It's one of the best cities to live in, in India -- Bangalore as the rain seems to have developed a love affair with the city. It seems to rain practically every month in Bangalore. The burgeoning romance can be credited to the unique geographical position of the city. Situated almost centrally between the southwest and southeast coast of the Deccan plateau, it's the recipient of two annual monsoons of the Indian sub-continent. And some additional showers during the cyclone season.

As soon as it rains, which it is at the moment, with torrential monsoon showers bearing down outside, the entire city cools down and its favourite pseudonym kicks in -- the air-conditioned city of India.

The city receives its first pre-monsoon showers in the last week of April. These continue till May-end, till the southwest monsoon arrives in Kerala by June 1, and hits Karnataka by the end of June first week. The southwest monsoon season continues till September end. This year the monsoon has already hit by the end of May and cooled the whole place down wonderfully.

"Bangalore gets less rain compared to coastal Karnataka, during the monsoon. The rain pattern in Bangalore is moderate during monsoon but it rains almost every day between June and October," said B Puttanna, director in-charge, Bangalore meteorological department. The rain takes a small break between October and November and resumes again from November, pushed by the northeast monsoon, which brings rain to Tamil Nadu and other eastern coastal regions of India.

"Bangalore is located between the southwest and southeast coast, and receives rain from both monsoons. Though the frequency of rain during the Northeast monsoon is less compared to the Southwest monsoon," said M B Rajegowda, an agro meteorologist.

When it rains in Bangalore the roads turn into rivers and low lying areas get inundated with water. However over time residents have begun to harvest the rain water and use it for their home consumption after letting the water pass through a filter. It is amazing how people have realised the efficacy of rain water harvesting in Bangalore. Infact the government has made it mandatory to fix rain water harvesting piping into all new buildings before they are given occupation certificates.

Whatever the negatives of heavy rains, the positives far outweigh them. The tanks get full, the lakes stop stinking with the inflow of fresh water, as usually raw sewage is dumped in them. Now even public buildings have RWH built in, to tap all the excess water and make it drain out towards the lakes. The efficacy of these lakes now are dawning on people, who realise its with these lakes, the water table remains healthy and needs to be protected.

Water is the elixir of life, but most of us take it for granted and with our human numbers growing with no end number in sight we are headed for disaster if we do not rain water harvest and look after our lakes in Bangalore.