The various soundtracks accompanying rain

The bird call that lifts my spirits the most at this time is the wild exultant ‘piu-piu-piu’ call of the rakish Jacobin cuckoo. In the northern parts of India, they are monsoon breeding migrants, considered to be the harbingers of the rains — announcing their arrival around a month before the first showers are due. It is speculated that they fly over from South Africa riding ahead of the monsoon winds, though there are resident populations in the southern parts of the country too. Up north, they have a wild exuberant romance — gentlemen duelling with each other in aerial combat — and like all cuckoos, deposit their eggs in the nests of suckers, like those glowering jungle babblers for example. Their dalliances can put you in the mood for all kinds of badmashi in the rains, which would send pious killjoy governments into paroxysms of sanctimony and finger-wagging. The Jacobin cuckoo, earlier called the pied crested cuckoo, is a handsome black and white bird with a raffish crest and long tail and at this time, seems to have a completely bindaas attitude to life. Both ladies and gentlemen dress alike.

Before the rains actually arrive, there’s the distant artillery rumble of thunder that quickens the pulse and puts a smile of anticipation on your face. Sometimes, it is preceded by an explosive, ear-splitting crack as a bolt of lightning spears down and strikes the earth or splits open a tree and startles the heck out of you. Now you know it’s time to hasten indoors. Never stand underneath a tree to enjoy this sound and light show; you may all too soon become a sizzling, charred part of it!

Once the rains arrive, there are other soundtracks to listen out for. There’s the soft whispery susurration of raindrops falling on foliage, deepening to a surf-like roar as the drizzle turns into a downpour. On tin and slate roofs the rataplan of rain can be deafening, though is never jarring. On a car’s roof, however, they can sound a little alarming, as though you are under machine gun fire! The plashing of big silver bullets of raindrops in a swimming pool can be musical, as is, of course, the gurgling of water rushing into drains or down slopes. This cheerful gurgle can change all too quickly into a dangerous dragon’s roar as the stream turns into a raging, mad torrent taking all before it. It’s best to listen to a river in spate from a very safe distance indeed. Waterfalls too roar with deep-throated power and on the coast, the giant white-capped rollers, thunder, boom and hiss as they hit a rocky shore, or the bollards meant to keep them back. But perhaps the most terrifying sound of all is the ominous rumble of a collapsing hillside as it tumbles into the valley below, with boulders as big as houses bouncing insanely every which way at hellish speed.

One of the most familiar sounds at this time is the shrill hiss of tyres on wet roads as cars speed past leaving a comet’s tail of spray in their wake. The wind that drives the rain can whistle eerily through slats in buildings and houses making them seem haunted, and there’s always the startling slamming of windows and doors left carelessly unfastened at this time, occasionally accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

And after the downpour come what I call the ‘becalming’ sounds: Now begins the great frog philharmonic orchestra as the amphibians puff up their cheek pouches and proclaim their undying love. Some may be soloists, others sing in chorus. The rain roar tunes down into the soft drizzle susurration, and then this too stops, leaving just the xylophone-like plink-plonk of raindrops sliding off the glistening leaves into pools. Sometimes the downpour stops suddenly giving way to almost immediate silence. But even as it does so, the first questing whistles of birds break the sudden quiet: the sweet flutings of a magpie-robin perhaps, or if you are in the hills, the long lovely whistles of the blue-whistling thrush. They are telling the world and their partners that they are alive and well – and it’s back to business as usual.