Exercising in the monsoons

I know of people who love to go on night runs in the rains during the monsoons. I tried this a few years ago, but somehow the combination of sweat, rain water and mosquito bites was not to my liking.

I usually either shift my workout to a purely indoor one or just not exercise at all during the monsoons. Walking outside with my heavy rubber fisherman's boots does help me burn more calories though.

This year, however, i have decided to be a bit smarter and adjust my workouts around the weather. We've had a beautiful July with ample rains and sunshine mixed with heavy and cool winds. When the conditions permit I go down and play wall tennis with intermittent rope jumping sessions. The latter sucks my energy, but is a great exercise.  When I do play wall tennis, there are occasional passing showers but I am OK with that.  It's the feel of the fresh and clean breeze that energises me to play longer.

Every workout is followed with yoga and meditation. I am not sure how long I can keep this up, but I don't pressure myself at all. This is the greatest advantage of living in the present moment. Take things a day at a time...

As long as this lockdown continues, we can keep breathing fresh air. There's no substitute for that at all. 

Frogs herald the arrival of the monsoons

I have witnessed twenty monsoons in Bombay and until this week I felt there wasn't thing about the season or its arrival that I would have missed. So when I woke up around 4 am a couple of days ago, along with the sound of crickets there was something that was unfamiliar at least for Bombay. It was the sound of croaking frogs! 

At 4 in the morning their melody had no competition with the birds, and so I heard this concert as male frogs sang away to attract mates! These amphibians were well aware that the monsoons and heavy showers were on their way. And how right they were! Within a few hours, the Hindmata junction in Dadar was flooded! 

So the blue skies and relatively mild sun of June has given way to grey and cloudy skies and the kind of showers that no major city on earth witnesses the way Bombay does. 

July is a wet, rainy and romantic month in this city  (in case you choose to stay indoors). I love turning on my yellow lighting in the apartment and lighting a couple of candles near the windows, which are sprayed by rain drops that slowly move downwards and take down the dust of the summer. Thanks to the lockdown, my florist shut shop. I hope he returns soon. Red and yellow roses look beautiful between my candle sticks by the window. 

Like a southern Russian summer

I can safely say that has been the most beautiful June in Bombay in living memory. The rains arrived in the city on the first of the month, thanks to Cyclone Nisarga and we've had a decent amount of rainfall, but the days have been gloriously sunny with the cloud and winds making sure it doesn't get too hot.

This month in Bombay has felt like a summer month in southern Russia. Instead of dacha duty, I have been trying to use the daylight as well as I can by playing wall tennis for any period between 30 minutes and an hour. It feels so good to move my body in such beautiful weather, supported by cool breeze and fresh and clean air.


When I look up, I see blue skies, warm sun and grey clouds, and of course a canopy of a banyan tree! My building compound is blessed with Ashoka trees, a Banyan canopy and a Gulmohur canopy. It's easy to look up and totally forget that I actually live in one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

This bliss, like all things in this physical realm, is passing. Soon the monsoon rains will lash Bombay and my wall tennis may be curtailed.

For as long as I can, I'll enjoy this Southern Russian summer, fuelled with some outdoor activity, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and Malayalam literature, as well as mint tea, the last Alfonso mangoes of 2020. 

How to keep the streets of Andheri West as clean and empty as they are now

Under normal circumstances it would take me exactly a few seconds before bumping into someone in the densely packed streets of Andheri West. J.P. Road is a major thoroughfare connecting S.V. Road to Versova, Juhu and the link road that heads as far north as Bombay stretches. Andheri also has its fair share of educational institutions and industrial areas. People who come to these every single day are guilty of dumping plastic bottles, wrappers of chips and other junk food and a whole assorted set of items that belong in garbage or recycle bins. I am no social enforcer so besides a dirty look, I don't bother much with litter bugs anymore, as far as possible.

A wonderful part of this lockdown has been that these people are home and not coming from elsewhere and trashing my area.

It is no longer stressful to go outside. No more loud car horns, large crowds and auto rickshaws. Since schools and colleges are indefinitely closed, the noise that comes from the streets is equivalent to what used to be the case on Sundays. I frankly love it.

Andheri has been abused for decades, as has the rest of Bombay. One of the best ways to decongest both is to throw out industrial estates, the headquarters of the Western and Central railways, Central Government offices and Bollywood. The city's population would fall by a substantial number and places like Andheri West would be more liveable under normal circumstances. 

Seeing Bombay from an entirely different perspective

I haven't left the city in six months. This is my longest continuous stretch in my hometown since 1998, when I was a teenager. Of course, three of these months have been under lockdown, but there is so much that I have been able to notice and observe thanks to this forced isolation.

For starters, the natural light outside. I can easily tell a month in Bombay apart by just looking outside. The 9 am blue-yellow light in December is different from the light at the same time in April when it's more of a lemony yellow. The breeze that blows in to my apartment in May is different from the one in April, although the difference is absolutely subtle.

What I have been able to notice in 2020 is the gradual change between these periods. The cloud formations, the birds (except parakeets) and butterflies were things I never paid too much attention to, but now I can tell the whistle of a black bird with a silver tail apart from the chirping of other birds.

When one is left with few choices, it's easier to notice the size, colour and shape of flowers on the trees. So no, copperheads and laburnums don't just have yellow flowers and the gulmohur flower is not just orange-red.

The late summer twilight is so different from that of January.

And oh the number of big birds that fly in the sky! How could I have never noticed them and their path before?

I have no idea what is going on even two kilometres from here, but I do know that we are surrounded by all kinds of beauty that often goes unnoticed. It's all there for us, to access when we do.

It's time to light candles and enjoy the grey and white rainy monsoon days now. I don't have to worry about being late for a meeting because the rains have wrecked havoc with the traffic or trains. 

Palakkad red rice and our heritage

India’s now-eased lockdown has forced even the strongest opponent of tech billionaires to try and source some groceries online. One of the boons of this reliance on e-commerce for Malayalis is the
nationwide availability of Matta rice from the fields of Palakkad. Those who live in localities (outside Kerala) that don’t have many Malayali residents would find it next to impossible to get this variety at the local grocery store. 

The change in diet from the polished white rice to this fine red variety has proven beneficial to this writer in many ways. Besides the obvious nutritional benefits that come with Matta rice, there is the compatibility of Kerala and particularly Palakkad cuisine with this variety. Erishery, sambar and any kind of upperi goes great with this variety...

Read my latest column for Manorama Online here.  

The summer of Covid-19 in Bombay

Old readers of this blog know that I absolutely love the months of April and May in Bombay. The humidity doesn't really bother me that much. There's always a nice cold glass of aam panna waiting for me when I get home. I love the flowering trees, the longer days. We don't exactly have White Nights here, but the sun does set after 7 pm in May and there are traces of daylight till around 8 pm.

The best part of a Bombay summer is the reduced traffic on account of schools being shut, and the fact that many families leave the city for long vacations.

Although I spent most of the Covid-19 summer indoors, I did have to step out for fruits, vegetables and some groceries. What I did notice is that it was much cooler this year than the years past. This obviously is because cabs, private cars and autos were off the roads for the most part. The burning of fossil fuels and the fumes that vehicles emit make it a lot hotter.

This summer was also a pleasant one for birds, which found a lot more freedom thanks to noisy people being indoors. They were always around but I started to notice them more in my building's common areas. The only unhappy birds seem to be the crows, who love feeding off garbage dumps. The very fact that the streets have fewer footfalls means there is less garbage on them,

There were days when I walked to the Andheri market and it felt just perfect. There was life, lots of vendors and a reasonable number of people, but it wasn't hot, dirty, smelly or crowded. Besides the metro line that bisects J.P. Road, the image of the market may been similar to that in the early 1970s.

I did miss having ice cream at Natural's in Juhu and having a sundowner at a bar overlooking the Arabian Sea and walks and jogs on the beach, but spending so much time at home helped me realise how much time I do waste outside, and how stressful the city's streets can be when life is normal.

Once life is normal, I'll make sure that local grocery stores deliver my monthly provisions and I do my vegetable and fruit runs at strategic times to avoid the horns, stress and people as much as possible.

The summer of Covid-19 has given way to the monsoon season of Covid-19. I am not sure how long this will go on, but there are indicators that school will only restart by August 15. I'll use this time indoors the best way I can by reading, learning, indoor and balcony gardening and meditating. Whenever I do get access to the great outdoors in the future, I'll appreciate all the more.