.
With my body and school bag bigger next year, the raincoat was the same and so, as I said you I could not button up my raincoat. This was a god sent opportunity to get wet in the entire rainy season in school hours. On holidays we were packed in home and when went out, were tucked in properly in the raincoat to prevent me getting wet. But as I was, I never missed a chance to get wet so whether I was wearing a raincoat or not, I was getting wet. Mother used to get angry not because I was wet but for the problem that we didn’t have place to dry clothes.
But when I see kids of today, their parents are so afraid of letting kids adventure in rain. Today parents have place to dry clothes and many have dryers at home but still they do not let kids to explore this season. As a parent we have become too protective of our kids but this isn’t going to help them. Instead this will make them weaker and less romantic because they will lack excitement.
It is raining good in Bombay and it needs to because the city gets its water from the rains, it fills up all the reservoirs and supplies it all round the year. Isn’t it amazing that it was time when farmers used to wait for rain, to plough their fields and now we in this this city wait for good rain so that we get unrestricted water supply throughout the year. But now this city seems to have exhausted all its open spaces, where the water collected. Now the water in all on the streets and this city can be stalled any time, if it rained heavily for a few hours during the heavy tides.
This city has its own charm of rains but water clogging too has become a regular routine; no one can assure you that they will be back normally during monsoon, they can get imprisoned by water on a railway platform or on a highway. There are no open spaces and there is no safe rains now. the residents are afraid of rains but still life has to move on and so the residents will keep moving on.
I wish to see a safer and happier city just like the olden days and that can happen only if we as citizens elect proper individuals who are aware of the problems and are ready with some plan to save this city and many cities like this. SO let us become aware citizens to enjoy monsoon. Rain Rain come again…. till then… lots of to all of you… bye….