THE WEATHERMAN

 THE WEATHERMAN

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

 

13/VI/2022

 

There are two ‘signs’ indicating when it is about to rain in the deserts. Clouds gathering is an obvious hint, temperatures dropping is understandable. You get that craving of having ‘Chai-Pakoras’ could be another. Let me share a secret. You can call me the ‘weatherman’ hereafter with a sure shot prediction.

 

In this place, clouds are no guarantee for rain. They come, they dance, make merry, turn from white to grey and even to the darkest shade of grey, bundle up at the horizon, come creeping slowly towards you, play hide and seek with the sun and then when they are overhead, they show you their tongue and vanish the way they came.

 

You in anticipation request your wife to get the wok boiling for ‘Kanda Bhajia’. She tells you to peel the onions or do a swiggy or even tell you to move your ass to go to the nearest shop selling ‘Mirchi Vadas and garma garam Kachoris’. Those ‘hand grenade’ sized vadas and ‘discuss’ like kachoris are a staple at every table here.

 

Come monsoons, they sell like hot cakes. It is actually a poor man’s cake. For just twelve bucks you get a ‘set’, as it is called in local parlance. It is basically a simple sandwich. Two slices of bread with a Mirchi Vada and chutney inside. This taste is so yum that I have forgotten the famous ‘Vada-pav’ of Maharashtra, where I spent fifteen years of my life.

 

Now back to the weather. Predictions are given by the Met department. Low pressure here, and high pressure there. The Bay of Bengal is turbulent, the Arabian sea is gearing up to be tempestuous and so on. They have satellites and all that gadgetry to talk to the clouds. “Hello clouds-message over. Cloud reply-hello met pass your message over. When are you coming, 'over'? We are too busy, may get delayed, or may arrive early, over. There is an immediate flash on TV channels. We wait not for the rains but chai-pakoras to fall.

 

The most accurate predictor is the Farmer here. He knows monsoons can fail, but still in the hope to see a crop, on the first signs of clouds, he starts tilling his land. These guys can smell rain by instinct & sow their seeds. If ‘Rain God’ is kind, ‘balle-balle’, if not then the farmers are doomed.

 

Another sign of rain is the outburst of various ants and moths from the soil. Most of us would have noticed them under the streetlights. Swarms and swarms of them fly to touch that light. Bats have a feast. Next morning there are hundreds of brown coloured transparent wings spread on the road. A few larvae still move around, becoming a snack for the early birds. The streetlights get clogged, but then that’s the sign of rains approaching.

 

Yesterday, we saw another sign. It was cloudy and much cooler. We had touched 48 degrees a couple of days back. In the hills and even on the coast, heat and sultriness used to gather rain clouds. Heat never lasted more than a couple of days and down came the rains.

 

Generally, we go for our evening walk after it gets dark as after nightfall, temperatures drop a little. Yesterday, it was nice and comfy and well before dusk we were on the road.

 

We saw a fantastic “dance of the birds”. Bulbuls, both with the red and yellow bums and Sunbirds. They were up in the air, hovering, diving, soaring, dancing, flying, plunging and making merry. Moths had hatched. As moths left their holes to fly skywards, they became ‘pakoras’ for these birds. Yummy, chewy & juicy ones at that.

 

A catch here and back to a branch, a quick bite and up in the air again fluttering their wings to come to a hover and wait for a moth to fly. Then swoop as they would change directions on the hover like helicopters. For good around an hour these girls had a ball. Moths were so small that they were not visible to the naked eye but they were there and birds could see them.

 

Doves too joined the fun. Moths, which birds had injured or those losing their wings were falling. Doves went into a feeding frenzy. It was fun watching them till the street lights came up.

 

Oh yes, the weatherman has not revealed his secret of how he predicts rains. If he sits in the drawing room reading a newspaper and if from behind his ears ‘sweat’ starts rolling behind his ears continuously, it’s a definite sign that the monsoon is nearby. If without doing any work, his T shirt gets wet, that’s a definite sign that rains are around the bend. Can his forecast be reliable? I wonder!!!!!!!

 

JAI HIND

© NOEL ELLIS