The rain’s finally here. Millions of Indians on the mainland will now be rejoicing as the sky overhead turns grey — perhaps the only time the colour conveys joy.
History has it that tracing the path of monsoon winds from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean was instrumental for the establishment of a maritime trade route that had significant bearing on the progress of human civilization. And the credit for the discovery goes to Greek master navigator and merchant, Hippalus — believed to have lived in the first century BC. Before Hippalus, the West was under the assumption that the geographical location of the Indian coast extended only from West to the East. But by tracking monsoon winds, Hippalus soon realised the Indian coastline extended towards the North and South too.
And this insight helped him understand that crossing the Indian Ocean was a faster way to reach the South of India than following the coastline in the west to east direction. And the rest is history. The maritime trade that flourished in the wake of the discovery triggered the birth of hundreds of kingdoms and cultural beliefs.
But the monsoon winds remain significant. The Southwest monsoon is the most watched natural phenomenon in the subcontinent and from the Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi to the great Indian farmer at a remote village, all eyes are fixed on the southern tip of Kerala — all through the first week of June, every year. If the skies remain dry there’s a certain shiver that goes down spines at South Bloc and your supermarket.
The ritual of monsoon forecasting and its progress begins months before the actual event. Climatologists from the United States, Japan, parts of Australasia join their counterparts from the Indian Meteorological Department to keep up 24/7 surveillance on the progress of the monsoon winds. The sheer magnitude of the endeavour is mind-boggling but new-age terms such as El Nino and La Nina are indeed the result of this painstaking work — by hundreds of scientists.
But besides the science, the monsoon also helped cultivate legends. L. Ananthakrishna Iyer, Dewan of the former princely state of Cochin, in his Ethnographical Survey of India, quotes a widely-prevailing legend about rain in Kerala.
Many, many years ago the kings of the Chera, Chola and Pandya dynasties went deep into the woods for a penance as their three kingdoms reeled from a drought. The three prayed to Lord Indra and he in turn blessed each with four months of rain. Happy and relieved, the kings returned home to daily life until the Chera King found that he was experiencing deficit rains when compared to the other two.
So they called on Indra again and it’s reported from the times that the god directed the Chola and Pandya kings to give two months’ worth of rain to the upset Chera ruler. The other two gracefully, agreed. Which is why the Chera king finally ended up blessed with eight months of rain while the other two were content with two months of rainfall each.
But things were much simpler in those days because today, after several hundred years of accumulated complexities, that deal between three kings and a god has manifested in the form of the Cauvery and Mullaperiyar disputes.
