RAINING ON THE RAIN
The skies are glooming and the streets awash with rain water. Mini floods have panicked people into jamming the streets and the pedestrians are all about to catch flu. There's malaria in the offing. The water supply is also likely to be contaminated by sewer water. And the rain you are revelling in might just be acid rain.
In fact, while you are busy cherishing the monsoon, it has every plan to kill you. Maybe it is time we stop romanticising the rain.
Why wax lyrical about the rain, in all honesty? Because it's beautiful, seductive, fresh and cool? Are we really that shallow? Have we not learned anything really from Julius Caesar's encounter with Cleopatra? While every other person can dedicate their Facebook status, the most important form of communicating all and every idea, we caution the men to take a step back and really look at the bigger picture.
Sure, women may love to get wet in the rain and so will the little boy in you. But since you aren't a woman or a little boy, it's time we act like men and be rational.
Firstly, before you even think about going out in the rain or praying for rain, stop and promise never to think about such things. Rain breeds mosquitoes and mosquitoes end up killing you.
A 2005 report by African Health Sciences gave credence to this very phenomenon, showing how an increase in rainfall increased the likelihood of malaria. Furthermore, the more it rains, the more the availability of breeding grounds for mosquitoes. While we all get wet in the rain and dance to a Hindi song, we don't ever come back and empty the accumulated fresh water all around our vicinity. Mosquitoes lay eggs in these still waters and give birth to malaria, dengue and cholera carrying little nymphs.
Secondly, monsoons don't just mean sudden rain. They also mean lightning strikes. And lightning strikes kill people. So while you are out there chilling in the rain with your friends on your roof, a lightning strike will ensure that there is a happy ending. And while little children may delude themselves into believing such strikes will give you superpowers, they actually won't.
Finally, do we even need to talk about the dirty water on the streets? The streets will be muddy and by muddy we mean full of contents from the sewer making it muddy. How is it romantic or even appealing to walk in that muck? Have we not seen what people do on streets corners, spitting and relieving themselves? The undercurrent of my possible love affair will not be a motley of excrement, spittle, garbage and possible acid water. A honeymoon with typhoid is not at all anyone's idea of a romantic time out.
These are just some reasons why you should not be all “oh it's raining let's go out”. That rain you see disguises the many images of flood and disaster the next day's newspaper will hold.
The rain is depressing. The only joy to be derived from the rain is to partially open your windows, hear the rain patter, get under your blankets and have a peaceful sleep. And no, you don't have to cosy up with a book.
Photo: Sazzad Ibne Sayeed
Model: Airin and Sam
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