If it is winter it must be Delhi, if it is monsoon it must be Mumbai

It’s the end of October and you know what that means. No, not Halloween, though sales of (hopefully fake) batwings are apparently sky-high. In any case, the western festival of all things creepy – including, for some reason, people masquerading as superheroes – has already been celebrated in this country on a daily basis since May 16 (oddly, by the same people whose ideology would ban it), so it’s somewhat passé by now.

No, the end of October means one thing only. It’s when Dilliwalas begin taunting Mumbaikars about winter.

"Ooh, how lovely, it’s cool,” says the Mumbaikar.

“Ha! You don’t know what winter is,” says the Dilliwala.

“Oh, hot water, how I love thee,” carols the Mumbaikar.

“Ha! You don’t know what winter is,” says the Dilliwala.

“Gosh, I need to wear clothes with sleeves,” marvels the Mumbaikar.

“Ha! You don’t know what winter is,” says the Dilliwala.

I suppose we have to forgive Dilliwala their disdain. After all, it’s the only way a city that believes 59 consecutive minutes of rain in July constitutes the monsoon can regain its self-respect. And I have to admit we Mumbaikars really don’t know what winter is. We genuinely haven’t a clue. Because even on the three days of the yearwhen the temperature slips below ten degrees (yes, Delhi, it really does happen. Just like your 59 minutes of rain in July), we’re all wearing tiny, barely-there clothes, just as usual.

It isn’t as though we deliberately avoid the coats, socks, mufflers, sweaters, boots and thermals that constitute Delhi’s annual weight gain programme. Our flats, the size of matchboxes though they may be, are not so minute that they can take either us or bulky clothing, not both. Nor are we afraid that that we wouldn’t be able to get into the local trains if we wore everything we owned. We’re Mumbaikars. Three generations of families live in apartments that would be called cabinets anywhere else in the world. We can squeeze in anywhere, anyhow. And we’re certainly not anxious about suffering from acute claustrophobia, tucked in and tied in quantities of wool like Dilliwalas are. Claustrophobia, who, us? We travel in train compartments with what seems like the entire population of a medium-sized African country. Claustrophobia just doesn’t exist in our dictionaries.

No, the real reason we saunter about wearing tiny tops and tinier skirts in temperatures below ten degrees Celsius is that we just don’t feel the cold.

That’s right. We don’t feel it. And even if we do feel it, we think we’re imagining it because, you know, Bombay doesn’t have a winter. Everyone knows that, including us. And since there’s no winter, it can’t possibly be cold, never mind what the weather bureau says. So blizzards might rage. Snow might fall. Zara will definitely try to sell us overcoats from September on. But the most a Mumbaikar admits to when the temperature is below ten degrees is a faint sense of surprise. “Odd,” she says. “It’s kind of cool today, isn’t it?”

“Ha! You don’t know what winter is,” mumbles the Dilliwala, through six layers of wool.