Waking under monsoon rain in Bangalore

It’s raining in Bangalore. Sound of big raindrops hitting the roof of office building was irresistible. I woke up from chair and went outside, there was a lot of people standing in the steps. Some had umbrellas. After waiting for some time, four to five people opened their umbrellas and walked out. I thought some guys will be ready to walk without umbrella in that rain. After all office hours are over.

However, it was a girl who walked out first without an umbrella. What I failed to understand is, why she is speaking in phone and walking in rain? Probably she want to change that phone, and waiting for some reason to do so!!! I looked towards the sky, big droplets were coming down and hitting the floor. Suddenly a stream formed in front of the building I was standing. After looking towards the big group of people, standing in front of the door waiting for rain to end, I walked outside.

Suddenly a wave of big droplets hit my face and broke in to hundreds of small pearls. I felt so happy and relieved. After walking for some hundred metres, I moved to the shades of a nearby building and watched the rain. From here I could hear the cry of big drops hitting the tiled floor. Fifteen minutes went very fast.

Ten hours back I was in bus, stuck at a signal in Hosur Road (NH 7). I closed my eyes and tried to use only ears for some time; heard many voices but nothing from the mouth of a bird, nothing from smooth movement of a tree. Only voices I heard was that of heavy engine jerking after drinking more than enough diesel, one guy was hitting his horns even though he knew that, sound can't change the colour of sigal to green from Red. Will I ever able to hear to the sounds of bids and trees while travelling through the roads of the city?

This time, there was hardly any water in many of the bore wells, better to say nothing about normal wells. What many residential associations did was dig further deep, this idea partially worked in this year; but on next year? Probably we may get lava from those wells!!! One day BWSSB told newspapers that, without rains water stored in KRS dam may able to serve the city for next 20 days only!!! What will happen after 20 days? Fortunately rain came... but next time we may not be so lucky.

However, this doesn't stop builders from converting the existing dams to high rise buildings and layouts. For decades Karnataka and Tamilnadu were fighting for water in Kavery River, but how much they are trying to protect the catchment areas of said river? They are fighting in the courts now and may fight for the next decade as well, without agreeing that nature won’t support rivers without having enough forest in the first place. But this doesn’t stop miners from digging out the remains of Western Ghats.

As Douglas Adams once said, “We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.”

Some more things to complete, I walked back to the office.

Sajeev.