Rain, Beach and Me…

Mumbai is famous for sea shores and beaches, though one won’t get feelings of Goa. Nariman Point, Marine Drive, Walkeshwar, Juhu, Aksa, Arnala, Worli Sea face etc. to count a few, are among few sea beaches/ shores for ‘good time’. Band Stand is famous, not for houses of big bollywood stars like Salman Khan, Rekha, Shahrukh Khan – rather it is famous for non-stop kissing and other scenes around the sea face. This location is so crowded that you need to be lucky to get a seat, and ‘do what you want to do’! Most of the Mumbai’s sea face are famous or say ill famous for ‘lovemaking in public’. Added advantage is when it rains! I am still searching a convincing answer for one question: Is it that people get romantic at sea shore, or that they are already romantic, only find sea shore as a safe haven for doing ‘everything’!

It was June 11, 2011, one among few lucky Saturday’s when I do sleep for long hours. Thanks to the headquarters policy, we get two additional holidays every month. Monsoon has arrived to Mumbai before the expected time. May be it came on time, our prediction was wrong. So as expected, Mumbai has become a slum. Water logging everywhere, late running trains, buses, and flights are common. Anytime and anywhere, it rains. Timing of rain is also very peculiar. It rains to ensure you get disturbed for hours especially during office hours! Sometimes I feel that raincoat and umbrella makers must have paid a huge bribe to Almighty to ensure hours of non-stop rain. It makes them rich. Whole four billion populations in Mumbai are required to buy either Umbrellas or Raincoats. Think of the business they will have. If one umbrella costs Rs 150, one has a potential business of 600 billion INR businesses. That too in One month only!

So I woke up at 11 AM and decided to have breakfast. Well rain hampered my plans. After much of brainstorming I decided to drench myself, and came out in shorts and T-shirt. After roaming around for quite some time, on the roads connecting Siddhivinayak Temple, I decided to head for Arabian Sea. For a change, I chose to go to a less famous Prabhadevi beach. The intention behind choosing a sea shore for killing time was my inquisitiveness of watching Sea’s behavior when it rains. For three hours, I was wetting myself on sea shore and walking around. Miles of the beach were full of dirt, plastics, cloths, and waste materials. Thanks to the nature of Ocean. It gives back what you throw in it. The question is- why we throw these things in it? May be because these are safest havens to throw, may be oceans don’t charge any penalty to people to throw waste in it. People tend to forget the very basic fact that air originates from Ocean. The direction of airflow is decided by the ambient temperature and water evaporation rate from Oceans. If dirt and pollutants are thrown into it, it shall bring contaminated odours with microbes (bacteria n viruses) in the originating air. Oceans never remain partial with anyone. It gives back what is given to it, either directly or indirectly. Anyways, more than 30 couples were searching a ‘suitable’ place to sit near the sea face. Struggling inside a small umbrella, they were trying hard to warm each other. Most of the people I could see were wet; still they wanted to be under umbrella. Don’t know why! Another interesting thing on sea shores! Condoms! I was confused whether it was used here and thrown or used somewhere and thrown here? Anyways the good thing is people have learnt to use it. Stones pelted on sea shores were full of algae and seed shells. Since it was raining and I didn’t want to get injured, I gave up the decision of rock climbing and rock sitting. Out of curiosity, I decided to go into the ocean. The soil below the sand was completely soiled. The reason might be the sewer line and waste water pipes and tunnels that open into sea. I could experience black mud all around. Seems Mumbaikar’s have decided to kill the very serenity of Shores.

The water pipes and tunnels were pumping out gallons of water into ocean. Since it was raining, I assume 99% of the water pumped out was rain water. I wish municipality and government could have done something on rainwater harvesting, or could have made some reservoir to store these rain waters. Mumbai is known to have huge water cuts in the month of April and May. Let us hope, someday these highly pure rain water would be utilized properly in Mumbai.