Huffington Magazine Issue 60 | Page 32

Voices out of the car, held shawls aloft as we scanned the view, jumped back in and headed home. My dad divulged a detail at the time, not in defense of his itinerary design, but parallel to it: apparently, tourists from the Saudi Arabian desert also time their trips to India to coincide with the rains. They rent hotel rooms with big windows and never leave, according to my dad. “Rain is so new for them,” he said mournfully, as if he were describing a life of extreme deprivation. “All they need to do is stare.” Those water-mad Saudis came to mind at 7 a.m. last Tuesday. I was waiting in line — along with seemingly all of New York — to see the Rain Room. Its creators, a young London-based art collective called rAndom International, describe it as a “hundred square metre field of falling water through which it is possible to walk, trusting that a path can be navigated, without being drenched in the process.” The magic is done through a series of body-mapping cameras, nine controllable spouts, and 2,500 liters of water falling at 1,000 liters per minute, filtered and cycled back to the spouts from whence the water came. The result is as unnatural MALLIKA RAO a version of a natural phenomenon as one can imagine. You’ll feel like Moses parting the Red Sea, promised the Guardian. Last weekend marked the last to visit the installation in its current state. London papers reported visitors queuing up to 12 hours at a time when it debuted in that city. In New York, the rumors are comparable. A Gothamist staffer stood for eight hours and let his mind No one at my office does this sort of stuff, but they understand I like it. Cultural stuff.” wander; not worth that wait, he declared, though he couldn’t presume to judge for others since he got to see the end. I too woke at dawn to make the decision for myself. By 7 a.m., I was established in line, between a golden-skinned mother, there with her two toddler girls, and a chatty finance guy whose boss gave him the morning off. “No one at my office does this sort of stuff, but they understand I like it,” the analyst, name of Matt, explained to us. “Cultural stuff.” A grandmotherly naturopath HUFFINGTON 08.04.13