When we landed in Bengaluru city, south India, our new home for the next two years, the weather was blissful with a light drizzle every day.
Coming from Dubai, where the temperature at the time of packing was hovering in the high 40s, the cool weather was a huge relief. (A couple of weeks after we left the emirate there was a frenzy on Facebook as friends started posting pictures of their car dashboard thermometer touching 50 degrees).
When I was in Saudi Arabia, home to the fearsome and beautiful Rub Al Khali Desert, The Empty Quarter as it is otherwise known, the temperature for some reason never reached 50 degrees Celsius, even in peak summer.
People who were unlucky to be walking on the street or had been forced to park their car far away from their destination, would be panting and perspiring with each step. Motorists in the cool comfort of their saloons with the air-conditioning blasting at full force, would look at you and say a small prayer of thanks that it is not them that is walking on the road on this terrible day. But the official temperature was always somewhere around the mid-40s.
There were many conspiracy theories floating about at that time over the mild temperature. “According to the ILO (International Labour Organisation) you have to give your employees the day off if the temperature touches 50,” said a knowledgeable friend. “Nobody wants to give us a day off,” he said, shaking his head. I thought about what he said and wondered what would I do with my day off. At that time there was nothing much to do, except go home and watch Disney cartoons on TV or fall asleep in a stupor.
“The weather in Bengaluru is lovely,” I gushed in an email to a friend as I looked out of the window. “Just like London.”
“You have never been to London,” said my wife, looking over my shoulder. “And the English hate their weather,” she said.
“I know London very well from watching Colin Firth and Hugh Grant movies,” I retorted. “We should buy a Burberry umbrella,” I told my wife.
What we did not know was that Bengaluru is pummelled by two monsoons every year. One, by the South-West Monsoon from June to September and the North-East Monsoon from November to December. This year, for some reason, maybe because of global warming, the weather went wonky and both the monsoons merged and it has been pouring every day. And it is not your ordinary cloudbursts, but rains with dramatic thunder, lightning and breaching of river banks.
Wettest year
Whenever the winter rains came to Jeddah or Dubai, the streets would turn into swimming pools, traffic jams ensued and municipality water tankers pumping out water from the inundated districts was a common sight.
Motorists foolishly would venture out into the deep waters desperate to get to work or return home and photographers had a fun time taking pictures of Japanese cars floating or nearly submerged with just the roof sticking out of the water. In Bengaluru, newspaper headlines screamed this was the wettest year for more than 10 years. The weatherman gleefully noted that the city has received more than 1,600 mm of rain. With the heavy rains, the badly constructed roads just melted away and giant potholes appeared like sinkholes waiting to eat up humans.
Bangaloreans have a crazy sense of humour. Memes and jokes started flooding social media sites as residents got fed up with the daily struggles of commuting:
“In India we drive on the left of the road. In Bangalore, we drive on what is left of the road.”
And this one:
“Bangalore is the only city where distance is measured in units of time.”
Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. You can follow him on Twitter @mahmood_saberi.
