Cloudy vision

Over the past month, there’s only been one thing to do while skin turned into something like soggy velcro to which everything clung uncomfortably: stare and the sky and wish for clouds. Of course, if and when the rains do come, we’ll all be cursing the waterlogging that makes us wade through all the icky muck of this city. Right now, however, the clouds that will be source of future misery are the one thing that makes the spirit soar just a little. Armed with my little camera, I’ve been counting clouds as they came over Bombay — first, thin and wispy and then, plumping up little by little — and building cloud castles of rain.

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Last night, a little past the witching hour, it rained. One moment, everything was stuffed with sweaty silence and suddenly with a whoosh, there was rain. You had to peer past the darkness and look for the occasional glint in the orangey streetlights to believe that it had finally, finally rained. And within minutes, it was over. Today, the clouds were fleshier and more dimpled than ever, as though they’d all fattened themselves overnight on our hopes that today would be just a smidgeon cooler. It wasn’t.