Chasing Our Monsoon

The sudden burst of torrential rains after interminable months of stifling Indian heat may be the world's most dramatic annual meteorological event. Political differences forgotten, every citizen of the subcontinent eagerly monitors the progression of storms across the Indian Ocean, searching for clues about the date of this year's onset. Alexander Frater follows the monsoons-unsteady northerly progress, pursuing its bliss and destruction as well is his own family ghosts, elegantly insightful and humorous, he captures the delirious celebration and relief with which India greets its liquid transformation. If all travel books were this good, everyone would just stay home and read.

-Karen Van Epen

From CHASING THE MONSOON:
Heaving a door open I stepped outside. Soaked to the skin within seconds I felt a wonderful sense of flooding warmth and invigoration; it was, indubitably, a little bit like being born again. Raindrops rang like coins on the flagstoned path and the air was filled with fusillades of crimson flowers from the flamboyant trees; they went arcing by like tracer and, raked by an especially mean burst, I can testify that flamboyant blossoms hitting you in the eye at 60 k.p.h. cause pain and temporary loss of vision. At Fort Cochin they were ringing the bells in St. Francis Church. In the dark harbour small boats ran for home. Waves bursting over the scarlet sea wall were suffused, curiously, with pink light. The jetty, set under a small wooden gazebo, vanished beneath the heavy surf. Orange tiles cladding the gazebo's steeply pitched roof began to tremble until, like clay pigeons being sprung, they went whirling off into the murk one by one.

Then, from the corner of an eye still watering from the flower strike, I witnessed an astonishing scene. Two straining waiters held the coffee-shop door open while a party of men and women filed into the storm. The men wore button-down shirts and smart business suits, the women best-quality silk saris and high-heeled shoes; as they emerged, they opened their arms and lifted their faces to the rains.The Spices Board had come out to greet the monsoon.

They made for the jetty, strolling, laughing out loud, calling, revolving slowly in a kind of dreamlike gavotte. In the gazebo they stood knee-deep in seething water while the wind blew spiralling flumes of rain up over the peak of the disintegrating roof; the flumes united there in a fountainhead which, along with the tiles, kept getting snatched away. Buffeted by the gusts, unbalanced by the waves, the Spices Board executives clung to each other with water in their eyes and looks of sublime happiness on their faces. A young woman in a soaked and flapping gold-coloured sari laughed at me and clapped her hands. "Paradise will be like this!" she shouted.

(Chasing the Monsoon, Travelogue by Alexander Frater. Owl Books, 1991). You can find this book at Amazon.