There is a particular kind of grey that belongs only to Mumbai in June/ July.
Not the grey of absence. Not the flat, featureless grey of a city that has forgotten colour. This grey is full. It carries within it the green of trees drinking deeply, the silver of puddles catching sky, the amber of streetlights blurring through rain-slicked glass. I noticed it on one of our first mornings here, standing at the window with my chai going cold in my hands, watching the city disappear and reappear between curtains of rain.
The first time I took Little Miss out in the balcony to see the rain she stood beside me, looking up at the sky and feeling the rain on her face and then looked back at me with an expression that said everything. Do you see this? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?
I was. I really was.
We moved to Mumbai two years ago at the beginning of monsoon season, which is either terrible timing or perfect timing depending on how you feel about rain. I feel about rain the way I feel about very good books – grateful, a little overwhelmed, and reluctant for it to end.
The city arrived in my life already drenched. My first auto ride here, the driver navigated a waterlogged street with the calm expertise of a man who has done this ten thousand times, while I clutched my tote bag (books inside, naturally; it’s an old habit) and marvelled at how matter-of-fact it all was. The rain is not an event in Mumbai. It is simply a season you live inside.
I am still learning to live inside it.
There’s a bookish memory I keep returning to these days. Years ago, I was reading The God of Small Things during a particularly dreary monsoon afternoon. It was of those long, suspended afternoons that belong to no particular hour. I remember the way Arundhati Roy’s Kerala rain bled into the actual rain falling outside my window, until I couldn’t quite tell where the book ended and the afternoon began. I hadn’t felt that complete, disorientating merging of reading-world and real-world again for a long time.
Mumbai, in the monsoon, gave it back to me.
There are cities you read about, and then there are cities that make you read differently. Mumbai, I’m discovering, is the second kind. Something about its texture, layered, loud, tender in unexpected pockets makes me reach for books that hold the same quality. Books that don’t resolve cleanly. Books that breathe.
This season, my TBR pile has arranged itself almost on its own. These are the four books I’m saving for rainy afternoons and chai that goes cold:
1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and somehow it has waited patiently for exactly this moment. A new city, a monsoon, a need to understand Mumbai’s deeper textures. Everything I have heard about it tells me it’s the kind of book that leaves a mark. I think I’m finally ready for it.
2. The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
Two women, two worlds, and the complicated tenderness between them set right here in this city. I want to read it with the rain outside the window and see how much of what I’m slowly learning about Mumbai I recognise on the page.
3. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
Part memoir, part investigation, entirely obsessive. Mehta returned to Bombay after years away and wrote the city down whole, every layer of it. I’ve heard you need to read it slowly, like a very strong chai taken in small sips. That sounds about right.
4. The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
Set in Kashmir, but what draws me to it is the restlessness at its centre; a woman between places, belonging fully to neither. A feeling I recognise completely right now, still finding my corners in a new city.
These books are waiting for me. The rain outside is the best possible reason to begin.
Little Miss has developed her own relationship with the Mumbai monsoon. Each morning, she stations herself at the window and conducts what I can only describe as a formal assessment of conditions, studying the courtyard below with focused, serious eyes. When the rain is particularly heavy, she turns to me and throws both arms wide, as if to say: Look at all of it.
I look. Every time, I look.
She has opinions about puddles too; strong, non-negotiable opinions. Small puddles are walked around with a certain dignified indifference. Large puddles get both feet, a pause where she makes sure my feet got some water too, and then a look of deep satisfaction that I would not trade for anything.
I watch her from the window, usually with chai, usually with a book face-down on the armrest.
The city has grown on us. We are still finding our favourites here – preferred chai stall, quiet street, our bookshop, which I don’t understand why there so few in Navi Mumbai. But the rain already feels familiar. And when the rain feels familiar, I think you might be home.
What’s on your monsoon TBR this year? I’d love to know – drop your picks in the comments below.
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