Monsoon Nights – Part 1: The Umbrella

The rain didn’t start in Mumbai. It arrived, the way an argument arrives: all at once, from every direction, with no interest in your plans.

Riya Malhotra had exactly three plans that evening. Finish the site visit at Kala Ghoda. Catch the 7:40 local from Churchgate. Be in bed by ten with a cup of ginger tea and absolutely no thoughts about men.

By 7:15, all three were underwater.

She stood under the narrow awning of a closed art supply shop, watching the street turn into a river. Taxis had vanished. A BEST bus sat abandoned at the corner, its lights still blinking, water lapping at its steps. Somewhere behind the wall of rain, a car horn played the same four angry notes again and again.

Her phone buzzed. Her flatmate, Tanya.

Trains stopped. Western line flooded at Dadar. Where are you??

Riya typed with wet thumbs. Kala Ghoda. Stuck. Will figure it out.

Figure it out how? It’s apocalypse out there.

She didn’t have an answer for that, so she put the phone away.

The awning dripped steadily onto her left shoulder. Her laptop bag, her precious laptop bag with six months of drawings for the Bandra library project, was pressed tight against her chest. Her kurta was soaked to the elbows. Her hair had given up an hour ago.

That was when the umbrella appeared.

It was enormous and black, the kind old men carry to cricket matches, and it came bobbing through the rain toward her like a small dark planet. Under it was a man, tall, in a grey T-shirt that had clearly lost its own fight with the weather. A camera bag hung across his body. He ducked under the same awning, shook the umbrella once, and water sprayed across both of them.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, that was, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Riya said. “I couldn’t get any wetter if I tried.”

He laughed. It was a good laugh, low and surprised, as if he hadn’t expected to do it. He was maybe thirty, with a few days of stubble and dark eyes that crinkled at the corners. Wet hair fell over his forehead. He pushed it back with one hand, and she noticed a thin silver ring on his thumb.

“Trains?” he asked.

“Stopped.”

“Taxis?”

“Extinct.”

He nodded slowly, as if she’d confirmed a medical diagnosis. “So we’re both just standing here.”

“I was standing here first,” she said. “Technically this is my awning.”

“Ah.” He looked up at the dripping cloth, then back at her, serious. “I’ll pay rent.”

She tried not to smile. She failed a little.

For a while they didn’t say anything. The rain got louder, if that was possible. A man waded past them with his trousers rolled to the knee and his shoes held above his head like a trophy. A stray dog sheltered under the abandoned bus. Across the road, a chai stall owner was methodically lifting his gas cylinder onto a plastic stool, inch by inch, as the water rose.

“I’m Kabir,” the man said eventually.

“Riya.”

“Riya.” He said it like he was testing whether it fit her. “What brings you to my, sorry, your awning, Riya?”

“Work. I’m an architect. We’re restoring a building on Rampart Row.” She lifted her bag slightly. “Which is why, if this bag gets wet, I will walk into the sea.”

“That would be dramatic.”

“I am dramatic.”

“I can tell,” he said, and something in the way he said it made her look at him properly for the first time.

He wasn’t flirting, exactly. He was paying attention. There’s a difference, and Riya, who had spent two years with a man who did neither, felt that difference land somewhere in her ribs.

“And you?” she asked. “What are you doing out in a flood with a camera?”

“Shooting the flood.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m a photographer.” He patted the bag. “Monsoon is the best light in this city. Everything gets honest when it rains. People stop pretending.”

“People stop pretending,” she repeated. “That’s a very romantic way to describe drowning.”

He grinned. “It’s a very romantic city.”

A gust of wind threw a sheet of rain sideways, straight under the awning. Riya gasped and twisted to protect her laptop bag. Kabir moved faster than she expected. He stepped in front of her and snapped the giant umbrella open, angling it like a shield.

The wind caught it.

There was a loud crack. Two of the metal spokes snapped and the whole umbrella folded inside out, flapping wildly like a wounded crow. Kabir held on with both hands, swearing in three languages, until the wind gave up and dropped it.

They both stared at the ruined thing.

“That,” Kabir said, “was my grandfather’s umbrella.”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry.”

“He hated it. He always said it was too big.” He looked at the mangled frame and then, unexpectedly, burst out laughing. “He’d have loved this.”

Riya started laughing too, the helpless kind of laugh that comes when you’ve been cold and wet and tired for too long. She laughed until her stomach hurt. Kabir leaned against the shutter beside her, the broken umbrella hanging from his hand, and for a moment the flood, the trains, the whole drowning city felt very far away.

When it passed, she noticed he was looking at her.

Not at her face, exactly. At the moment. The way, she realised later, he looked at everything he wanted to remember.

“Okay,” he said. “I have a proposal.”

“That’s fast.”

“A practical proposal.” He pointed down the road with the broken umbrella. “My studio is on the second floor of that building. The blue one, next to the bakery. Two minutes away. It has a roof, a kettle, towels, and a very bad sofa.”

Riya’s smile cooled a few degrees. Every woman in Mumbai knows the arithmetic of a stranger’s offer. She did it now, quickly. Public street. Bakery downstairs, still open. Tanya knew where she was.

He saw her doing it. He didn’t push.

“I’ll send you the address,” he said. “Send it to whoever you want. Your friend, your mother, the police commissioner. The bakery uncle downstairs has known me for six years. If I’m a serial killer, he’ll be the first to testify.”

“That’s exactly what a serial killer would say.”

“That’s fair.” He nodded. “Or you can stay here and wait. I’ll stay too. I’m not going to leave you alone on a flooded street.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I know you’re dramatic,” he said, “and your bag is very important.”

The water had reached the first step of the shop now. In an hour it would be over the second. Riya looked at the blue building. Its lights were on, warm and yellow behind wet glass. The bakery sign glowed: Yazdani & Sons, Est. 1953.

Her phone buzzed again. Tanya: Seriously, where will you stay tonight?

Riya typed: A photographer’s studio near Yazdani bakery. His name is Kabir. If I die, tell my mother I was right about everything.

Three dots. Then: IS HE CUTE

She put the phone face down in her bag.

“Okay,” she said to Kabir. “But I’m warning you, I have very sharp elbows.”

“Noted.”

“And a pepper spray.”

“Do you actually?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I have very sharp elbows.”

He smiled and held out his hand. She hesitated, then took it.

His palm was warm despite the rain, and rough in places, like someone who worked with his hands. They stepped off the awning together and into the flood.

The water was shin-deep and shockingly cold. Riya yelped. Kabir held her bag above both their heads with his free arm, his broken umbrella abandoned on the step behind them like a fallen soldier. They waded down the middle of the road, past the stranded bus, past the dog, past the chai uncle who raised his cup to them in salute.

Halfway there, Riya slipped.

Her sandal caught on something under the water and her body tipped sideways. For a split second she saw the whole thing: the fall, the bag, the drawings, the sea. Then Kabir’s arm was around her waist and she was pressed against his chest, his heart beating hard against her cheek.

The rain hammered down around them. Neither of them moved.

“Okay?” he said quietly.

She could feel his breath on her wet hair. She could feel the exact shape of his hand on the small of her back, steady and careful, as if she were something that could break.

“Okay,” she whispered.

She wasn’t sure it was true.

He didn’t let go until her feet were steady, and even then his hand stayed close, hovering, just in case. They reached the blue building. Mr. Yazdani, a tiny man with enormous eyebrows, was standing in the bakery doorway, watching the street like a ship’s captain.

“Kabir baba,” he called. “Who is this? You finally found a nice girl?”

“She found me, uncle,” Kabir said. “I broke Dadaji’s umbrella saving her laptop.”

Mr. Yazdani studied Riya with great seriousness. Then he disappeared inside and came back with a paper bag, warm, smelling of butter and sugar.

“Bun maska,” he said, pressing it into her hands. “For the shock. If he misbehaves, beti, you come down and knock. I don’t sleep.”

“Thank you, uncle,” Riya said, and meant it more than she could explain.

The staircase was narrow and steep, lit by a single flickering bulb. Their wet clothes squeaked with every step. On the second floor, Kabir unlocked a heavy wooden door painted the same blue as the building.

“Welcome,” he said, “to the driest place in South Mumbai.”

He pushed the door open.

The studio was one huge room with tall arched windows, all of them streaming with rain. There were lights on stands, white backdrops rolled against the wall, a long wooden table covered in prints and coffee cups. Plants everywhere: on the windowsills, hanging from the ceiling, crowding the corners. A red curtain hid a doorway at the far end. And yes, there was a sofa, green and lumpy and very ugly.

Riya stepped inside, dripping onto his floor.

Kabir dropped his camera bag, grabbed two towels from a shelf, and threw one to her. She caught it against her chest.

“Bathroom’s there,” he said, pointing. “I’ll find you something dry to wear. I promise it will be very unattractive.”

“Thank you,” Riya said. “Really. You didn’t have to.”

He looked at her for a moment. Rain ran down the windows behind him, turning the city lights into gold streaks.

“I know,” he said.

Then the lights went out.

The whole studio dropped into darkness so complete that Riya heard herself gasp. Outside, the street went dark too. The bakery sign, the windows across the road, every light on the block, gone at once. The only sound was the rain, louder now, closer, as if the dark had let it in.

“Kabir?”

“I’m here.” His voice came from just in front of her. Closer than she’d thought. “Power cut. It happens every monsoon. Don’t move, there’s a lot of expensive equipment on the floor.”

She didn’t move.

She heard him take a step toward her. Then another. She could smell the rain on his skin and the faint coffee-and-cedar smell of the studio. In the darkness, every sound felt enormous: his breathing, the drip of water from her sleeves, her own heartbeat.

His hand found her arm, lightly, just above the elbow.

“There you are,” he said softly.

And then, in the dark, he said the thing that would change her entire night.

“Riya. The roads won’t clear till morning. You can’t go back out there tonight.”

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Next: Part 2, The Power Cut. A candle, a confession, and a question she has never answered for anyone.