When the afternoon monsoon broke, the gutters were suddenly awash with paper; but this was money.
When the monsoon broke, one could watch dark, mountainous clouds mustering, edged with lightning; these would develop awesome pyrotechnics.
But forget about that, because it was early June, the time when the monsoon breaks, the yellow bullfrogs etc, etc... when Rahel returned to the house.
He is a specialist, who uses his eyes, nose and ears to sort and stack "empty water bottles, mildewed newspapers, used tampon applicators, umbrellas stripped to the ribs by the monsoon, broken shoelaces and yellowed Q-tips" so fast and efficiently that, by 2008, he is making the unprecedented sum of Rs500 (about £5) a day.
In August, the monsoons broke.
The months preceding the monsoons, which break in June, are uncomfortably hot.
The monsoon typically breaks over Indian territory by around 25 May, when it lashes the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
Officials said a respite was likely to come by the end of the week, followed by the anticipated arrival of the annual monsoon rains, which break the feverish temperatures.
We all know about this summer - flooding, monsoon conditions, records broken, the jet stream that stubbornly refused to shift.
Vritra prevents the monsoon rains from breaking.
