Is it the monsoon yet?

There have been short rain showers nearly every day for the past week, and I ask Indians at work, is this the monsoon? First off, no one calls it “the monsoon.” It is “the rains.” Only I call it the monsoon. Second, no, it’s not the monsoon yet. These are just pre-monsoon rain showers.

A few weeks ago there was a hurricane that hit Oman. Oman is a country on the extreme east of the Arabian Peninsula. North of it is the Persian Gulf and north of that, Iran. There are a lot of Indian immigrants there. Maybe you’ve heard that the Arabs won’t work, so they ship in huge populations of foreigners – Indians being one of the most represented nationalities in this shipping. Some Indians died in this hurricane, and it was slight news here. It was more newsworthy because this storm has delayed the official start of the monsoon.

But today it has rained almost all day off and on. It pours for 10 minutes or so, then it drizzles, then it clears up. It stopped raining for about 3 hours this afternoon, and with my reputable meteorological skills, I predicted that it would not rain the rest of the day. This was, of course, a wrong prediction, yet on today’s adventure I never got soaked, just a little wet.

I woke up late, had some spaghetti and red wine, and then lounged around reading for a few hours. When it had stopped raining for a while, I started out on my adventure. My original plan was to go to South Mumbai and go on an adventure, but I never made it that far. Nevertheless, my first stop was to see Vicky and buy him his box.

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