A Grump’s Guide to Enjoying the Mumbai Monsoon

A completely unbiased opinion from someone with damp school uniforms

The Mumbai monsoon brings out the inner poet in some people. Suddenly they’re waxing eloquent about petrichor, frying pakoras (or thinking about them), nestling cups of chai while gazing wistfully out of windows, and planning long, romantic drives to Lonavala. 

I’m not one of those people. I don’t even particularly care for the rains if I’m being entirely honest. Much like the Monday blues start creeping up on people on a Sunday evening, I start getting the monsoon blues towards the end of merry, sunny, summery May. And if you’re a mom in Mumbai responsible for organizing freshly laundered uniforms during the monsoon, you may understand why.

The complexity of laundry in the Mumbai monsoon is something only the ones who have suffered can fully understand. Without getting into the gory details, suffice to say, come monsoon I feel like I’m managing a moderately successful dhobi ghat. It’s not my finest season.

Then there’s the muck on the streets. You can sit by your window and marvel all you want at the charming greenery outside. But when you have to step out for a school run or to run errands and wade through murky swathes of muck, the emerald greenery is the last thing you’ll be thinking about. Oh, and if you’re in your car, stuck in traffic that won’t budge, navigating your way through waterlogged streets and praying fervently that you don’t get your spleen displaced by those incredibly tenacious Mumbai potholes, surrounded by honking cars and road-raging drivers, you might want to replace that serene monsoon Malhar raga with a rage anthem.

And don’t even get me started on the creepy crawlies of all kinds that arrive like unwelcome guests during the monsoon and manage to get into your home even if you’ve sealed every crack and netted your windows till they look like Victorian frocks.

So yeah, sorry Mumbai monsoon, but I’m not a fan. Even if I did wake up today to the sound of rain gently shimmying down my window pane and abandoned my workout to gaze outside, nestling my adrak chai. (I was not looking wistful, that was just the laundry I was thinking about. It’s my resting laundry face). 

And even if the thought of a romantic drive to Lonavala may have fleetingly crossed my mind, a passing fancy, merely. And when the husband (who is one of those people I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph) brought up the subject of pakoras, I silenced him with a look of utter disdain.

But when I, grudgingly, bit into one such aforementioned pakora some time later, it occurred to me that this attitude towards the monsoon is frustratingly futile. I mean, whether I like it or not, they are going to carry on relentlessly for the next couple of months like they do every year. So I can either be a grouch (something I’m rather good at) for the next several months, or pivot, like the start up types would say and embrace them. And now that I think about it, there are a bunch of rather interesting things one can do that have a distinct charm in the monsoon.

Like that drive to Lonavala, for example. There’s something about those misty, impossibly green, winding roads with the clouds swirling around you that brings out everyone’s inner Langston Hughes. Or sitting in the glasshouse encased interiors of Fiori, pondering over life’s intricacies over their exceptional tiramisu and coffee.

Or, if you’d rather enjoy the rain while you’re comfortably ensconced indoors, you could visit some of Mumbai’s art galleries, whether it’s the iconic Jehangir Art Gallery or Art and Charlie if you fancy contemporary art. Or go on a hunt for Mumbai’s best hot chocolate, because everyone knows that there’s nothing quite like a sinful cup of the perfect, decadent hot chocolate on a rainy day. Or lose yourself in a book or four, at your favourite Mumbai bookstore.

And then suddenly, even if you’re the grumpy sort with a tendency to obsess over laundry, you just might begin to see those little magical glimmers of the Mumbai monsoon too. 

You may also like:

Small Things by Wellthinest