PERSONALITY
TREND
FASHION
SPECIAL
ARCHIVES

V Gangadhar

Monsoon. Magic. Masti.

But they came back with a vengeance. I had put away my umbrella because I felt the rains would not return. When I retrieved it from the attic, I found it needed major repairs. It was then that I discovered I was not the only man who had taken the end of the monsoons for granted. All those who repair umbrellas had disappeared. Since I was reluctant to invest money in a new umbrella at the fag end of the rainy season, I decided to stay indoors till the showers stopped.

This was my 19th monsoon in Bombay. Before that, I had not bothered much about the rains because the monsoon was seldom active in Ahmedabad where I had spent the previous 19 years.

My association with the umbrella went back much earlier, to my school and college days in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. And looking back on those days, I can say that my links with the umbrella were inherited from my father.

Kerala, of course, experiences heavier rainfall than Bombay. At Fort Cochin, sitting inside the collector's bungalow which almost touched the sea, I used to watch the menacing black clouds assemble and take over the sky. Along with thunder and lightning, the raindrops started from the horizon and came rushing towards the shore. They were huge drops and clattered down with a loud noise on the tiled roof of the bungalow.

Naturally, the umbrella was an essential part of everyone's daily equipment. In the rainy season, we could not do without it, though carrying an umbrella did not protect one completely from the heavy rain. For me as a student, holding my books and the tiffin box along with the umbrella was an ordeal.

There was always the fear that my dhoti would come down any moment. Especially since I often had to run fast to catch the buses and, then, the ferry boats which took college students from Fort Cochin to Ernakulam. It was sheer good fortune that I did not stumble and fall.

I have never liked carrying umbrellas. But, then, in Kerala, you could not avoid it. Even during the hot months, when there was no threat of rain, boys and girls carried umbrellas. My father had strong views on the issue and I could not stir out of the house without an umbrella. "It protects you from the rain and from the hot sun," he told us. "And you can always use the umbrella as a weapon of defence." Fortunately, such an occasion never arose.

In those days, we never bothered with fashion. For some years, college boys did not carry lady's umbrellas with them because it was regarded effeminate. Suddenly, this trend changed and it became fashionable to carry umbrellas with attractive plastic handles. The gent's umbrellas of those days had huge curved handles and were referred to as paataa kodai (grandfather's umbrella).

Coloured umbrellas were practically unknown then but, sometimes, one saw old men carry with them umbrellas of such antiquity that their black cloth had turned white with age.

At Ernakulam's Maharaja's college, where I studied for two years, some of the village boys brought olai kodais (huge umbrellas made from dried grass) with them during the rainy season.These were common among villagers, but seeing them in college rooms was a new experience. We sniggered, but it had no effect on our rural friends.

Occasionally, the umbrella had its image burnished. One of my classmates discovered a lost umbrella which belonged to one of the most attractive girls who travelled with us in the 'college special' boats. We volunteered to return the umbrella to her, but my friend would not listen. Though shy by nature, he was determined to do the job by himself.

We watched the scene with excitement. He approached the girl, muttered something and handed over the umbrella. The 'goddess' smiled radiantly (she had dimples on both cheeks), chatted with him for quite sometime while we burned with envy. He returned to our company in a daze and, from that day on, all of us were on the lookout for lost umbrellas!

Some of us did find an occasional lost umbrella but the owners invariably turned out to be old men or irritable middle-aged women.

As I grew up, lost umbrellas continued to haunt me. In Bombay, I managed to lose an umbrella every monsoon. I developed a habit of getting down from buses and walking away, leaving my umbrella behind. My wife was so exasperated that she kept aside the oldest and the most unattractive umbrella available in the house for me. No one bothered to return even these to me. Because of this tendency to lose umbrellas, the lovely ones which I brought back from my two trips to Hong Kong were denied to me.

Of course, umbrella technology has changed tremendously over the years. All you have to do these days is press a button and the umbrella opens or shuts. We had tougher specimens in our days. It required some strength to open and close these umbrellas. Quite often, during the latter process, the thumb and index fingers got entangled amidst the rough springs which held the cloth together. It was a painful experience, that too when you stood exposed to the pouring skies.

Illustrations: Dominic Xavier