his year the monsoon arrived in Mumbai almost a week ahead of schedule. It announced itself with whip-cracking thunder on June 5, catching the otherwise prepared Mumbaikar unawares. Around June 10 in normal years, the average Mumbaikar has umbrellas, rubber slippers, plastic bags, waterproof bags, zip-locked checkbook holders, the works. Girlfriends make dates with each other to shop for gumboots.
The slush and the rush of the torrents of water leave the average worker surviving twice-over: once their normal day in an anxious, heaving city, and once again to wade towards their destinations.
However in contrast to a heavy snow-day elsewhere in the world, no monsoon can stop Mumbai.
Everything looks full and ripe, and children play and nobody is thirsty, and all of a day’s work (and play) is undertaken wet, instead of dry.
The monsoon is a great inspiration to pop-culture. From countless Bollywood films to Tuhin Sinha’s novel, "That Thing Called Love" and Kashmira Sheth’s endearing children’s book, illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi, about a young boy and his grandfather who go out one "Monsoon Afternoon" to sail paper boats.
More famously, Steve McCurry, the photographer behind the lucid eyes of the Afghan girl featured on the front of National Geographic, created a monsoon series set in Mumbai.
Particularly, this portrait of a tailor in the monsoon became similarly iconic, for framing the good humor and idiosyncrasies that come with this paradoxical season.
McCurry's photos all pinpoint the simultaneous hardship and humor and accidental poetry that come with the monsoon season in Mumbai.
This photo gallery charts the same.
Read more: Gallery: India's monsoon arrives early | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/wettest-monsoon-photo-gallery-youve-ever-seen-410728?hpt=hp_c2#ixzz1OyHldCXf
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