14 July,2022 10:19 AM IST | Mumbai | Sammohinee Ghosh
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The pitter-patter of the rains always invites a crazy mix of emotions - romance, reflection and nostalgia. My choicest monsoon reads match that mood. Anjum Hasan's A Day in the Life is a book I read during this season every year. The collection that moves at a languid pace loops narratives of love and longing, myth and legend, and domesticity and hesitant romance. The thematic sentiments seem somewhat magnified against the grey skies.
When I was in Chicago, rains took on a different meaning making me incredibly homesick. I used to spend hours watching the downpour, the trees, the empty streets, and catching the sounds of the city. In a way, time stopped suspending my sense of self. Months after I returned, I picked Like Blood on the Bitten Tongue by Akhil Katyal. The poet's prowess can make time stop. Although the book of poems mirrors Delhi, its insightful observation of the everyday makes it a perfect choice for an evening of quiet contemplation. I would also like to recommend Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier. It's a book I read many years ago but a charming sentence from the story has stayed with me - "There was a time when every home could have its own lake." The line beautifully captures the need for green open spaces, something the city monsoons nudge us about.
I am originally from Indore, but have spent some 15 years in Mumbai. I couldn't have discovered the city without its literature and of course, its rains. While many crib about the mess on the roads during these months, I cherish the place wearing the beauty of a wet day. Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill rings a bell because the protagonist in the story, Perveen Mistry, is a lovelorn lawyer whose take on the rains is as divided as the multicultural context to her struggles. She hates the season when out but appreciates it from the safe confines of her home.
My early years in the city were ushered in with Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Lin associates the sea with his realisation of exile and when it rains continuously for a week, he warns the villagers of the river water rising. They laugh at him for his naivety. The book also shows how monsoon can mean different things for different social classes.
I can't think of the rains without turning to the opening lines of The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy describes a force of nature in one the most profound and cinematic ways. That paragraph begins with, "But by early June, the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green" - and is a burst of colours and life thereon. Also, the most impactful events of the novel unfold during the monsoon months.
The island city has a singsong deliberation with the season. And the minute I think of Mumbai, I am reminded of a Bombay traced by the Parsi community. It comes alive in Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. He highlights spatial marginalisation in jhopadpattis where monsoons, beyond the certainty of a common world, can destroy shelters and belongings.
Titles to get children to look at the monsoon with amazement:
Raindrops: This book by Vaishali Shroff follows a little girl called Anju whose imagination is spurred by the downpour.
The Little Rainmaker: In this book, Roopal Kewalya depicts the fierce determination of a young girl who's faced with an environmental crisis. She lives in an age of no rains and doesn't believe her grandfather's stories about the season.
The Little Bird who Held the Sky Up with His Feet: Author Paro Anand shines a light on how the unlikeliest hero - a little bird - can save a big forest from the Monsoon Army.
Inputs by Archana Atri, 56, founder, AA's Book Nerds
