Monsoon Memories
My first experience of India was as a child of the British Raj in the 1940s. The majority of tourists, sample this varied and colourful country in only one of its seasons, the cool dry season. But one of the great experiences of living in India for several years is to feel the rhythm of its seasons, the cycle of the year, the anticipation of the change to come.
As the hot season gathered strength cattle became thinner and thinner and, in the poorer parts of the town, there was always the danger of an outbreak of cholera or bubonic plague. Tempers and the murder rate rose. Amongst lonely white men, stuck in some far-flung outpost, so did the suicide rate. Not only the relentless heat, but also the brain-fever bird played its part in driving people mad. There was one of them in our Ranchi garden. Its call rose to a point which required a final note that never came. Then it would start all over again, on and on, all day long. After eight months of drought and three or four months of mounting heat, everyone yearned for rain.
In Ranchi the Monsoon usually began towards the end of June. Its start was predictable almost to the day. The newspapers and radio would report the progress of the rain clouds as they moved in a north westerly direction across the country. Before there were newspapers or radio the coming of the Monsoon was signaled by rockets and bonfires, the good tidings being passed from village to village.
With growing excitement we would wait as the clouds gathered, the growling thunder drew nearer and sheet lightning flared along the south-east horizon. Then, with a mighty peal of thunder, the Monsoon burst and the first raindrops bounced on the hard ground. The smell of newly dampened earth was intoxicating. Faces upturned, we danced in the rain. Everything was washed of dust and fresh and the air was cool, wonderfully cool, perfumed with flowers. This was the season of flooded fields, swollen torrential rivers, gushing drains, birds in new voice, serenading toads, buffalo wallowing, and the ping, ping as leaks dripped into tin cans all over the house. Snakes, scorpions and centipedes, flooded out of their homes, would seek refuge in our house. I retain the habit, even today, of holding my shoes upside down and shaking hard before putting them on.
Rain was life or death to most of the population. From our house we could hear drumming and chanting as the arrival of the Monsoon was celebrated with festivals and offerings to the Lord Shiva, for if the rains were late, or not as copious as usual, the rice crop might fail, bringing starvation to millions.
Sometimes the rain fell in solid sheets, sometimes the sun would shine for a day or half a day and then the downpour would resume, turning the dust to mud. After a few weeks of rain the air was so humid that you sweated even more than in the fierce heat of the previous months. Sheets and towels felt damp all the time and mould sprouted everywhere – inside your shoes, on the covers of books, on any food that wasn't kept in the ice-box. At night, flying insects, moths, termites, mosquitoes, beetles and greenfly, attracted by the lights in the house, battered against the window panes or flew in frenzied circles around any lamp or light-bulb. The flying ants (termites) came in their millions, casting their wings when they died. Next morning the wings would be swept up in heaps. Then, towards the end of September, the rain gradually eased off and finally stopped and the cool dry season began.
Robin Lloyd-Jones
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