It just has to get wet, wet, wet, on a Sunday morning, and fear dangles over movie-land once again. Memories of the July 26, 2005, nightmare return in the manner of Banquo’s ghost.

Amitabh Bachchan’s fleet of cars was destructed, Shah Rukh Khan and family had to seek shelter in a five-star at a hotel’s throw away. Katrina Kaif’s brand-new apartment leaked like a tea-strainer. You don’t want to remember more, do you?
Quite naturally, in a filmcentric city, rains stir images. Newspaper monsoon pictures display romantic pairs — are they the same couple every year? — huddled under umbrellas, street kids bathing boisterously and seafront boulevards lashed by salty high tide waves. Movie and TV stars, alike, pose with Dalmatian-dotted or Burberry umbrellas for the enterainment supplements. Not that the movielanders use umbrellas, the TVwallahs do. And so after an itense monsoon attack, the city inevitably limps back to normal. And as inevitably, you want to shout out loud will someone ban this limp homily please?
Fire brigade engines break speed limits like those souped-up bikes from Dhoom (or should that be Fast and Furious?), docs deal with an array of viral fevers, and Page 3 celebrities give Page1 bytes about how it’s the season for hot chai and hot pakoras. Excusez, are there any other kind of pakoras but the hot kind. Since the show must go on, shoots are in progress unless of course, clout-wielding stars can’t make it to the Film City grounds. It’s another matter that they drive in lumbering SUVs. So what’s a micro-water logging, dudes?
Quite tellingly, Bollywood’s rain fascination starts with the title itself, Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat was followed by Rajkumar Santoshi’s Barsaat (Bobby Deol-Twinkle Khanna) and then Suneil Darshan’s Barsaat (Bobby D again, the title must be lucky for him).
Madhubala was drenched in rain, even as superb qawwalis rent the air, in Barsaat ki Raat.
Raakhee, blind but sensory-alert, crooned away in Barsaat Ki Ek Raat. Anu Agarwal showed up in the classic white sari in Rain (directed by one of the peepshow NRI types). And to date, Smita Patil’s mum isn’t happy that her tremendously gifted daughter broke into an Aaj rapat something something with Amitabh Bachchan in Namak Halaal.
Rain songs are not for real, incidentally. The torrents are manufactured by rain machines, which can be quite a costly affair. That’s why Mira Nair was thrilled about completing Monsoon Wedding on a bang-on tight budget.
There can be several wet takes and re-takes, in the course of which the stars are offered cognac snifters to keep themselves warm. I’m not suggesting that Juhi Chawla must have downed gallons of VSOPs while filming her Darr song though. Tea, coffee and shawls are the other warm-comforts in the vanity van... And believe you me no heroine can escape the wet rite of passage. A wet song is mandatory to get to the A-list. Ask Katrina Kaif (De Dana Dan), Kareena Kapoor (Chameli, 3 Idiots), Priyanka Chopra (Barsaat, Agneepath), Sonam Kapoor (Mausam) and Anushka Sharma (Badmash Company). There’s no heroine who hasn’t done it, be it Aishwarya Rai (Guru) or Kajol (Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge). Er… that transparent, curve-accentuating look is loved by the viewers. And raindance clips are even sold, at cool prices, nowadays to websites.
Rain can even play Cupid as in Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli. If Kareena Kapoor and Rahul Bose connected, it was because the rains had brought life to a standstil. And you can bet that at the end of the story, the city limped back to normal.