Monsoon in Arizona

Believe it or not, it's monsoon time in Arizona. For a place that receives about 3 inches of rain a year, even if it rains once a year it's called the monsoon. It rained like hell on tuesday night. The smell of damp earth along with the fine spray of water that hit me every time I opened the door was so much like Kerala where it rains for six months.(Okay I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels). No one can live in Kerala and not be nostalgic about the rains. The whole place becomes unbelievably beautiful. Oh yes, there was one more thing to remind of home - most areas had power outages within minutes of the thunderstorm. Now that's something I know quite a bit about!

I've spent five years and as many monsoons in Kerala and never have I owned an umbrella of my own. In college there was always some nice girl to share her umbrella. (Don't blame me, I know for sure that with my absent mindedness I cannot own an umbrella for more than a few days). Couple of weeks back I bought The Life of Pi from Borders. Ever since someone borrowed my bike permanently, I've been using the bus and that involves quite a bit of walking down Mill Avenue. Every time I come near the Borders bookstore I cannot resist the temptation to walk in and buy something. I invariably end up buying something from the store to justify my hanging around for two hours. (Sanaja just sits down and reads entire books without buying, so I'm sufficiently inspired to try it out the next time I visit. Now where are those Asterix comics?)

The glorious book about Pi left me without as much as a bye in a Jack in the Box (or maybe it was the bus.. I really can't remember). So I'm reading the second copy of Pi which I purchased the same day. (I wasn't so interested in the book, but I saw the same lady at the checkout who had sold me the earlier book and I seriously wanted to spook her out by giving her a feeling of deja vu.. by buying the same book and saying the same things).

[On the net: Great rotational illusions | Greater Illusions | Robert Blackwill gets an emotional sendoff | A bathroom odyssey in glorious technicolor | A Job for John]