Linguistic Underpinnings

When I first arrived in Mumbai it was the monsoon season.  I took this for granted because the rainfall was actually reasonably similar to the sort of rain that comes to both Tennessee (my birthplace) and Pittsburgh (my last state of residence in the US). If anything, I found myself thinking of childhood vacations to Florida, where the wind and clouds swirled around and dumped out a thunderstorm almost daily.  Mosquitos and humidity followed but it was always worth it for that brief vacation from the heat and the clean air which inevitably followed.

The same was true here. In that first month in India, I came to think of the rain as a distinct part of this place.  If nothing else,  it provided a reason to stay in bed away from the “What am I doing here?” feeling that followed most misunderstandings or frustrations that take place beyond the wooden doors of my apartment.

Now proceeding into the months of October and November when it hasn’t rained for 3 weeks plus, my roommates and I confess to audio hallucinations of rainfall.  Just a week ago during Diwali, I woke and heard that familiar Tennessee summer storm sound of hard rain on the windows and regular thunder in the back ground. Rolling over I dozed off again, feeling wonderful familiarity: if this is what I was hearing I must be at my parents house, and there would probably be someone waking me up soon for dinner so why not keep sleeping peacefully?

On waking a second time, I found the sounds in the distance were not thunder but fireworks going off, one after another.  Now loud explosions were happening just outside my window as neighbors set off rockets from the roof. Children laughed and cried in unison. The rain had only been my ceiling fan, and I was (and am), a thousand miles from Tennessee.

In June, India’s scientists went to work seeding clouds to encourage rainfall and ease the droughts that were destroying farms in the South. The rains came, (it’s still unclear what the seeding changed) and they lingered almost 2 weeks in the year later than they usually do.

Besides the seeding, other methods were attempted:

The government of Andhra Pradesh ordered  religious institutions to pray for rain

Frogs were married (later some called for divorce)

And in some villages, a girl wearing a skirt made of knitted vines and small branches, sang and danced through the streets of the village, stopping at every house, where the hosts poured water on her. The people of the village followed her dancing and shouting.

Following this,

the rain fell and fell and fell:  for a limited time only.