Rainy day memories...

The rains seem hell bent on not keeping their date with the city this season. The MET department which began forecasting this season with an upbeat "above average rains" etc, has now changed the tune to "gloom and doom" and keeps postponing the arrival of the much needed showers by a couple of days everytime one of the news scribes asks for their comments. I don't blame the poor souls, the gods sure seem upset with the MET department, as far as I can remember, whenever the MET department predict "rain and thundershowers" the sun shines in a cloudless sky in all its glory and when they say it will be a sunny day, the clouds burst like there is no tomorrow!!!

The BMC has upped the ante by declaring "20% water cuts" in the island city and suburbs and also "requested" the city hotels and clubs to stop filling their swimming pools with water as the lakes and ponds that supply water to the city only have enough to last upto 15th of July!!!

Last week as we scanned the newspaper, and came across the news item declaring that the city would have no water post 15th of July, my mum started reminiscing about the time when she was little and the city was in the throes of a similar rain problem. People were asked to go to their villages as there was no water to sustain the ever growing population.

Every community did its best to appease the rain gods, Christians went out on prayer processions, Hindus performed yagnas and bhajans and the Muslims also went out on prayer processions chanting "Ya Allah paani de, Ya Maula paani De". With all the attention that was showered on them the rain gods relented and the much awaited showers arrived in the city.

My uncles who were four and five years respectively at that time, also joined in all these activities...For days after it started raining they continued chanting "Ya Allah paani de, Kya bola, paani De ??!!!"