Each year by mid-July the monsoon rains would arrive in Murree. We would go from glorious sunshine and fields of daisies to soggy puddles, torrential rain and a fog that enveloped the mountainside; a fog that rushed in to the house whenever you opened the door.
The monsoon rains were like nothing I’ve ever seen in the west. They would soak you through in minutes. Clothes and houses were perpetually damp and smelled of mildew. Shoes, if left in the closet for too long, would turn green with mold. The makings of penicillin were all around us.
For a kid growing up, it was easy to believe that a flood could wipe out the whole earth while experiencing monsoon rains.
My mom would try without success to dry our laundry by setting up makeshift clothes lines all over our small living quarters.
Life was perpetually humid and moist.
The school we attended was an old church building with a tin roof. The rain would come without warning on school days, beginning with a pitter-patter and ending with a roar. Classes were known to stop because the teacher, even shouting, could not compete with the sound of the monsoon rain on the tin roof. Buckets placed throughout the classroom created an obstacle course, there to collect the rain that would sometimes drip and other times pour through cracks in the ceiling.
Despite these weeks of fog, the discomfort of sticky, damp clothing, and ever-present scent of mildew competing with the strongest of perfumes, these monsoons were an expected part of life, understood and tolerated as such.
Monsoon rain meant water supply for the rest of the country. Monsoon rains meant good harvests in places far away,
The rains also meant landslides and tragedies, occasional floods and internally displaced people. Rain was life – the good and the hard, the beautiful and the terrible.
The rain on the tin roofs would fall through July and August, but just as you could count on their coming, you could also count on them leaving, giving way to glorious sunshine and clear views of some of the highest mountains in the world.
Rain was the sound of home and belonging. As a small child I would wake to thunder and lightning, followed by torrential rainfall. I was rarely afraid – rather I would clutch my covers close to my chin, say a silent prayer and drift off to sleep to a land of sunshine and hope.
It’s strange that after all these years I would think about rain on a tin roof. Some moments stay with you forever, not because they are particularly deep or noble but because they were such a constant in the life that shaped you. A continuous thread in the thick tapestry of events woven together to shape the life that is yours.
Picture credit: Monsoon Rains. Digital image. Photo of the Day: Heavy Monsoons. Zoomer Magazine, 4 July 2011. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <" rel="nofollow">http://www.zoomermag.com/news/picture-of-the-day-heavy-monsoons/22173>.
