With a Bang!

Devastation and destruction, the first casualty of the monsoon

Monsoon has arrived in Mumbai and how. The sky was overladen with dark clouds since early morning, the sun refusing to come out. A strange stillness hung in the air. And then it began to drizzle. By 6:30 a.m., the droplets turned into a torrential downpour and it began to rain cows and bullocks.
Inside the Garden, silence of the lambs greeted the few who turned up to exercise. Water gushed everywhere and flooded the lawns. Apparently nobody had come prepared with umbrellas. We sat quietly, huddled in the China Hut, confused whether to thank the heavens for this sort of relief from sweltering heat and humidity. The skies rumbled and crackled with thunder as the rains showed no sign of abating.
Against this backdrop, Nahid Khan took to conducting today’s exercises inside the China Hut. It was a wise decision because within minutes, the wooden shed close-by (where we usually exercise during the monsoons) came crashing down, narrowly missing two old men and a middle-aged dog who had taken shelter there.

Concluding prayers by Ved Prakash Grover

Exercising in China Hut

Had we been exercising in there, chances were at least one of us would have been reduced to chutney.
Sadly, what we missed today was the madness and mayhem people like Shekhawat and Bijoy Gupta bring to the Garden every morning. Still, Srichand Arora and Mallika Kagzi tried to enliven the proceedings with occasional one-liners and wisecracks, but their voices could hardly be heard against the roaring downpour outside. Even the 'train' did not run today, because, as someone remarked, "the bogeys were there but the engine was missing". After all, we were only 12 today. But that’s okay, when the date is June 12.
Kiran Prakash:
I really like your imagination on the age of the dog and that "at least one of us would have been reduced to chutney".