It is raining!!!

I am so incredibly happy it is finally raining!    Monsoon season has arrived! 

It has been so hot recently that even I, a Michigander who claims she can withstand any weather and refuses to ever admit defeat by nature, thought it was too hot to even live.  I think Michiganders can only withstand large temperature fluctuations throughout the day.  70°F at 2 pm and then frost that night?  I can handle that.  But this constant heat is something we find unfamiliar and I only know how to combat weather with layers and snow boots, two things completely unnecessary in the current heat. 

For the past week, with the heat index between 106°F and 107°F, I have stared repeatedly at the weather report.  50% of rain, 50% of rain.  No rain, no rain.   Wednesday it finally rained, but so briefly I didn't notice it until I looked out of the balcony and saw that the cement driveway was wet.  

Our balcony.  Since arriving back from KL (which should be the forthcoming blog) I've found it way too hot.  I was desensitized by the relatively pleasant climate.  So, you’d say, just run the AC and eat a lot of ice cream.  Of course, our electricity bill runs in correlation with the temperature, and is also way too large.  Check on the ice cream, though. Indian electricity is like American taxes.  The more you use, the higher bracket, and the more you pay.   We are in the most expensive bracket, the '100 rupee bracket'.  If I could just get us in the bracket below '50 rupees', we'd be paying half as much per every unit of energy consumed.  Anyhow, because of our ridiculous electricity bill, I've been keeping the AC off and the balcony door open.

If you stand on our balcony, crane your neck to the right, and jump, you can see the Arabian Sea.  Otherwise you just see the tops of buildings.   But being so close to the sea does give us a pretty good breeze.  So each day I open the balcony doors, plop myself next to them, and doze in the heat.  

At least I can sleep inside.  For my cook/maid and driver, it is too hot inside their homes.  They have to stay outside during the day so they don't fry like an egg.   

So I have been using our balcony every day. Each day, when my maid comes in, I smile and tell her I hope it will rain.  Each day it doesn't.  Except for that tiny amount that neither of us noticed.   It is hard to notice the rain because the people of India reinforce their windows like they are trying to taunt the folks from Mission Impossible to sneak inside the home.  In our case, we have three 'layers' to our balcony.  The first layer (on the outside) is simple chicken wire, which is known as pigeon wire here.   It has worked fairly well.  So far, in four months, only two pigeons have wound up on our balcony. 

The next layer is metal, and painted sea foam green.  It is some decorative stuff that is apparently considered attractive in this country.  I find it a nuisance, ugly as sin, and useless.  What if I have to tie my sheets together and jump out of the window in case of a fire?  This stuff wouldn't even be allowed in the US.  At least they aren’t vertical black prison bars; they are wavy horizontal bars; I think it is supposed to represent ocean waves.  I just see it as a death trap. 

The last layer is a layer of mosquito netting.  I swear, one of those Mogul princesses who aren’t allowed to be seen by men could use our balcony for viewing.  No one can see in or out through that fine mesh.  But it is good, because it allows me to keep the balcony open, mosquito free, and everyone knows that I attract bugs better than a heat lamp.

Unfortunately, we have to shut the balcony doors at night.  I didn’t latch it properly, just once, and it swung open, waking us up.  Also, rats chewed on our bananas that night.   So the doors stay shut at night.  The rats and I have an agreement.  I get the balcony during the day, they rule at night.

Anyhow, back to the glorious rain.  It has now been raining for exactly 40 minutes.  My driver had insisted it wouldn’t rain today.  But as I was sitting next to my open balcony door and watching an episode of Huge (I love that show), I noticed that the sky was turning a distinctive green color that Michiganders know to either love or hate, depending on the current condition of the corn crop.  About ten minutes after the green appeared, the TV satellite went dead.   I started internally cheering, knowing the rain would soon be on the way.

I repeated walked to the edge of the balcony and stuck my nose, best I could, through the pigeon wire, wavy metal, and mosquito netting to see the ground.   Still no rain.  Still no rain.  And then, rain!   The kids who play cricket outside the apartment building started cheering.   The college students across the street ran for cover, and are still, 40 minutes later, standing in the same spot.  

It is dark now, and I can see a bit of lightning that I didn’t initially notice (I think the clouds are so thick they could block anything).  But it isn’t an extreme thunderstorm.  It was mostly just a very nice downpour that lasted forty-five minutes or so. 

The patch of dead-end road that my apartment building is stationed at is flooded.  It is hard to tell from this angle and the dark, but I’d guess maybe three inches of standing water.   I was hoping for more.  I really wish it wasn’t dark, and that it was at least a foot deep. I really want to go and run outside in it!  I didn’t buy ugly rubber (‘gummy’) boots for no reason! 

It is dark, so I can’t even stand on the balcony anymore.  The mosquitoes (yeah, the net isn’t that good) and the rats rule the night.   But now that I’ve shut the balcony, I sure wish the satellite would turn back on!

Yeah!! Monsoon season is finally here!!!  I love rain!

By the way, random fact of the day: did you know that it is so humid; my extraordinarily stick-straight hair is curling a bit?  That is humid!