Sahyadrica

There is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind – Lawrence Anthony My date with monsoon was as unexpected as the date of its arrival. I think, if it were not for our reliance on monsoon, it shouldn’t be predicted at all. So this year I stayed away from the news flashing its arrival, although I sneaked some information from discussions with, literally, everyone I met. And just as unpredicted was the place where we’d meet – on a Friday evening on the way home from work. If anyone saw me smiling they had no idea if it was for the last day of the week, or for getting my shoes wet in the first monsoon showers of the year. After all the days spent waiting desperately for the rains to arrive, the monsoon sure does surprise everyone with its pre-monsoonal heavy downpour. People forget the scorching heat of the summer, and get a new reason to complain about wet clothes and muddy roads. Although greeting monsoon in the city was unexpectedly pleasant for me, I wo...

Monsoon is magic. If I have said it already (thrice now), please bear with me. This magic is not the kind we read in books. It is a heightened sense of seeing, of hearing, of smelling, of tasting, of being happy. Of love. It is a heightened sense of knowing: anything natural seems supernatural. Anything supernatural is no less than magic. And monsoon is just that – a heightened sense of everything. To be amidst the deep and dark woods or over the edge of a cliff while the cupid of clouds strike the ground with numerable arrows, is not only our time of happiness. It belongs to all the creatures of this world. Happiness to be alive, to be able to survive, to procreate. During this time of the year, it is monsoon that expands this emotion, even to creatures we so wrongly consider sphexish. A bee pollinating Chlorophytum tuberosum - a monsoon ephemeral As I followed the plants, I followed insects as well. Their lives are intermingled, and I find observing either without t...

It will be wrong if I say I have not spent time (a lot of it) looking at the nimbostratus clouds passing silently from the south-west, waiting for the horns to blow that mark the arrival of monsoon. This we must agree, that monsoon is the epitome of change. It is the most astonishing of all changes. The change is in the air, in the earth, and is ultimately wrought in the mind. And all of this may happen just as you sit and stare out of the window! Monsoon this year did not arrive at its stipulated time. It thundered sparsely. There was no dance of the lights. May I say that Lord Varuna is not happy with what mankind has done to Mother Earth? That he is not in our favour anymore, and would abandon us when he knows we are completely, hopelessly dependent on him? We are all out praying, some loudly, some in their minds, some going to the length of marrying Hoplobatrachus tigerinus , the Indian Bullfrog, in hopes of impressing the Rain God. Today, the interval between two continuo...