For the lack of convenient conversations, one of the most persecuted topics has to be weather. Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it rainy? Is it sunny? How is it? Good? Bad? Unbearable? Lovely? Which brings us to the greatest question in this realm: what exactly did you do to deserve it? Do the Bedouins ever dream of rain? Do the Eskimos ever want the sun to stay all day long? Aren’t those tribesmen in Papua New Guinea fed up of the rains? Noticed how one W-word can spawn so many irrelevant questions?
That, ladies and gentlemen and others, is the beauty of being.
Weather, at the risk of sounding poetic, is you passing through something, not the other way around. If you move from Mangalore to Gurgaon, the weather doesn't change. You did. To give you a more grounded example, when you visit Hampi, you go looking for famous landmarks. But that experience leaves a lasting effect on you. So, in reality, you become a landmark.
That’s precisely how the weather works.
You are the guinea pig here.
You are welcome.
As a boy who was introduced to black-and-white television, I enjoyed watching anything that moved on the small screen. In fact, back then, I even enjoyed weather reports on Doordarshan. Words like andesha, anuman, taapmaan, sambhavna, mausam (the root of monsoon), aasaar, raftaar (the first Indian hip-hop artist to accept bitcoin), adhiktam, etc. are etched on the canvas of my childhood. In short, I’ve always been fascinated by weather. We had a satirical chapter in English during my sixth standard where we learned how the Met department always gets it wrong: I was genuinely offended because I felt they were mostly correct. Anyway, thanks to that chapter, I picked up heavy words like cumulonimbus and stratosphere.
Yes, I always paid attention to details. Why? Because some of us are cursed that way. We end up scouring for stuff that doesn’t mean anything and yet we invest ourselves in it. Before going to Ladakh in 2012, I thought it would be very cold there. I was partially right: it was very cold at night but then, it was blistering hot during daytime. The kids there had faces like apples, mainly because their cheeks were adequately sunburned.
Having good weather is like winning the lottery again and again. If it’s nice, half the problems are already solved. Good weather is equal to better mindset. Anyway, I tend to keep a note of the weather. I always do wherever I am or go. If you ask me how the weather was during my last visit to Nashik, I can tell you elaborately. Similarly, I was in Chandigarh—one of the most pleasant cities in the country—for five weeks and made a note of the sky as if I was there on a secret drone mission or something.
As a parting gift, let me share some weather updates from my mental journal:
Nostalgia already.
The dark clouds are in and it's going to rain next year.
Cynicism must be trapped in those dark clouds.
Nothing changed.
The melting point of a person is now degrees.
Nature has turned off its fan. No breeze.
Claire Underwood level cold.
My noke is blosed.
The weather is having severe identity crisis.
This weather is gloomier than my future.
It's still raining. It will continue to rain all day. Till the end of time.
The storm before the calm before the storm.
Hot and windy, because confusion is cool.
When they offer you chutney and sambar, always take both.
Some days are a lot longer than the previous night.
Everything is absolutely still. No breeze. As if the nature has paused itself.
So cool. I loved the Noke is blosed part.