Monsoon: Why is it now dreaded in India? | Economic Times

Last week a friend sent me a link to one of my favourite songs, and it was certainly topical: Rain, by Jose Feliciano. “Listen to the falling rain, listen to it pour,” he sang, and I remember getting an odd shiver the first time I heard it over 40 years ago because of the poignancy of his words. Listen, not watch, the clouds. Hear the rain pour, not see. Because Feliciano is blind, and his reaction to this very elemental of weather events is acutely aural.His words and the urgent thrum of his guitar came back to me again and again this week as the skies opened up thrice, in roaring downpours that I had never heard in Delhi before. The downpours were loud, powerful and relentless. The garden filled up until it resembled a pond, a minor tsunami overran the verandah and the road soon resembled a stream. A million drums seemed to be rat-a-tatting on the roof for hours on end. It felt like Noah’s Ark.And a leaky one at that. A patch of damp appeared near the skylight in the living room on one day. By the third consecutive day, it had spread across the ceiling and wall like a bizarre map of the world, with certain patches showing up lighter, like a storm system seen on a satellite image. Similar damp blotches rapidly appeared in several other rooms. Windows were the next to give way, with their sills becoming mini-waterfalls or oozing pores.Practically every orifice in the house was soon letting in water every time it rained. The analogy to a sinking ship — or a sieve — was undeniable. No matter how much we tried to stem the flow, new ones appeared after each ‘extreme rain event’. Luckily newspapers are always handy in the house and were pressed into service to stanch the ingress. But such was the inflow of rainwater that it did not take much time for them to turn into soggy grey lumps.The usual flood victims soon headed indoors: earthworms, caterpillars, lizards, snails, slugs and several large rats. The latter were soon despatched by our agile resident mouser and the lizards fled up the walls, but the others had to be rescued and put back in the vegetation. The monkeys had disappeared and even the peacocks were strangely silent as if the sheer volume and fury of the downpour had put a dampener on their usual stately rain dance routine.Along with the pervasive wetness came the ‘other’ smell that defines monsoon other than petrichor. It is the distinct musty odour that comes of damp, blistering plaster, humidity-loving fungus and moisture-heavy air. Even keeping the fan on all day in every affected room at full speed in empty rooms did nothing much to dispel the dank emanations. Nothing will improve until extensive repair work is undertaken once the rains finally bid adieu for the year.Rain used to be a time of joy and passion — a reaffirmation of life — immortalised by our intense monsoon ragas and lyrical poetry down the millennia. Why has it become a nightmare now? Why do the clouds seem more menacing, the rain more destructive these days? Our lives appear to have become antithetical to rain, our routines and practices are no longer accommodative but antagonistic. We make no space for even a little rain in our lives any more.We city dwellers dread rain because our roads get flooded as do our basements, our cars and bikes get marooned, our businesses, meetings and chores get stalled, our flights and trains are cancelled. We curse civic agencies for not desilting the storm water drains and not putting in more pumps in low-lying areas. We want the monsoon to bend to our will, to adhere to our restrictions. But when it shows us its actual power, we suddenly realise our inconsequence.These days my ears stay pricked to catch the sound of falling rain, just like Feliciano’s. It’s primordial; our earliest ancestors living in caves and makeshift dwellings were equally aware, no doubt, of that susurrating sound and gradually grew to not only love the monsoon for the lush verdure that inevitably followed but even began to base their livelihoods — agriculture — on its yearly appointment. So why has our relationship become so discordant now.