[sbkane]

The monsoon is here in India and true to its character, is playing hide and seek. This review is about a book on the monsoon. The book is called “Chasing the Monsoon” by Alexander Frater. It is a great book, a travelogue really, by the author who is fascinated by the unique phenomenon of the monsoon in the Indian subcontinent. The author is a widely travelled professional travelogue writer and had spent his childhood in a south Pacific island and had seen tropical rains. He inherits a keen interest in the tropical weather from his father. He also inherits from his father a painting of Cherapunjee in rainy season that keeps haunting him until he decides on an impulse to experience the Indian monsoon himself and boards a flight to India to undertake a “monsoon pilgrimage”. The book is an account of the journey that he undertakes in 1987, to literally chase the rain-bearing clouds from the moment they strike the Kerala coast and travel northwards up to Cherapunjee in Meghalaya, as he strives to be a step ahead and reach monsoon’s next port of call before it’s advent there. He is there at the Kovalam beach with a large excited crowd when the monsoon arrives. Describing the monsoon’s arrival, he writes, “ The thunder boomed. Lightening went zapping into the sea, the leader stroke of one strike passing the ascending return stroke of the last so that the whole roaring edifice seemed supported on pillars of fire.” He joins the people on the beach as they spontaneously form a human chain, holding hands in the face of strong wind blowing over the foaming sea, carrying rolling black clouds and thunder. He then rushes to Kochi and then on to Goa, Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, and finally to Cherapunjee to experience the arrival of the first rains at these places. He is constantly in touch with the Met offices to keep an eye on the progress of the monsoon and planning his next move accordingly, not always successful in beating the monsoon. A Met officer explains to the author the extremely complex nature of the monsoon, “ It is like human brain, we know it and yet we do not know it”. The author comments on the personality of the monsoon which is “ like that of a troublesome relative about whom responsible family members were constantly worrying- he’s disappeared again, he’s turned up on so-and-so’s doorstep, he’s in trouble with the police, he got drunk on the train….”. In this “wet” report of pilgrimage there is also a “hot” episode when the author, while in Delhi which is sweltering under a heat wave, goes to see the “monsoon palace” at Deegh near Bharatpur. The trip turns to be quite an eventful one with a nasty multiple-vehicle accident, the driver losing his way, running out of fuel and an unscheduled halt in a hotel, and spending a sleepless night without electricity. The author remembers the driver’s tips on driving in India “There are four things motorist needs in India- good brakes, good horn, good reflexes and good luck”.  The monsoon palace at Deegh was built by the ruler of Bharatpur to create a “virtual monsoon” in this arid land with a huge water tank built on the roof with 3000 small narrow outlets opening out in to fountains all round. When water was released, it created a spectacle of rain and a number of stone balls rotated with water pressure created sound of thunder!
There is an account of the author’s exasperating efforts, running from pillar to post in the bureaucratic corridors in Delhi to obtain permission to visit Meghalaya, which was out of bonds for foreigners then due to insurgency in the NE states. Frustrated, he returns to England, and then unexpectedly, fortune smiles and he gets a permit to visit Meghalaya for only three days. He rushes back to resume his chase. His visit to Cherrapunjee turns out to be a bit of an anti-climax. There are no tourists and the general atmosphere is cold and unfriendly on account of on-going anti-foreigner agitation. He gets to spend a day at Cherrapunjee and is mesmerized with the scenery of scores of waterfalls on the slopes across the surrounding valley. He is soon rewarded with a sight of black clouds that come spiralling from over the hills with thundery rumble, rising up and engulfing everything around in a dark cloudy tent followed by rains that fall in sheets ”bending the spokes of the umbrella like saplings”. Comparing this to monsoon bursts he had witnessed a few days ago in the South, he writes, “ those were occasions of public jubilations, this was a routine matinee performance” with hardly anybody watching!      
The author’s account of his travels across the country is full of vignettes of local landscape and people, perceptive observations of people’s idiosyncratic relationship with monsoon, his interactions with ordinary people, with Met department and with officialdom. It is interspersed with anecdotes, scientific information on the monsoon, snippets from accounts of British officials of the “raj” period, comments on the local places and culture. He captures the overwhelming influence the monsoon has over the people’s lives, its ambience, its romance, and its magic and varied moods of the season that one can recognise and identify with. What results is a montage of the Indian diversity, of its lands, people and customs and beliefs, with a common theme of the monsoon, a spectrum, as it were, of a slice of India projected through the prism of the monsoon. Despite being associated with romance and magic there is a flip side to the monsoon. “Where’s the romance in mud, slush, floods and rats?” one Indian argues with the author. For another, monsoon means un-dried clothes, wet shoes and damp walls all making the interior of rooms musty; and a sun-less grey environment outside, leading to an overwhelmingly melancholic mood. It’s a trying time in metros for the middle-class with traffic jams and delayed trains and a harrowing period for the slum-dwellers and for those thousands living on footpaths. Notwithstanding this every one awaits the monsoon. Its arrival signifies life, rejuvenation, rebirth and its absence or even delay or shortfall spells devastation, famines. No wonder it is inextricably linked to the Indian art and culture and has inspired poets, authors, musicians, folksingers, painters from ages.
The author’s chase of the monsoon was 1987, before the era of private airlines and mobile networks. Things have changed for the better over the years. But it is not all that long ago and neither have things changed so drastically; and for many it all will sound familiar. The monsoon of course remains as capricious as ever. Nor has it lost, or will ever loose its  charm and magic. Reading the book gives an extraordinary feeling of experiencing the past and the present simultaneously. For me, it evoked memories of our visit to Meghalaya last summer just before the onset of monsoon rains. The state too has changed and for better. Incidentally, Mawsynram (about 20 kM away from Cherrapunji) is now credited with the title of the wettest place on earth, though it’s only a matter of few inches.
These days here around Delhi and North India, it is oppressively sultry with temperature exceeding 40 degrees. The season here is quite freaky. The northern part gets rains from both the arms of the southwest monsoon- the Arabian Sea branch moving northwards along the west coast and the Bay of Bengal branch that moves across the North-East India and gets deflected from the mountains and moves eastwards. By the time these currents reach North India, they are nearly a spent force. There ts another weather phenomenon called the Western Disturbance that is even more unpredictable than the monsoon, which launches hit-and-run forays on the northern parts with squally winds that occasionally aid the monsoon clouds and at other times repel them. These random forces of the nature acting simultaneously cause rather unusual monsoon rains, which sometimes come from the east, sometimes from the southwest. We know that the monsoon will come unfailingly. It may be late, it may arrive early, it may be bountiful, it may be sparse. We have no choice but to bear this gruelling sultry weather while we wait for the rains to arrive, watching the images of rains elsewhere on the TV screen with mixed feelings of despair, envy and hope. Or take up a book like this to relive the monsoon magic.

[vandy]

Yes its a fascinating read, I was given this book as a gift by an Indian friend in Bangalore last year.

One day I hope to experience the monsoon in Kerala.

During a car journey from Munnar to Kumily I stopped at a roadside tea stall for a cup of chai, it started raining and it was soooo cosy sitting in the little chai shop listening and watching the rain outside, whilst all the time the chai maker
had his little wood fired stove keeping the chai hot.

Thanks for your interesting write up of Chasing the Monsoon.


rgds - vandy  

[jyotirmoy]

Dear Kane, thanks for this wonderful post. Like you and many others I am looking at the sky for the clouds while roasting in the hot Delhi tandoor. As per our met department the monsoon has got stuck up in the west coast and hadn't moved any further in the last couple of days.

[Shilpaks]

i also finished reading this book a couple of weeks back.
its a good read, the stlye of writing is average but looks like the author did a lot of research.
i seemed to have timed it perfectly coz as i progressed thro the chapters as the monsoons rolled into blore

i hope i can do this journey at some point coz i love the rains as well