May is the hottest month when the unrelenting heat is punctuated by the only pleasure to be had, bouts of mango eating. But one evening in the middle of the month, it rained. The mugginess that had steadily increased over the day meant that my usual jog in the evening was a sweaty affair giving the impression of having been more vigorous than usual. But all of the discomfort melted away as the rain lashed against me, almost painfully. It was obviously a brief affair and the next day the sun returned with its immense, fiery rage to torment us for some more time. But while it lasted, the air was cool and gave a sense of satiation.
A few hours after these showers, my room was suddenly filled with dozens of winged insects fatefully flinging themselves at the fluorescent lamp. Their ancient biological clocks triggered by the unseasonal rain, in a brief hour or so a whole frenzied cycle of life and death was enacted. The resident lizards were probably confused at this unexpected feast, but by the next morning it was all over. The only visible reminders were the hundreds of translucent wings that dappled the wet earth outside my window. Wings shaped to perfection for flight, like the airflows in textbooks that explained streamline flow and lift due to Bernoulli´s principle.
These rains had arrived due to a depression in the Bay of Bengal and one was acutely aware of the possible damage this cyclone could inflict on the coastal areas and its people. Over a week the cyclone had built up over the bay and made its way towards us on the eastern coast in Visakhapatnam. Thankfully it petered out without causing any damage and the heat came back with a vengeance. So while I had relished this brief munificence of the weather gods, I also looked forward to the real rains.
In early June, I travelled westwards to Goa on the other coast and the rains had just about arrived here. On the western coast of India, the monsoon is a particularly striking, often overwhelming experience. Watching the endless sheets of rain pour down is exhilarating and refreshing but experiencing it for a whole month is also a sobering reminder of the immense power of Nature. It is mid-July and the heavens have literally opened up here. The river Mandovi is swollen and roiled and even on a short bus-ride through Goa´s peculiar landscape where urban and rural areas intrude onto each other, one encounters in quick succession fully flooded emerald-green rice fields juxtaposed with damp, urban areas. The beauty of the natural landscape is unfortunately marred by clusters of ugly advertisement hoardings. And in a more mundane sense, the perennial wetness also means that clothes take forever to dry and it's a hopeless task trying to keep your house free of insects and fungi.