Let’s face it, we all love a good storm. One reason why we love it is because it provides us the most convenient and universal ‘pause’ button.

Ever since I can remember, I have harboured a strange fascination for balcony doorways. To my curious mind, they have come to symbolise an ethical voyeurism – a place of transition between the private world of a hidden household, and the public performance of city living. These ‘middle-men’ are ignored for most of the year, but there’s a particular season when you can find a frozen city standing with bated breath under their archways: the monsoon.

Let’s face it, we all love a good storm.

So much so, that Delhi has been waiting impatiently for two days for a superstorm that is yet to arrive. Millennials went live on Instagram from their dusty terraces Monday evening, as Whatsapp groups flooded with ‘weather warning’ messages, and 10-Things-You-Can-Do-During-A-Thunderstorm advice, from paranoid, but well-meaning, elders. In popular culture, stormy weather has evolved to become a common background for romantic montages, introspective mind-monologues while travelling, or grief-struck central characters contemplating the meaning of life. Also, chai and sutta.

In literature, the term pathetic fallacy is used to describe the phenomenon of human attributes and conduct being transferred to inanimate objects of nature. There’s a reason Wordsworth’s clouds are lonely, or why we secretly imagine ourselves to be in a Bollywood movie when it rains. Human beings cannot help but try and find echoes of themselves in the environment around them.

As a species becoming increasingly isolated by technologies we built to connect us, a storm also becomes a shared experience of almost-trauma. It’s only fun as long as someone you actually know doesn’t die. Over 125 people were killed by dust storms in five states last week, but for us, it’s a distant reality.

The possibility of harm unites us, within a common purpose of protecting ourselves and our loved ones. If you read a little more into that “Stay indoors,” message, you might find it sounds a lot more like “Hey we’re in this together, and we’re not alone”.

Maria Konnikova writes at this exact intersection of science and psychology. In her New York Times bestseller ‘Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes’, she asks, “Why are people so fascinated by storms, even when they’re nowhere near them?

“In the modern environment, we aren’t exposed to natural risks in nearly the same way. But the underlying neural mechanisms haven’t gone anywhere … A winter storm—or any storm, really—approximates this thrill. It’s powerful, and even dangerous. But safely ensconced inside, and in front of our computer screens, we don’t think that it will really hurt us…. We satisfy our inner risk-seeker without going into dangerous territory,” she writes.

Assuming you don’t blame yourself for destroying the ecological balance of the planet when these storms hit, it’s likely you will experience a moment of transcendental smallness – look how powerful the winds are, look how tiny your problems are in comparison. A storm is the most convenient and universal ‘pause’ button, because now you don’t have to explain to your boss why you’re exhausted from running in the rat race. In the face of (almost) destruction at this scale, what is pressing the snooze button for another ten minutes?

So Delhi, for now, can exist in the calm right before the storm. Because as long as we can share pictures of Sonam Kapoor’s shaadi lehenga, talk about the IPL, and wait for the storm together, maybe the ‘real’ world will pause till we’re ready. Ten more minutes in the balcony doorway, please.

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