Petrichor

There are people who love the monsoon and then there are those who hate it. 

There is no in between.

Monsoons can be romantic– the earth smells fresh, it’s chai and pakoda season and the fantasy of kissing a lover as you share an umbrella and have a fleeting moment of privacy together fills you up with butterflies. 

Monsoons can also be depressing, with grey gloomy skies and you feeling homebound, you may not be in the mood to steal intimate moments or feel aroused at all.

Regardless of which one you are, there are drastic reactions to our lib!do when the season changes. 

Losing your summertime lib!do when the clouds come rolling in can be a bummer, while craving sex in the monsoons after months of not feeling sexy can be confusing, lonely and frustrating.

The lows

Hormones

Lack of sunlight and lowered vitamin D levels can lead to a drop in testosterone. When your sexytime hormones aren’t active, when you’re less active and more gloomy, it’s hard to actively build intimacy with others.

Season of sickness

Head colds, new seasonal viruses, fungus or mold in your shower or on your damp shoes and laundry with flies and mosquitoes trying to find shelter inside your home… what a turn off.

Wrong kinda wet

The stickiness of your skin when you travel by buses or trains, the smell of damp laundry, the unpredictability of transport options in the rain… it’s not exactly an aphrodisiac. 

Getting caught in the rain is only really romantic when it’s a planned weekend getaway, but not when you’re stuck in the rain with your laptop bag.

Cabin Fever

For many of us, cabin fever creeps up during monsoon season more than it does in the winters. City flooding may force you to stay indoors. Restaurants shut, there are no events happening. It’s a socially dull time, which makes it harder to feel sexy.

The highs

Goodbye heatwaves! The heat has been brutal this year. When the monsoon hit, many of us felt relief. There was a respite from the brutal sweating, headaches, dehydration and dust, and everything around us looks and smells fresh again.

Boredom

There’s not much on TV, and you can’t go out. Your body feels good and there’s nowhere to take it. What are you going to do? Masturbate, probably. 

Hum tum ek kamre main

This is different from boredom. You don’t have the distraction and excuse of busy social calendars anymore. 

Being stuck together means more quality conversation, quality time, reconnecting through chores and rekindling that feeling of being a team that tackles life together. Sometimes that’s enough to make life sexy again.

Romantic

Maybe it’s the image of a secret kiss by the bus stop when no one can see you in the rain, or the urge to share some chai sutta with your lover as you watch the city together, but rainy romance comes easy.

Sometimes all it takes is the sight of your partner coming home in a dripping wet kurta.

Life can come at you really fast. Sometimes we transform in ways that we don’t even fully realise and it may be too late before we recognise the most basic things about ourselves.

Here’s to all the Petrichors out there– 

I hope your monsoon is wet AF.