Monsoon Magic: Time To Sing, Recite And Listen

When my British pen-friend visited me in Mumbai years ago, I was embarrassed. What a din our incorrigible Radhabai made when washing the dishes, and why on earth did my neighbours holler on the phone?

Then the monsoons arrived. And I saw why we were incapable of being as whispery and decorous as I바카라�d have liked. We took our cue from the bipolar weather gods! The monsoons were our Ms Manners. This wasn바카라�t mercy that 바카라�droppeth as gentle rain from heaven바카라�. This was life. And it was big. 바카라�We are pagan,바카라� I told Brian, jauntily. 바카라�Nothing faint-hearted about us.바카라�

Yet, for all their joyous heathenism and love of profanity, the Indian monsoons are versatile. Their vocals range from murmur to howl, their percussion from castanet to nagara. And they are multilingual. They switch dialects all the time. This explains the torrent of onomatopoeia in our song. There바카라�s rimjhim, of course. But I바카라�ve also heard the memorable chatta-chada-chatta-chada-datta, and the many in between바카라�tip-tip, jhir-jhir, kila-kila, ghanana-ghanana, among others.

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The problem is we live in a subcontinent whose poets have been warbling about the monsoons since the dawn of time. How then can a contemporary poet not be paralysed by the anxiety of inf­luence? If you look out at a blurry horizon and think of the sky mating with the earth, you realise an ancient Tamil Sangam poet got there a few hundred years before the Common Era: 바카라�바카라�our hearts are as red earth and pouring rain: mingled beyond parting.바카라�

If a rain-glazed window evokes intense pangs of yearning, you know Kalidasa바카라�s already been there, done that. (The Meghadūta image of a cloud messenger despatched by an exiled lover to his beloved still haunts our collective consciousness more than 1,500 years later). What바카라�s more, Sanskrit poets have described clouds in such inventive ways, it바카라�s difficult to keep track: a damp buffalo바카라�s belly, the breasts of a new mother, raging drunkards, celestial elephants, emeralds in a pearl necklace, fresh mud, heap of collyrium... that바카라�s just skimming the surface of all the metaphorical lushness.

When a rain-glazed window induces a lingering melancholy, you know you are experiencing a much more modest version of what Valmiki바카라�s Rama went through when he spent an anguished monsoon away from Sita. If the wild soundtrack of a south-western storm sounds like the voice of the divine, you realise that the 17th-century mystic poet, Bahinabai, thought so too. 바카라�In my heart, God spoke in thunder.바카라� If there바카라�s a surge of voluptuous longing, it바카라�s difficult not to think of all those brazen nayikas who headed out to meet illicit lovers on tempestuous nights. The 15th-century poet Vidyapati writes: 바카라�Like a vine of lightning,/ As I chained the dark one,/ I felt a river flooding my heart바카라�./ I devoured that liquid face바카라�.In my storming breath/ I could hear my ankle bells.바카라� This is a thunderclap climax바카라�sexual and existential all at once. How does one better it?

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Then, there바카라�s Bollywood. Whether it바카라�s O Sajnaa, Ek Ladki Bheegi-Bhaagi Si or Rimjhim Gire Saawan, the fact is they have all got there before us바카라�Shailendra, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Yogesh (with the added blessings of those music composers and vocalists who made them unforgettable).

The truth is, every Indian poet writes a rain poem. There바카라�s no escaping it. It바카라�s a rite of passage. We know the embarrassment of cliché. We know the risk of mediocrity. We know the risk of ending up as poachers and plagiarists. Yet, how can we not? Years after our first experience of them, the monsoons still turn us from horizontal to vertical beings. There we are, full of self-important plans and carefully-constructed identities, busily going about our lives. And suddenly, we are proper nouns no longer; just very soggy beings, gasping, laughing, scrabbling for shelter. The rains make us denizens of this moment, of the same planet. The rains are levellers. They destabilise us democratically바카라�you, me, 바카라�the ficus/바카라� knocked off the ledge바카라� and 바카라�the little moths/ with speckled wings바카라�, as a young poet Kuhu Joshi puts it.

A summer world is prose. A monsoon shower is a lyric poem. The former is stuffy, respectable, and linear. The latter is a slap of wet surprise. Once you have been ambushed by a really good poem, you are drenched for life. Your inner weather is never quite the same again. Being ambushed by an Indian monsoon is quite the same. 바카라�Even people seem to become taller in the rain,바카라� says Gulzar.

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There바카라�s ecstasy in the air. It has to do with a kind of irrepressible fecundity, and the promise that even devastation can, somehow, be a kind of greenness. As you mourn the fallen gulmohur down the road, the rain바카라�s hypnotic murmur reminds you it is not the end of the story. 바카라�But sure as the turning days/ There will be other trees/ Wet with rain바카라�/Leaves born with new/ Lines on their palms바카라�, writes Manohar Shetty.

The rains remind us of a less complicated world. A bit like a childhood we all dimly remember, even if we never experienced it. An imagined innocence? Perhaps. But I love it all the same, the sense of belonging to a time 바카라�when the skies were crazier,/ love purer,/ life simpler,/ when the heart was Malabar,/ the spirit Arabian,/ desire Coro­mandel,/ laughter more Gene Kelly,/ and words like baarish/and mazhai/ were headier, truer바카라�.

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There are the rituals too. Comforting ones, like adrak chai. There바카라�s the comfort of turning archetypal ourselves. When we walk the streets hand-in-hand, we know we are enacting the old-lover archetype (think Raj Kapoor-Nargis and Pyaar Hua Ikraar Hua). When we decide it바카라�s time for bhajiyas, we know there are thousands of households nursing the very same intention. Boundaries blur. Hierarchies fall away. When we look at a solemn schoolboy trudging down the lane, we are there with him, lost in the magic of a world turned aquarium. (And then Elizabeth Coatsworth바카라�s exuberant rhyme returns from some dim recess of the mind: 바카라�a thunderstorm/ a dunder storm/ a blunder storm바카라�a plunder storm/ a wonder storm!바카라�).

Indian rains are leakier than most. And they invite us to spring a leak too. They drop us from our heads into our bodies. They remind us of what pleasure that leakage can be! And that we are capable of thinking with every singing cell and yodelling pore of our rain-sodden beings. That human intelligence is deeply and happily visceral. 바카라�There is no better season in which/ to weave the body바카라�s history,바카라� writes the Tamil poet Kutti Revathi.

It is not all soft-focus romance and pakoras, of course. There바카라�s room for lament and critique too. 바카라�Why did we think it was trivial/ that it would rain every summer바카라�?바카라� asks Mamang Dai, in an elegiac poem about Northeast India. For the world changes, and suddenly one day, there바카라�s a new menace in the air: 바카라�the footfall of soldiers바카라� begins to grow, even as 바카라�weapons are multiplying in the forest바카라�. For all their foreverness, the rains can also abscond, as Nabina Das바카라� poem reminds us: 바카라�Tell me where trees go to rot, rivers migrate, farmers commit suicide for lack of forever-rain?바카라�

Still, the rains always manage to stay original. Little surprise then that so many spiritual initiations in yogic, tantric, and shamanic traditions involve water. Or that Christian baptism and Islamic purification rituals employ it. Rainwater, in particular, seems potent, and catalytic. It washes off grimy irrelevance; it even seems to alter chemistry. In a savage poem about a traumatised world, EV Ramakrishnan turns to the rain for revelation and clarity: 바카라�You long,바카라� he writes, 바카라�for the script of the slanted rain on the plain/ to tell you the difference between a prayer/ and a false affidavit.바카라�

It바카라�s possible to turn blasé about other seasons. We can ignore them. Increase fan-speeds and air-cooling in the summer. Grab an extra sweater in January. But the rains compel us to become listeners. No umbrella, raincoat or waterproof paint will keep them out. Somewhere, we recognise that to banish them would be folly. Vladimir Nabokov says, 바카라�Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.바카라� But do we really want it to? Here바카라�s one season we can바카라�t browbeat, and we have a hunch that바카라�s a good thing. The Hindi poet Mangalesh Dabral writes: 바카라�Outside a breeze was blowing,/ there was a little light,/ a bicycle stood in the rain,/ a child was coming home/ I wrote a poem,/ which had no breeze, no light/ no bicycle, no child/ and/ no door바카라�. Keeping out the rain is to keep the doors shut. Our lives, we know, will be poorer for it. Much poorer.

Yes, it바카라�s the Bad Hair Season. The E.Coli Season. The Season of Bread-Mould and Wobbly Wi-Fi. Yet, it is indefinably more. It is the season to be unmade. To allow plans to melt away. Time to be stilled. Time to be liquefied. Time to allow the heart to sing, and time to listen to its song. Time to 바카라�rub rain into every pore바카라�, as poet Sarabjeet Garcha writes, 바카라�바카라�so there바카라�s nothing between you and the sleep of trees.바카라�

(This appeared in the print edition as "Time to Sing, Recite & Listen")

(Views expressed are personal)

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet and author. Her most recent work is Women who wear only themselves