Ode to Monsoon

By the beginning of June after enduring the harshness of the hot and humid Indian summer season from March, the nation starts looking skyward for the rain clouds to appear. The parched earth and roasted humans in utter despair go to their Gods, weathermen, and astrologers to hear the good news of the arrival of monsoon.

Their huge errors in predictions in the past don’t stop the hapless populace from dabbling with the discussion over rains even if it’s just in the discussion. The pain and hope behind this trepidation are like the hopes of one of the lovers in a broken relationship for the other to return.

The arrival of the monsoon on the Kerala coast is the most awaited event in the month of June.

Why not, when most of our rivers are rain-fed and agriculture is mostly dependent on timely and adequate rains and most of our festivals follow the agrarian calendar? Government and economists prepare themselves for the consequences if it doesn’t rain. Our lives directly or indirectly are dependent on monsoons. In certain years it's timely and adequate and in some it's scarce and so more that it calls for national emergency response. This annual climatic event does something so magical to everything living and non-living who dwell on this vast sub-continent so routinely that all have learned to dance to the tune of it.

I am not the first one who has chosen to write about it nor will be the last one to do so.

With the first monsoon rain humanity erupts into joy. The postings of pictures, videos, reels, and songs on social media by the citizens indicate the magnitude of joy that they are experiencing. Tomes of literature have been written on the monsoon. In the movies, rain is used as a metaphor for ecstasy, blessings, and love. Not only the peacocks are seen serenading their potential mates, but heroines also break into song and dance to celebrate the spirit of the season. 

In the novel Train to Pakistan, Khuswant Singh while describing the most violent episode of the subcontinent’s history couldn’t stop himself from pausing the narrative to describe the first rain of monsoon. He uses three pages to describe it and I am sure he would have held out to the editor’s request or pressure to truncate it. It’s the best description of monsoon I have ever read. Go through the best three paragraphs of his narrative.

“The dust hanging in the air settles on your books, furniture, and food; it gets in your eyes and ears and throat and nose.

This happens over and over again until the people have lost all hope. They are disillusioned, dejected, thirsty, and sweating. The prickly heat on the back of their necks is like emery paper. There is another lull. A hot petrified silence prevails. Then comes the shrill, strange call of a bird. Why has it left its cool bosky shade and come out in the sun? People look up wearily at the lifeless sky. Yes, there it is with its mate! They are like large black-and-white bulbuls with perky crests and long tails. They are pied-crusted cuckoos who have flown all the way from Africa ahead of the monsoon. Isn’t there a gentle breeze blowing? And hasn’t it a damp smell? And wasn’t the rumble which drowned the birds’ anguished cry the sound of thunder? The people hurry to the roofs to see. The same ebony wall is coming up from the east. A flock of herons fly across. There is a flash of lightning which outshines the daylight. The wind fills the black sails of the clouds, and they billow out across the sun. A profound shadow falls on the earth. There is another clap of thunder. Big drops of rain fall and dry up in the dust: A fragrant smell rises from the earth. Another flash of lightning and another crack of thunder like the roar of a hungry tiger. It has come! Sheets of water, wave after wave. The people lift their faces to the clouds and let the abundance of water cover them. Schools and offices close. All work stops. Men, women and children run madly about the streets, waving their arms and shouting “Ho, Ho,”- hosannas to the miracles of the monsoon.

The monsoon is not like ordinary rain which comes and goes. Once it is on, it stays for two months or more. Its advent is greeted with joy. Parties set out for picnics and litter the countryside with the skins and stones of mangoes. Women and children make swings on branches of trees and spend the day in sport and song. Peacocks spread their tails and strut about with their mates; the woods echo with their shrill cries.”

When David Attenborough in one of his documentaries describes the Himalayas and Monsoon in his calming, soothing voice …“. Warm winds from India filled with moisture are forced upwards by the Himalayas to cool which causes clouds to form thus monsoon is born…” the background music and the dramatic time-lapse video beautifully captures the drama and the magic this phenomenon creates over this vast geography.

It almost seems as if God is manifesting himself before humankind.

Early humans realized early how closely nature is intertwined with its existence and chose to respect and worship nature. No wonder very early humans conceptualized God in his role as the creator, nourisher, nurturer, and destroyer by looking at the same aspects in various natural phenomena. It’s only a few hundred years back from the present era, humans as a departure from their earlier convictions saw mother earth as a resource to be exploited for its insatiable greed triggering what we now know as Global Warming and Climate Change.

We are witness to the changing patterns of rain.

Rains have become erratic. Slow drizzle over weeks which was good for farming and absorption into the soil has become non-existent now and what we witness is a cloud burst-like situation over a limited area for a few days which erodes the most precious commodity of the nation - top soil and causes flash floods and immense human misery.

If the rich soils and monsoon rains have been instrumental in developing us from our settled agriculturist days into a civilization of 140 cr to recon with because of our literature, and wisdom; how a changed monsoon pattern triggered by climate change stands to change us is a matter of grave national concern. 

To my kids on Father's Day

If I was instrumental in bringing you into the world, certain things came along the deal which I'm responsible for; you better know about the roles I'm going to play in your life.

As the Protector:

My primary role as a father is to give you physical, emotional, social, and financial protection to the best of my ability till you become an adult. It's also my role to provide you with exactly that much protection which will prepare you to be independent and autonomous and not make you dependent on me for life. Don't expect me to protect you when you are wrong; I'm not your private bouncer. But when you fall, betrayed by your love and the world, I will be there to provide the safety net and a launch pad to swing you back into life.

As the Provider:

My role is also to provide the resources which are needed for you to develop into an educated, sensitive, emotionally stable, well-mannered, and respectful human being with values and principles who can provide for himself and lead a small but honorable life. It will start with my being the example of all of it. I'm not here to give you a luxury lifestyle, foreign vacation, and admission to fancy foreign universities. You have to earn it yourself. Don't try to make me look deficient as a father because your friends' fathers are breaking their backs trying to live up to the expectations of their wives and children. Period!

As the Disciplinarian:

If I'm doing the above two things well, be prepared for the third. My job is to discipline you, your thoughts, and your actions. I am here to set standards and instill values and principles in you. Breaking you in is no easy job and I don't want you to love me for this. You can run to your mother, and grandmother to cry and complain against me to release your angst. I want you to remember my face when you do anything wrong and fear the consequences even if I am not around.

Your Gen Z friends will say that your dad is old school, controlling, orthodox, and chauvinistic but digest that and do as I say.

You will remember all the things that I did to you as discussed above when you become an adult and have your own children to raise. You will remember me and appreciate the hard choices I made when you would be falling and rising and successfully navigating the obstacles of life. But by then I would be history; not around to know your appreciation of my role in making you.

That's a dad’s life.

Those Old Toys

They were stowed away and forgotten for close to 15 years till we discovered them while clearing the cupboards yesterday. But as I look closely at each one of them, flashes of memories come rushing back.

From the day they came into our house - either bought or gifted, how my kids played with each of them, how many kilometres they travelled with us, what all the places they visited with us, and how many times they suffered being smeared in Cerelac and how many times they had to suffer the washing machine and the tumble dryer to the mountains of joy they brought into our kids’ lives. They were living beings with individual personalities and identities in the chaotic circus we called home.

They were on our beck and call working untiringly along with us to raise our kids.

The children outgrew them years back and when their role as their emotional support started dwindling, we wrapped them in a polybag to declutter our home. When we met them today, one of them had lost an eye, many had lost their lustre, and some wore tattered jackets. Logic says that the time to say goodbye has come and let them go as they neither are needed by our children nor by us.

Now, they are like the nanny we had but don't need her anymore.

Now even after they were conveniently forgotten for 15 years; they look as happy as always - ready to make us joyful again.

Should I let them go or can I let them go rather? Kids will leave us one day, but can I ever let go of the memory of their growing up phase and the awkwardness of ours as untrained parents and those million experiences. These lifeless stuffed toys are the objects around which these precious memories are woven.

Will know by this evening.

22nd May 2023

Different Strokes

In another few hours, the deadliest train accident of our living memories will be 52 hours old. Hours will be days, days will become weeks, and weeks will become months.

Life will go on but those gory images of dismembered bodies, strewn body parts, and the sound in our minds of a huge mass of metal hitting another at great speed, wailing of people crushed under the metal carriages crying for help will keep playing in a loop and haunt us a lifetime. As many times its memory would visit us, that many times our hands will rise in prayer for this not to happen again. If the macro picture of this tragedy was unsettling, micro tales of personal tragedies that will roll out one after the other will leave us devastated emotionally in the months to come. 

After the Super Cyclone, Odisha registered itself at the top of one more list which no one wants its name on.

When an incident of such tragic proportions happens, baser minds like ours get tempted to ask the unseen - why? What were his plans? Why did he orchestrate such a sanguineous drama to destroy hundreds of innocent lives and leave behind ten times more people scarred for life?

The exact number of dead is not known yet. 288, 295+, 175, and 1000 are the numbers flying around and each source has its own method of counting and each will stick to their number. We thought human beings were countable but now we realise that dead bodies are not.

The response to the accident was straight out of the disaster management textbook. This is what we get to see in American movies. Well-drilled professionals were cutting through the chaos with the precision of a surgeon.

Before the agencies could arrive the locals came in droves and started rescuing people using locally available crude tools and ladders. The picture of them pulling out people alive, injured, maimed, and dead was so moving and heartening. The people from the nearby towns came in hundreds to volunteer and donate blood. For them, the world was a binary. The ones who can help and the ones who need help. Every life mattered and every minute was precious. Balasore rose above faith, regionality, language, and economic divide and set a benchmark of what civilians can do sans power and resources.

The scale of the tragedy though caught various state agencies unaware, the alacrity, efficiency, coordination, and cooperation among them showed no sign that they represent three different governments ruled by three different political parties who are known for their differences. No one was blaming anyone, no one was trying to steal the limelight, and no one was trying to gain political mileage in the time of this monumental crisis facing humanity. In their mind the same binary played. The ones who can help and the ones who need help.

But the scene in the virtual world of social media which didn't stand anywhere near lending a helping hand was in stark contrast to what was on the ground. The grief and outrage of people were painted with political and communal colours, people who generally wore the garb of decency didn't bat an eyelid to shed it and turn vituperative and personally abusive, and many pandered and fuelled conspiracy theories against a particular section of the society. No one wanted to miss the opportunity at hand to grind their personal axes of hatred and divisive politics.

Behind the cloak, some were seen with a pair of wings of goodness and ready to take humanity to the next level and some were seen carrying a dagger to slit someone's jugular.

Incidents like these throw us to our bare selves, exposing our core values and intentions - wings and scabs.