Monsoon madness

Above is the crow that was actually a pigeon.

I got drenched twice today morning trying unsuccessfully to dry out two buckets of laundry on the terrace. The first time, while blissfully in the bathroom, I had no idea that the clothes wrung dry by the washing machine were now being brutally battered by big bursts of monsoon moisture. The second time, I was plain defiant despite gloomy grey skies and my energetic arrangement of clothes and clips were sent into utter disarray within 15 mins by another gigantic grey abandon of whimsical waterborne clouds.

Resigned and resentful, I dumped the overloaded bucket by the terrace door and panted perilously down the stairs to shut yet another lot of windows against the onslaught of the moody monsoons.

Then this sombre sight met my eyes. Junior joined me and after much consideration, he overruled my identification of the avian species under observation and airily identified it as an extremely miserable-at-the-moment specimen of the pigeon species. He pompously explained that my error was natural as its bedraggled feathers rendered its colouring darker than usual what with the falling light etc. I was duly chastened. Not just by my mistake in identification but by the realisation that there were certainly other living creatures in a more pitiable plight than me at that point.

Talk about relativity!