Sometimes the bad weather can bring you joy.

Today’s weather is exactly how it was when we first saw our current home – gloomy, dark yet full of hope. It was the fifth day of continuous house hunting. I was determined to find something that could replicate my home in Mumbai. I was waiting for a house to speak to me like it was my own.

It was almost a year ago that the winds lashed out at the trees, the dust got into my lenses half blinding me, we sat in the coffee shop outside the complex and waited to see yet another place and face yet another disappointment. A really delayed call by the property dealer had already inflamed us. We were almost determined to not go and see something else the week after that. All I wanted was to return to my house in Mumbai in which I had spent hours, making it from a brand new house with no fittings to a workable home with many memories. We move every 2 years. This is our third house. City to city, locality to locality, cook to cook, convenience store to convenience store, we are uprooted from our comfort zones so often that now house hunting has become a painful ritual.

In a weather like todays, we walked into the complex, through the dingy corridor that had no light and it opened up to the messiest and yet the warmest house I had seen all week. Seven people lived in this house before. None of the flushes were working. The balcony door had been cracked by the crazy wind, the wall was a jaundiced yellow and multiple things needed repair. But the kitchen had nice modular shelves, the living room had so much potential, the white light needed to be done away with and I could see more than a month’s time of work that the house needed but somehow it was okay. Somehow we had found our new house.

Sometimes bad weather brings pleasant surprises. Sometimes a heavy downpour can make you stay in and have that really rare conversation that cements relationships. Sometimes a really hot day can make you like yourself in your own skin. Sometimes a really cold day can make you fall in love with an author you didn’t discover before. Sometimes a windy day can make you feel like Marilyn Monroe. While on other days, it can find you your next home. :)

I did get rid of that white lighting.

Molten Sunset

The weather is deceptive today. It gets warm, a little dust storm comes from nowhere. Then the weather suddenly cools down. Now it is breezy, beautiful and not a time for indoor activities. It is the final match of the world cup. I don’t care too much about cricket. I just like watching the last few overs of the second innings. So I will go for a swim.

The water isn’t warm but it isn’t cold. At sun down, getting into the pool feels like dipping yourself in molten sunshine. It’s somewhere in the middle – the transient transition, the few minutes that just passes by, the shortest part of the day, when the yellow and ochre meets the blue and invites the indigo sky to take over for the night. It is a time for a peaceful exchange between the busy day time and the sleep inducing hour. That is the time I love to go for a swim, when everything is changing and the shimmering droplets of water turns into dark glittering globules and I can stay in and watch the day retire into the night.

And while I am swimming and have drowned the noise of the world and my mundane daily life thoughts in the water, I stay suspended in a state of alternative introspection. That is my favourite part of the day. That is the most beautiful. In a pool, around strangers with whom I don’t have to make conversation, in a completely public space, I find my most private moments and I find my peace.