MONSOON. You're the shit and I'm knee deep in it. Literally!

I could probably live the rest of my life without another drop of rain ever touching me again and be perfectly content. I've reached my quota. But today there was so much rain that I couldn't be annoyed at the minor inconveniences of walking through ankle deep water to get to the main road, which has disintegrated before my very eyes over the past 2 rainy monsoon months in Delhi. Today the rain was so ridiculous that it took me an hour to get to my house--a journey that is usually a 20-minute stroll, a 15-minute walk.

Here's how I found myself knee deep in the shit:
I was over at a friends house, doing some trip planning for the beginning October as we have a 2 week break from Deli University. "Why?" you may ask. Well, you see, this year Delhi has the honor of hosting the Commonwealth Games. They can only be described as what I like to sum up as the Olympics for former British Colonies; tramady (tragedy + comedy) ensues. The entire city has been under construction since we've been here. New overpasses, metro stops, sidewalks, wiring, painting. Everything you can imagine. Makeshift scaffolding crafted out of bamboo. Mini-Machu Picchus made of bricks eroding away under the torrential downpour, completing their life-cycle back to red clay. Styrofoam pallets eroded too, into chunks and pebbles thrashing about in the filthy puddles gone mad with the excess water. Like a sea of green house gas evaporated icebergs, but covered in a film of foodwrappersmangopitsbannanapeelspetrolexcessfecesofthehumanandanimalvariety.

But to get out of the simile and back to the (sur)real. Today, or tonight I must say. As I left my friend's house the wee downpour began, though there had been a steady drizzle all day. Usually I walk back to my house from the metro, but as night had fallen, my shoe had broken earlier in the day--from rain destroying whatever was holding it together (faith? optimism? Elmer's?), and it was raining, I opted to take an auto-rickshaw. But fate would have it otherwise as the mere 3 auto rickshaws that even dared near the newly forming rapids near the metro entrance were filled with passengers like a lifeboat on the Titanic (too soon?). A few bicycle rickshaws approached. After losing the sprint once, I thought I was home free (not technically, for the ride up the street from the metro bike rickshaws are a 15 rupee splurge compared the 5 rupee rides in auto-rickshaws). I asked, "Bayaa, Batra chalogaye?" (Brother shall we go to Batra--the movie theatre near my house) and he said "Baithiye" (sit) and I said "kitna" (which is the abbrev'ed form of how much) and he said "sattar" (70) and I was like "kyaa?! bis!" (What?? 20 rupez) and he just shook his head and I shook my head and went back under the awning. Then the rain got worse so I posted up near the back of the crowd and finished a chapter in the book I'm reading (about the goddess Kali, seriously obsessed with her). Then it let up. Snagged a bike rickshaw for 50 rupez, essentially the cost of a kilo of tomatoes and half a kilo of onions, to put it in perspective.

The water is so high that me are holding their khakis up to their knees, where the water is lapping after each car makes any kind of movement (did I mention that traffic was a total clustercuss?). Cars are honking constantly (typical, but especially futile considering the weather conditions, making it excessively pointless) and car alarms go off. I am in a matrix of small 4 doors (silver is the color of choice here), motorcycles with 2 or even 3 young men straddling the struggling beast, little Vespa-esque scooters, old rusted Hero bicyclists, huge city buses white with two thin horizontal stripes running down the middle of its shell dividing top and bottom sometimes with windows smashed out running until they literally can run no more, a few auto-rickshaws that seem to hover on the grey-brown water, a myriad of walkers (much less common when there's no downpour) and other bike rickshaws proving their efficiency in all weather conditions.

Some motorcyclists had to get off their bikes and walk them through the streets or on the 2 foot center divide (also rapidly eroding due to the fact it is made of a line of concrete slabs leaning up against mud and maybe a few rocks here and there) because their exhausts were inhaling water and their engines were starting to smoke. For a quick second I thought that the bike right next to my rickshaw was going to explode or something because it was smoking up so bad and I thought about how devastating it would be to lose an eye because of that. But he turned off his bike and started walking. Those brave souls that walked probably didn't want to wait in the traffic, or pay the exorbitant monsoon prices for hallowed admission into any kind of vehicle. It could've been me, really, when that police SUV sped past us heading north bound on the deserted southbound side of the street (because that would mean people having to leave via S on Dr. Mukhergee Nagar having to walk through the rain to their cars to escape the neighborhood into something that could be even more fearful in the concrete maze of Delhi). It could've been me, really, when the SUV not only splashed the people on the center divide, but drenched them from head to foot. 5-foot tidal waves like big blown kisses from the drivers via the tires in bliss with the dirty-grey...paani (water!). The guy closest to me that got drenched did a classic "Are you serious?!" gesture and sighed at the heavens and continued on his way.

Times were slow, I started singing to myself. Or I guess you could say I was serenading the rickshaw-walla. Braided my hair and enjoyed the ride. A little Monk nun (Biksuni) in a little Docker's khaki colored rain poncho and matching rain hat saw me peeking out under my little red rickshaw roof and gave me a big, adorable smile and a wave. SO ADORABLE. I was already in the zone of this-is-so-ridiculous-that-I-am-getting-zen-Buddhist-on-this-and-maybe-even-enjoying-it-because-it-is-so-ridiculous stage and her smile brought me into the this.is.so.ridic.it's.awesome stage. Water was up to my feet while sitting in the rickshaw (something like 2ish feet from the ground?!). The center divide was no longer visible under the newly born sea, see? Those who had been navigating their ways home on it appeared to be dogged and dogmatic Christ-like walking on water while wheels drowned. Bikes were stalling and so were cars. Men pushing rickshaws out of the mess, searching for some higher ground. And all the while, amid this seeming chaos people watched from the sides of the streets. Sometimes clutching umbrellas trying to gain strength for their eventual submission to the fact that they would get wet somehow or another on their way home. Some cozied up in restaurants or the neighborhood Cafe Coffee Day (i.e.: India's version of Starbucks).

Eventually we arrived to the stretch of the street that isn't constantly flooded--maybe it has some whisper of a drainage system?, and cruised up towards Batra and my home. In front of one of the sweet shops a group of young guys probably in the mid-20s, were splashing and playing on the side of the street since they were already all so soaked anyways, why not take it the max? It was pretty awesome. One guy tackled his friend into the water and the guy in the water dragged his assailant in with him and then the other friends got in there too. I thought I was the beach for a second. No, really. So mirthful! Then it was time for me the get back into the rains, though I was already soaked (the little rickshaw roof doesn’t cover your legs or protect you from being in the splash zone of motor vehicles, nor does it help when its raining sideways, nor does it help when you go through a big ditch that it sheds all the water it's been keeping between you and the bursting sky on you all at once from that sudden deep-ditch jolt). I paid my rickshaw-walla a few crumpled 10 and 20 rupee notes and held my Ali Baba pants up to my knees.

And I was knee deep in it. And then my sandal broke even further submerged in that water and I was floppin around on one good foot, trying to keep the other sandal from totally slipping away. As I neared my street the water receded, and collected in pools instead of drowning the entire street like it had on the main road. I was still singing to myself and a guy right behind me with some of his friends was singing too. He caught my stride and said "nice huh?" and I said "pyara mausum" (cute weather, literal translation). And he said "oh you know Hindi" and I said "thori Hindi aati he" I have acquired a little Hindi. "Nice Hindi" he says and I continue home, no more than a minute away I'd say. Belt out some Rilo Kiley and traipse up to the third floor of ol' 907 Mukhergee Nagar.

I drip in through the front door tell my tale to my enthralled housemates. And I peel off my soaking clothes that smack on the floor with a satisfying, engorged slap. And then my roommate Alyssa says, "Oh my god you're blue." Turns out the shirt I was wearing today, borrowed from dear Nina, hadn’t been washed yet. And if you didn't know, everything in India bleeds its die. All over the place. Like a dog in heat. Buckets of laundry (no washing machines here, sorry!) bleed together. It is a crime here for any fabric to maintain white. I'm starting to think that the whole hippies are obsessed with India thing is all backwards. My theory? India forcibly turns people into hippies by dying their formerly white clothes into Berkeley Telegraph Ave wet dreams. And then monsoon rains dye my body blue. Can you imagine! A sheen of blue hue seeped into my torso. The color of a dying Navii in the movie Avatar. Not that vibrant blue, but a blue-y grey. Subtle. Call me Susan Sarandon already.

If you're wondering...it’s still raining right now. We'll see what more destruction the rains bring. Supposedly the Yamuna River (which runs through Delhi and is oh so close to my neighborhood) is a just .2 meters from 1978 levels--the highest monsoon recorded in recent history. Awesome!

xoxo
Soggy Delhi Dime