Monsoon fever leaves India
steaming By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - It is like a strip tease. The
audience: Indians, browbeaten by the summer heat that
unfailingly crosses 40 degrees this time of the year,
raising temperatures and tempers, everywhere. The
performer: the Indian monsoon that tantalizes till the
very end. The drummers: officials from the
meteorological (MET) office, who play it safe by
predicting a below normal rainfall each year. If they
get it right, they say so. If not, nobody bothers with
what they said as the rains arrive.
For the
populace, calculations and speculations take place in
overdrive. There is desperation in the air; an example
of this being the cases of road rage that show a
remarkable rise during this period, with Delhi one of
the worst affected.
Last year, Sunita Chadha, a
mother of three girls, was shot dead on a busy road
after a little altercation with a group of young boys,
short-tempered in any case, but more short-fused due to
the heat. In another instance, a truck deliberately
drove over a man, leaving his wife and family as
survivors. There are many more ghastly encounters that
happen each summer during the unbearable heat and
humidity.
Meanwhile, Indians await the monsoons,
like drought-stricken animals of Africa, beseeching the
sky-gods to oblige.
"India has a traveling
monsoon, and it travels fast," says Alexander Frather in
his delightful travelogue Chasing the Indian
Monsoon. But it's never fast enough. A couple of
squalls, the little pitter-patter of raindrops, as is
happening now, only heightens the expectancy. They turn
out to be false alarms, the audience roars in
anticipation, as the winds of change happen to be just
another flap of the impending climax.
"This is
pre-monsoon humidity. I can feel the low pressure, it
smells different, notice how much I am sweating," is the
comment heard in grimy public places, air-conditioned
offices and plush, cool plazas, all of which feel the
same, the excess demand for power resulting in a
permanent tripping of transformers.
Everyone
looks to the MET office for some succor. There could be
a train crash, India could announce peace with Pakistan,
US President George W Bush could declare an attack on
Iraq under UN auspices, but editors find space every day
in newspapers and on television to run the MET office
info, which is usually a play-safe denial: "No, no, no -
the raindrops are not the monsoon, just a disturbance."
There is a collective moan cursing the gods for
allowing it to pour in spurts. The only sure facts are:
"Last year[s] record of the all time high at this time
of the year has been broken. It was 45, it is 46." There
is the speculation on dates, with even the satta
(gambling) market getting into the fray, given the
cricket off-season. It will be June 23, an unsuspecting
official may say as an aside, only to find himself
splashed all over prime time TV that very evening.
"It's hit Maharashtra, swept Gujarat, Rajasthan
too, it is hovering around Haryana," say reporters from
anywhere in the country, with TV producers dispatching
their camera teams to scurry across the land looking for
an elusive black cloud as the background for their
report.
The year 2002 was particularly
difficult. The monsoon tantalized - she arrived with a
vengeance; the circumspect MET office even declared that
she had unveiled her full fury. As if to prove them
wrong, she petered out, leaving most of north India in a
severe drought, the worst in over a decade.
This
year, MET officials say the rains have already reached
parts of south India. The advance estimates are
optimistic, signaling a good show, but who knows.
Usually, the southwest monsoon hits Kerala by June 1,
Mumbai by June 5, and Delhi around June 29.
The
monsoon will yield, hopefully. This was our prediction,
will be a MET office statement, given the reasonable
margin of error this and that way, which finds no place
in the media. Who cares about the MET office now? The
audience just claps. Another ready-made excuse is the
statement every year at this time, by somebody who
matters in the Electricity Board, explaining the reasons
for non-existent power for months as "the sudden
temperature drop and water seepage due to the rains,
resulting in transformers going bust."
For the
rest, the monsoon is a mother scrubbing her dirty child.
The country needs a wash and the gods know it. Months of
dust and heat - on roadsides, trees and semi-burnt
leaves and the faces of laborers and bus conductors -
washed clean. India glistens. Then chokes.
A
couple of years back on Vinay Marg - a busy diplomatic
highway in New Delhi - next to the happening Chanakya
cinema hall and the prime minister's residence, a
furiously driven city bus stalled, the drains spilling
all around it. A couple of days later all that was
visible was the top of the submerged vehicle - bus No
610. Yashwant Place, close by, is the site where many
guided tourist excursions begin; the sunken Red Line bus
became a stopover. A terrific photo-op for all those who
wanted a glimpse of real India; Red Line Bus No 610
along with pictures of the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal.
Little boys and beggars swam to the bus, played
on top and floated paper boats. The tourists could not
have taken back a truer image of the capital. One little
boy also got caught and was sucked by a current into a
manhole. This happens every year, if not Chanakyapuri,
then somewhere else. The bus resurfaced as the monsoon
receded, and the police would not let it be removed
until investigations were complete, which in India can
take a long time.
Siddharth Srivastava
is a New Delhi-based journalist
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