The monsoon evening is a rooftop ritual

The first proper downpour triggers a synchronised migration upward. Rooftops and balconies fill with families conducting the season's opening ceremony: rain watched from just inside the splash line, accompanied by items fried specifically for the occasion.

The menu is codified by consensus. Pakoras — onion for traditionalists, paneer for the ambitious — with chai brewed darker than any other month permits. Nutritionists publish monsoon advisories every year; every year the rooftops file them respectfully under the plate.

Each terrace hosts the same cast: the uncle who predicted this exact rain, the cousin filming slow-motion droplets for an audience of forty, the grandmother who remembers better monsoons with suspicious consistency, and one wet child in violation of every instruction.

The ritual ends when the rain does, or the pakoras do, whichever the household treats as the real weather report. The plates go down, the poetry improves with distance, and the city returns indoors to complain about the humidity it just celebrated. Both positions are sincere. It is that kind of season.