That rainy day feeling

With the monsoon at the door, seasonal associations come knocking

It’s one of those pre-monsoon showery days where the weather – much like the Hogwarts ceiling charmed to reflect the sky outside – is conducting the orchestra of thoughts and emotions within. Temporarily erasing months of uncertainty, gloom, grief and loss, it’s fooling me into believing it’s just another end-of-summer day in any year of any decade. Luckily, I haven’t yet spied any rain poems on my SM feed (mainly because I’ve resisted posting them). Before the deluge of odes hits, I’m having a private tryst with the returning rain, unspoilt by other people’s nostalgia.

The four seasons principle

It’s impossible to talk about certain cities without talking about the weather, too. These fierce yet fun rivalries are often predicated on the climate. I turn a special shade of red when I hear about Mumbai’s unbearable humidity from Dilliwallas, alternately ensconced in an ice box or a furnace to endure their city’s temperature extremes. I am, however, partial to Bangalore’s siesta-worthy afternoons and Chennai’s Decembery enchantments.

But it took an afternoon at the posh Tollygunge Club in Kolkata to bring out the diehard Bambaiyya in me. After a placid morning of golf, a silver-haired gentleman I had just met patronisingly told me about how Kolkata trumps Mumbai in the city hierarchy because it has four seasons. At which point I was pleased to inform him that we, too, had Four Seasons now – in Worli. He laughed, we ate our sandwiches, drank our shandy, and I left feeling I had done something to restore the dignity of my poor city battered by perverse weather for most part of the year. But why allow someone from Kolkata to say that?

A perfect storm

No painter portrayed atmospheric effects better than JMW Turner. In his canvases, the dramatic moods of the sea were captured with such command that looking at a turbulent ocean in actual life takes me back to his paintings, as if they were the template for nature.

The Tate Britain in London holds the largest collection of his works, which take your breath away with their primal force and mastery of light. I’d like to visit the gallery with a seafarer someday, just to see what kind of impression the paintings make on someone whose life is governed by wind and surf. But to walk into a faraway art gallery with a sufficiently sensitive sailor is too implausible a dream even for a writer suffering a bad case of pre-monsoon syndrome.

From raag Miyan Ki Malhar to Tchaikovsky’s Winter Daydreams, art and the seasons have an intimate association. And it’s not just the purveyors of high art who use the weather as inspiration. Bill Watterson distills both the rain and snow into his work to great

GET WIND OF

It’s not just the purveyors of high art who use weather as inspiration effect. I especially love the Calvin and Hobbes panels with sheeting rain playing spoilsport for the six-year-old boy with a memorable sulk and imagination. And in the guilty pleasure category of entertainment, I enjoyed the Gilmore Girls – A Year in the Life (2016) miniseries, following its fast-talking, coffee-glugging, love-seeking mother-and-daughter duo through a cycle of seasons at Stars Hollow, that fictional American small town that’s equal parts cringe and comfort.

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT CERTAIN CITIES WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER, TOO. THESE FIERCE YET FUN RIVALRIES ARE OFTEN PREDICATED ON THE CLIMATE

Dear Mr. Fry

With the rains now at the door, the triggers will be many. You’ll likely overuse food apps. Be tempted to send beseeching messages to holograms from your past. Drink when you shouldn’t. Overthink what you mustn’t. Let me absolve you in anticipation: it’s not you, it’s the weather. The most heartening weather analogy I’ve ever encountered comes from the British actor, comedian, author and mental health crusader, Stephen Fry. The wonderful anthology, Letters of Note, compiled by Shaun Usher, quotes the exchange between Fry and a woman called Crystal Nunn, struggling with a severe bout of depression in 2006. Here’s an excerpt from his reply:

“In the same way that one has to accept the weather, so one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes. “Today’s a crap day,” is a perfectly realistic approach. It’s all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. “Hey-ho, it’s raining inside: it isn’t my fault and there’s nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow and when it does, I shall take full advantage.””

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