Weather
A friend once teased me when I asked about the weather in his town. He said, we’re meeting after all this time (eighteen years) and you want to discuss the weather?
But weather is one of those triggers like smells or sounds that bring back memories. I remember the weather on some of the most memorable days of my life.
That day we met, this friend and I, it was warm and muggy. I remember how stifling it felt in the empty chapel until the air conditioning kicked in. We were waiting for a bridal party to arrive for the rehearsal. That marriage unfortunately didn’t last but this memory lingers.
My own wedding day, it was hot and sweltering. All the guests wilted in their silks and suits but we were too happy to feel the heat. I drank a couple of chilled Bloody Marys and didn’t eat a thing. My new husband ate his way steadily through all the courses. Twenty four years later, it’s much the same. Oh don’t get me wrong, I curse the summer heat like the rest of us but my anniversary is the happiest of days. That hasn’t changed. Except I now match him bite for bite at dinner.
The day my brother died was all beautiful blue skies and sunny enough to bring out straw hats. My girlfriends and I had spent the day out. It was cricket season – Australia and India were playing a test match and we had been given the day off from school by our Australian principal. That night, after everything was over, I lay down to sleep in a neighbour’s house. It was very hot and stifling in that strange room but their distraught solicitude and the sleeping pill sent me into the first of the many nightmare filled nights ahead.
The next day, at the funeral, was terribly hot. I wore the most inappropriate clothes, given the weather. A white skirt of some synthetic material, a black woolen blouse and a green nylon scarf to cover my head. My hair was unkempt because my mother was in no state to plait it neatly for me. The heat felt like a slap to the face as the priest droned on and my friends arrived on muted motorbikes. But then, as my brother was lowered into his grave, a cool afternoon sea breeze danced through the trees and brought us relief from the oppression. Perhaps it was really the relief of knowing it was done, no more threats and drama and emergencies. Rest in peace indeed.
There are memories of rain too. Once, we walked in a sticky drizzle along the beach, sharing a raincoat. Another time, we were drenched on a bike ride after giving blank cassettes to Ananth for taping. Those were the eighties and that’s how we got our music fix. We saved up to buy blank TDK or Sony audio cassettes, then spent the entire afternoon at a professional recording shop, mulling over the albums for side A and B, discussing the pros and cons of Rainbow versus Scorpions, or Dire Straits and Eagles. Best of all, carefully selecting the right mix of songs that would fit exactly on a ninety minute cassette. A mixed cassette cost more to record than two straight albums but were the most coveted music tapes in our collection. Having spent a happy afternoon at Vibes, the shop with the musically most clued in owner and the best equipment in town, we were on our way home when the cloud burst hit us. We were drenched in seconds and it was glorious. My brother’s friend was caught in the same shower. I still remember him at the traffic light, shaking his head at the two of us, laughing as we sped away from him. It rained too, the day I broke a heart. Our tears mixed with the rain that morning.
Our older son was born in the early summer, but I remember feeling very cold as they wheeled me in for an emergency caeserean section delivery. The maternity ward was beautiful, each white washed room with a balcony overlooking the ocean. A fresh breeze blew through the room and the baby slept better when it did. He grew up with a topsy turvy thermostat. If it was cool outside, he needed the air conditioning on full blast, and while the rest of us wilted in the summer, he would huddle in an extra layer and turn the fan off. That boy has always marched to the beat of his own drum…
Our second son came six weeks early on a chilly January day. He had to be bundled up in warm clothes before we could take him out on the same balcony, after more than a week in the NICU. Seventeen years later, he still loves the cold weather.
The delayed monsoon set in this morning and we had a day of furious rain. Monsoons in the three cities I’ve lived in have all been very different. In the first sleepy Southern town, the rain fell in unrelenting sheets for days on end. The coconut palms bowed their heads and swayed in the wind and we waded through calf high water to school. In the second, a city of drought and missed opportunities, a cyclone would hit the coast every year with bizarre accuracy on a friend’s birthday. Then the monsoon would settle into a cycle of a couple of days of heavy rain followed by five or six days of a gentle drizzle.
In this third city, my city now for a quarter century, we rarely experience cyclones or really stormy weather. Here, instead, the weather plays havoc with busy people’s busy schedules. Some years, it will pour every morning just as children are leaving for school and then clear up for the rest of the day. Other years, it will stay sullen and dry in the day. Slowly the humidity will build to a screaming pitch, and the clouds will open up just as people are heading home after work. Then there are rare days like today when it rains steadily for hours on end.
It is still raining as I write this late at night. Tonight, the rain will act as the counter beat to my dreaming. Weather is not just a clichéd conversation starter, as a friend once joked. Sometimes, it is interwoven with memories and magical moments of déja vu.