RAIN DICTIONARY

DEPRESSION
Not just the low-pressure zones in the sky that invite the heavy rain-clouds and the monsoon, but the hollow feeling in my stomach when I look at the still-wet washing hanging on sagging lnes inside rooms where they have no business to be. Wet clothes should dry fast and smell fresh and sunny, not go on hanging for ever.

DEBRIS
Is the muck that rises up to greet your feet (or ankles, or knees, or waist - depending on the water level) when you wade from job to home, or anywhere to anywhere.

DECISION
To take the raincoat or the umbrella? The foldable brolly or the huge one with the hook-like handle that always gets stuck in other people's bags? Whatever I decide is ineffectual anyway, because the monsoon has a mind of its own. And a heavy downpour can throw cold water on all my decisions.

DEVILRY
The sheer cussedness of auto-richshaw drivers who are always zipping up and down, but never where you want to go. In monsoon, along with dengue and malaria, auto-rickshaw refusals reach epidemic proportions. Even if you have tons of grocery bags on your arms, or wet-and-wailing children in your arms. They'll never go where you ask them to, but always stop and pick up the next person.

DESPERATION
Personified by me when I am standing in the pouring rain, trying to flag down an auto, with an ineffectual umbrella in one hand and the aforesaid tons of grocery bags on the other hand, getting horribly late for home.

DELINQUENCY
Personified by monsoon-mad Mumbaikars who seem to be in love with this misery-pouring season. As Obelix would say, "These Mumbaikars are crazy!"

DEFIANCE
Me arguing with the above-mentioned mad phalanx and saying, "Monsoon, huh? The sooner it is over, the better. And anyway, why doesn't it just go and rain on the lakes, instead of messing up my life?"

DELIGHT
Is a fast-forward to a future when the lakes are full and the sun is shining.

Care to add some more words to the list?

FLIPPING OVER

Probably I'm late, as usual. Probably everyone of you have already been there and done that.

But I'm just so, so excited about about this on-line bookshop I've just found out about - FLIPKART.COM.

They have the most amazing collection of books that most other bookshops (even my favourite haunts like Landmark and Crossword everywhere) do not have in stock. And they offer you pretty decent discounts! And they'll deliver it home, if home is in India, without any shipping charges!

I managed to track down a whole lot of completely delicious and completely unavailable-elsewhere women detective fiction authors from the 1940s-1960s. Everybody's heard/read/seen/bought/trashed/loved Agatha Christie. Her contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, - more erudite, and, ergo, less popular - graces Crossword/Landmark shelves in her shiny reprinted avatars. But I totally flipped over when I found rows and rows of juicy murder mysteries by Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh (Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh are together revered as the Queens of British Golden Age Crime Fiction), Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth! Virtually close enough for me to reach out and touch! Now I can't wait to bite into them!!! And it's great fun just browsing along and adding random favourites to my wishlist!

But if you are completely unmoved by Miss Marple and Miss Silver, Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Inspector Grant or Albert Campion and the rest of those ancient genteel-detectives, you can always search and find your own poison!

A site for all bibliophiles to flip over!! I have!