Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

Many (non Indian) people are scared by the concept of monsoon (continuous rain for weeks).

But rains are life!!

Rains means being freed of the unbearable heat, rains mean seeing plants thriving everywhere, rains mean you will have food next year, and electricity also!! Here in India we love the rains!!

So if some times monsoon also means traffic, anarchy, damaged roads and flooding like below on Linking Road in Mumbai:

It mostly means amazing moments watching the rain falls, like here in Deo Bagh, Madhya Pradesh:

On a Saturday I took my parents out for a walk around (some parts of) Mumbai: the Byculla zoo (where we happened to be more of an attraction than the poor bear), Malabar Hill and the Banganga tank, Chowpatty beach and Marine Drive, the local train back home.

I dont'think I have ever ever seen so many people. I think the 3 millions of Muslims of Mumbai went to the zoo and then to the beach on that long Eid week-end... Socially interesting but physically suffocating...  

I concluded by visiting Big Bazaar on Sunday. When I saw the line I thought of giving up but pushed by my dad I went. You couldn't move 2 centimeters anywhere in the supermarket and each cashier had a line of 50 overfull carts. Before fainting I dropped my empty basket and rushed out (as fast as the crowd would allow me). Stupefying experience. Sales were going on. People fighting to get 1+1 bottles of coke. If this gives a glimpse of what the world will be when India access modern consumption, we should be shit scared I tell you! 

Video of Chowpatty Beach and the Saturday crowd

Photos of a day strolling around Mumbai 

After one month away from home I decide to take back possession of my place. Which means getting rid of all the vermin the monsoons generously bring along. Not only because my parents are coming next week, no no no, it is also because it has become really filthy.

Now picture this!!

My maid enters the house to see me half naked, a terra-cotta mask on the face (all the vermin must go), perched on a stool cleaning the walls. She got a shock and found the motivation to also climb on a stool to clean the fans. Which have turned from white to black with dirt and this is no image…

Had she entered half an hour before, she would have found me getting rid of the dead mini-flies that keep appearing in my fridge after it got accidently unplugged for half a day two weeks ago… Which led me to inspect the fridge and discover all the black fungus thriving in the rubber thing.

Had she left half an hour later, I would have taken her to help me clean my car. For some reason water manages to get in and I have a nice grass blossoming on the passenger seat floor and anything in fake leather is covered with fungus.

Cleaning the walls proved a tedious task with orange and grey spots everywhere. And plain dust as well. I didn’t have the guts to clean the wall where infiltrations have been unstoppable – it has been raining more in my living room than outside! Which led my wooden shelf to turn white.

And to finish my “fumigation” I attacked my cat’s ear which has a special monsoon-parasite!

Aren’t monsoons fun??!!!