Rain in the metro

Life in a.. Metro. Caught the show first day (a thing I rarely manage). The movie juggles (mostly unsuccessfully, I think – simply because you just sit and wait for the act to fall apart) several characters, each of them related to others in the movie one way or the other. (Just to tell you – I developed a crick in my already painful neck from keeping track of who’s bonking who and who the who is actually married to and who is related to who else how). The actors all did their bit very well but somehow I kept thinking of what I read somewhere – that Konkana Sen Sharma had signed on the movie without even hearing the script. Not that she got a bad deal – she with Irfan felt the most real… kept the movie together in some ways.

What I loved was how the rain was almost a distinct character in the movie… For all the references to metro (local trains), the rain was what defined the city best in the movie – sudden showers, umbrellas open, people going about their work as usual. Sharman Joshi throwing away his umbrella just to walk under the same umbrella as his love, Kangana Ranaut… ek aleki chhatri me aadhe aadhe bheeg rahe thae… Uma and Baradwaj in their reviews of Metro have mentioned the rain, each giving a different meaning to its role in the movie…

I can think of only two other movies (songs actually) where the Bombay monsoon has been the central character, the actors flitting in and out of it, almost peripheral to the rain which sets the mood. Rimjhim girey sawan – the one sung by Lata, not Kishore (which while is wonderful, does not show Bombay comes to life during the first spells of afternoon showers in June) – Maushmi Chatterji getting wet in the rain in gorgeous, squeaky-cleaned-by-the-rain South Bombay – pehli bhi yun toh barsey hain badal, pehli bhi yun toh bheega tha anchal – but now with romance in her life (a smooth-talking Amitabh Bachhan) the rains suddenly assume new meaning in her life.

And then sawan barse tarse dil in Hariharan’s melting (he surely deserves much beter than what Bollywood has given him so far?) and Sadhna Sargam’s melodious (and non-sqeaky) voices (listen to it here – opens only on ie)- I remember a longish stint I had in Chennai in 2000; unwell and jobless, I was watching television when I caught this song for the first time – and I ached to be back in Bombay. Bheege balam, phisle kadam barkha bahar me – all the romance and magic of the monsoon, with all the mundane and inconvenient phisle kadam (the girl falls in love with a most unsuitable boy – from another caste? religion?).

The rains in Bombay are like your long-awaited trips home – or an eagerly expected guest – the first few days are magical, wonderful, everything you hoped and waited for all this while – and before the week is out, real life slowly pinches its way in… Life goes on as earlier, you work your way around the rain (or the guest) – and also enjoy those rare flashes when you realize all over again how grateful you are for this – the rain – or this trip home with a family that dotes on you…

But for all the slippery muddy roads, the post 26th July paranoia, the clothes that never dry, the trains that run late, the slush and the misery, Bombay rains make me mushy. They mean to me long drives to the hills. The monsoon to me is a time to dream, when you look for excuses to stay back from work, and sit at home, sipping chai, listening to the rain outside. When you want to drive to Marine Drive in those short no-rain spells, just to breathe the smell of corn getting charred on coal, and feel the giant waves leave gentle salty drops on your cheeks.