To write on the monsoon? Oh that is just what I have been doing ever since I held a pencil in my hand. It was a must in our school, to write an essay on the Barsha ritu, in every Bangla class from III to X.
For us, Barsha is the magic word, when the whole nature celebrates youth and regeneration. A divine season for romance and mystery, a trend set by Radha-Krishna, and irresistibly exploited by poets of all ages (and as you know, every Bengali has written at least one poem in his life, and that one is most likely to be on the rainy season). It is also a season for musical soirees, welcoming the rains, celebrating life and love through Barsha Mangal, a secular cultural festivity created by Rabindranath Tagore, that now runs through Bengali veins. On both sides of the border, in Bangladesh, and in West Bengal, Barsha is the ritu closest to Bengali heart.
But the word monsoon is different. Heard only in the weather forecasts in English, it brings to my mind not the romantic rumblings of the rain clouds but the stern voice of our geography teacher. A term bound by calculations, matching dates with winds, is not capable of bearing the emotional weight, nor the 1,000 mysterious shades of the rainy season in Bengal. Rabindranath merely provided more power and contemporaneity to the romantic literary climate created by the medieval Vaishnava Padavali poets of Bengal. Lines like “Bharaa baadara/maaha Bhaadara/ shunya mandira mor” had already prepared us for the fabulous Barsha songs of Tagore, like “Shaaona gagane ghora ghana ghataa”.
Monsoon is the kindest season, eagerly awaited by our farmers after a hot, dry summer, allaah megh de, paani de... but mother earth is acting like a drunken sot, the seasons are all messed up, everything in life is unpredictable today, including the monsoon.
In the cities, water-logged roads and overflowing vats, leaking underground pipes, polluted drinking water and live wires fallen into the water, make monsoon the cruellest season. Yet, the flowering Kadamba tree (evergreen, tropical tree) and the ever-dancing peacock shiver with the irresistible flute and we Bengalis, blind ourselves to the showers at ungodly hours, enjoying the cool music of the monsoon rains, with the inevitable muri, telebhaja, khichuri and Rabindrasangeet.
