Varsha Ritu - the bearer of life

The summer that passed was, perhaps, one of the worst in living memory in terms of soaring temperatures in the country and the number of deaths reported from the state. While the temperatures in Vizag stayed relatively low, being a coastal city, it had its own share of problems of extreme humidity and the resultant high levels of dehydration. The sea breeze offered no comfort; one choked on the humid and warm air even before sunrise.
The days of Rohini Karthe were miserable in the morning, sweaty and steaming in the afternoons and sweltering in the nights. Birds literally dropped dead from the trees. The humidity, mixed with industrial pollution, left an unhealthy pall of haze over the city, resulting in breathing problems in children and the aged.
One wonders how people managed their summers before the advent of electricity, fans or air conditioners. Old timers tell us that rains used to arrive earlier, and were more plentiful in the years gone by. Summers as a whole were less severe and even if the days were warm, the evenings brought sea breeze, and the much needed respite. For one thing, there was more greenery and less heat generating activities.
Even the poorest of the poor lived in independent hutments, with proper setbacks, surrounded by greenery. Houses were built of lime and the roofs were stacked with palmyra leaves or hay. It might come as a surprise to many that even the well to do preferred that mode of house construction to keep them cool. Those with tiled roofs had higher ceilings and front verandahs that reduced the impact of the strong sun. They lived in a different environment, where their lifestyle was in tune with the local conditions; in other words, they did what was comfortable and suitable to the climate and, did not care to make fashion statements.
The food and the clothing were designed to counter the warm weather. The summer food was high on buttermilk and rice; sour stuff like amla and raw mangos, sometimes cooked in gud, were consumed in quantities, while onions were munched to spike the sour rice gruel. Their food gave them sufficient probiotics along with the common salt. Delicacies consisted of thati munjelu and chunks of ripe mangoes, ripened naturally, without the help of chemicals. Every street corner had chalivendrams, where jaggery water, butter milk, pickled amla or just ordinary cool water was freely served by socially conscious citizens.
With modernity creeping on us we have taken to western food, western dress, and the western lifestyle, all of which sits ill with our climate. The ubiquitous cement concrete has more or less put paid to the more comfortable and eco-friendly vernacular architecture. Houses are being built cheek by jowl, and multistoried houses are proliferating, while sensible and necessary measures like setbacks have been given a go by.
One is not suggesting even for a moment that we should revert in evolution or that we should get back to living in caves. However, wisdom lies in being conscious of the ill effects of borrowed cultures/technologies on us and, taking remedial measures to neutralize the problems that they create. Decreasing the forest cover, changing the land use pattern, indiscriminately converting arable and agricultural land to housing or industries, and much worse, tampering with hills and water bodies is certainly not the way to go about it.
Quite unexpectedly, on the first of June, the citizens of Visakhapatnam woke up to a relatively pleasant morning. Cool winds blew and the stranglehold of summer seemed to have loosened a bit. The surprised but exultant citizens were grateful for the cool day, for one never knew how long that relief was to last.
No wonder the rainy season, the Varsha Ritu, has such an appeal for us Indians. Perhaps no season is as eagerly welcomed as Varsha Ritu. The very sight of the clouds flitting in the blue sky is enough to send our poor sun-scorched souls into ecstasy. The fragrance of the first drops of rain on baked earth is the most awaited. That is perhaps why the Indian monsoons have been so highly romanticised in our classical literature.
In Vedic pantheon, Varuna, the bringer of rains, was one of the most important of gods. In pre-Vedic times, he was the supreme lord of the cosmos and the keeper of the celestial waters. In ancient times, Varsha Ritu was the season when all kinds of travel — military, merchant or otherwise -- had to pause. It was an age-old custom in India not to travel during the rainy season as people may unintentionally harm crops, the low life like insects or hurt themselves during their travels. Even Sri Rama had to pause his search for Sita during the rains, and spend the waiting months in agony. Wandering ascetics of all faiths, be they Jain, Buddhist or any other, retreated to one shelter or the other. In fact, that is how the first monasteries like our Thotlakonda and Bavikonda came to be built.
For poets like Kalidasa, Varsha Ritu was the season of love and romance. In Meghaduta, the yaksha, who was banished from Alkapuri, sends his message of love to his wife, through a cloud messenger. In his quintessential Kavya, Kalidasa blends the phenomenon of the Indian monsoon with sringara, in his inimically beautiful (in this case rain drenched) similes. Clouds take on fanciful and wondrous forms in the poet's imagination. The very colour of the clouds is magical and ethereal, like Lord Krishna's 'Neela Megha Chaya', clouds are likened to Krishna's peacock feather, an emerald placed in the middle of a pearl necklace, a drunken elephant, Shiva's bull, Balarama's black robe, and so on.
The beauty of the season makes the viraha of the yaksha so much more intense. The theme of rain and romance seemed to fascinate the people, for, a few centuries later, Sudraka, the author of Mrichchakatika, too uses an unseasonal storm to describe his rain drenched nayika, Vasanthasena, in alluring terms. Bollywood has caught on to the same theme with gusto, for they show us the rain soaked heroines prancing around enticingly, scene after scene, movie after movie, without imbuing them with the same grace or elegance.
Kalidasa and his ilk tell us that the birds and the bees do not lag behind either. They are equally enthralled with rains. The peacock, in particular, goes delirious when it sees rain clouds and dances with joy. All manner of frogs come out of their hiding places and so do the fire flies, which lighten the nights magically. It is said that exotic flowers like Kadambas burst into bloom with the first drops of rain. In short, the celebration of life begins for us with the onset of monsoons.
Such is our fascination with clouds and rains that Amarakosa gives 16 sanskrit synonyms for the word cloud, just as the Inuit Eskimos have '15 sets' of words for snow. Unfortunately, it is predicted that such life giving rains (particularly in our post Hudhud days) are going to be scanty in the future. Large scale desertification and indiscriminate industrialization are held responsible for it. An El Nino is going to hold the country in its grip, resulting in scanty rainfall, impending drought and an increasing number of typhoons.
What would Kalidasa have said if he lived in our times? Would his pen have gone silent?
(The writer is a heritage and environmental activist. She can be reached at ranisarma2010@gmail.com)