Last year, I made an inauspicious start to the monsoon by losing my umbrella in the first week of the rains. It was with me for one minute. Gone the next. Just like that. Don’t know where I left it. Or if some rogue stole it when I was not looking. And yesterday, when rains poured continuously and heavily for hours flooding the city, I broke the umbrella I had saved from the last monsoon. I seem to have some cursed misfortune with umbrellas.
The umbrella takes some getting used to. It is easy to forget that you left home with it in the morning and must take it back at night. Especially if the day was bright and sunny. And the umbrella uselessly traveled around with you like an unwanted companion. That’s what happens to me. I am notorious for losing umbrellas. Once I bought a new one and stepped out of the store into brilliant sunshine, leaving the umbrella behind.
This is not a hereditary habit. My father had one long-handled Duckback umbrella all his working life. It had a sturdy wooden handle carved like a duck’s head with a long yellow beak. I think it lasted with him for decades because my father seldom used the umbrella. He used to gloomily stand by the window looking at the dark skies before leaving for work and ask, “Can I dodge the umbrella today?” And that’s what he did, leaving the Duckback at home.
But what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. Absentmindedly, I have walked out of restaurants into the pouring rain and gratefully accepted umbrellas from confused doormen when I hadn’t carried one to my dinner. And once in a multiplex, at the crowded popcorn and cola counter, I unknowingly switched an old and shabby umbrella with broken ribs for somebody’s brand new one of a similar model. And felt guilty afterward.
I have also found umbrellas on the seats of taxis and have not handed them over to the cabbie. Finders keepers. But now the rains are here and I have broken last year’s umbrella. Do you share my angst? The Turkish novelist Mehmet Murat Ildan said, “The rain never understands why people hide under their umbrellas. Let us make a surprise to the rain by closing our umbrellas.” I don’t know how it rains in Turkey, but I would like to see Mehmet doing that in Mumbai.
About Mark Manuel
The above thoughts/content has been proudly copied from the wall of Sir Mark Manuel. Being interviewing almost every role model of this country and going stronger each day. Mark Manuel is a respected Mumbai editor, writer, and columnist.
With over three decades of journalism in leading publications. This includes the Free Press Journal, Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Mid-Day, and Afternoon. He is famous for his brilliant pen interviews. He himself is a TEDx speaker.
Further
His interviews have featured in several leading media houses. They include the Hindustan Times, Huffington Post, BBC, and Network 18. Almost every famous person has been interviewed by him in the country from Mother Teresa to Muhammad Ali. His first book is just out. It’s titled Moryaa Re! It is a crime thriller that is perhaps the country’s first police procedural. He began his career covering crime. And in a tribute to his experience and knowledge of this beat.
Several distinguished officers of the Mumbai Police and its Crime Branch collaborated with him to make this book possible. Amitabh Bachchan wrote the forward in a statement of friendship for Mark Manuel and admiration for his work.
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