The Monsoon Begins

Midnight, Rue Bellecombe, Pondicherry.

The monsoon, which has been threatening to commence for several days, finally let loose tonight with a drenching thunderstorm. Let the wild rumpus begin!

Forecast: Tropical Showers Likely

Imagine sheets of rain so caressingly warm, so drenchingly insistent, so thunderously purifying that you have no choice but to strip down, take shampoo and soap to the terrace, and bathe in the downpour. This is one very lovely way to celebrate the monsoon.

Under Siege

I love the monsoon rains. But tonight, we are under siege.

As Yoo-Mi has documented in the past, our room-on-the-roof is not exactly a water-tight vessel. The roof has had a new layer of concrete since we were forced to bail (literally, in two senses of the word) last year; and thus far, a mere two buckets are required to catch the drips. But tonight the rain is utterly torrential, and our 25cm mud-brick walls are thoroughly saturated. The photo above is simply the most artistic example.

The Rickshaws of Kolkata

It is a classic image of Kolkata: scrawny, spindly-legged men, often in advanced middle-age and barefoot, pulling passengers through the streets in rickshaws. According to a vote taken last month by the city legislative council, however, the hand-pulled rickshaw may soon be a relic of the past. The city has banned the practice as “inhumane.”

Kolkata is the last major city in the world where hand-pulled rickshaws carry passengers. China, where the rickshaw was invented, outlawed the “bourgouis and exploitative” practice in 1949, during the early days of the Cultural Revolution. Now, politicians in West Bengal are hoping to follow suit. Says the Chief Minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, “We have taken a policy decision to take the hand-drawn rickshaw off the roads of Calcutta on humanitarian grounds. Nowhere else in the world does this practice exist and we think it should also cease to exist in Calcutta. It is inhumane.”

Are hand-pulled rickshaws inhumane?

Monsoon

A number of factors kept us in the states beyond our scheduled departure date in early October, and we didn’t land in India until early December. November is the heart of monsoon in Pondicherry, where we live, though it is common for the rains to linger a bit after the calender page has been turned. When we arrived to day-after-day of clear blue skies, it seemed plain that we missed monsoon this year.