Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Aandhi

I walked through a dust-storm today. Cloudy when I left home, and then the wind whipped up. Dust and leaves and the funniest sight - those little cottony balls of fluff that hold seeds, rolling faster and faster down the road as the wind gave chase.

I must've been quite a sight. Lone girl in a red kurti and jeans, hand held up to shield her eyes, the wind whipping up dust devils all around her, her magenta silk scarf struggling to make a break for it.

Not that there was much of an audience.


Just a few measly drops of rain though. And I was praying for hail. Have you seen one of those in Delhi? If you're outside when they hit, you're torn between wanting to take cover (those things *hurt*) and staying out because this is ice falling from the sky in a city that was an oven till a few minutes back.

And if you're indoors, you hear them rattle as they hit the windows, the AC, the mosaic floor of the balcony. When it's over, if you get outdoors fast enough and if it was a big storm, the roads are shiny black and the hailstones look like melting stars.

4 comments:

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

Gah! They do look like meltling stars! Genius.

Pappaya Pie said...

melting white butter looks no lesser a sight...

Chronicus Skepticus said...

Beth: You have hail in Champaign?

*Unless* that was a comment on my unbridled shmoopiness in which case I'm embarassed as hell.

It was the sun I tell you! The sun!

Pappaya Pie: That's an intriguing name. Is there such a thing as pappaya pie??

As for melting butter...*sigh* that is the one sight is almost solely responsible for my 'child-bearing hips'.

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

I don't know what shmoopiness means, but you really are genius and we really do have hail in Champaign. And in champagne, when we take our flutes out on the lawn during springtime gala events and have to dash, laughing and tripping over our ball gown hems, for cover under a tree, then huddling for cover with our dashing companion. As one does.