For Mumbaikars, the monsoon means different things — steaming cups of chai, waterlogged streets, long traffic snarls, sometimes, a dreamy kind of romance. For singer-composer Adnan Sami, the season has always evoked something more musical. The sound of rain, the mood it creates and the city’s transformation under grey skies have found their way into some of his most memorable songs. He shares with us his love for Mumbai’s monsoon and the memories it holds.

Adnan says, “I don’t know why I get so attached to the rain. Right from Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein, the number of songs I’ve done that are associated with rain is uncanny. When people say, ‘Oh, I don’t like the monsoon,’ I tell them, ‘Listen, I have made a living out of it!’”

The musician’s latest track Ishq Tamasha, too, has an element of rain. But his love for the season goes beyond music. Sami says he has always been captivated by the atmosphere that rain creates. “I just love the whole vibe of monsoon. I find it extraordinary. My wife is from Munich and my family likes going there for holidays during this period. But I tell them I’m not going anywhere! I want to spend the monsoons in Mumbai.”

For Adnan, however, the connection between Mumbai’s rain and his music is not merely poetic hindsight. One of his most memorable rain songs was quite literally born out of the city’s monsoon. 

“Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein was actually inspired by the monsoons of Mumbai,” he reveals. The inspiration came from something as simple as the sound of rain itself. He adds, “The sound of the rain hitting the windowsill was what inspired me to come up with the rhythmic pattern of the song. From there, I came up with the idea of the whole song. That song is absolutely dedicated to the monsoons of Mumbai.”

Adnan’s first memory of a Mumbai monsoon dates back to 1991, when he walked out of a recording studio to discover that the city was witnessing its first hardcore rainfall of the season.

He shares, “The studio didn’t have any windows, so we were completely locked in. When I came out, it was raining cats and dogs, and I had no umbrella. My car was parked far away, so I had to walk all the way to the parking lot and was totally drenched. The song that was running through my mind at that time was Kishore Kumar’s Bheegi Bheegi Raaton Mein. That first experience of Mumbai’s rains has stayed with me forever.”