Kerala gets its annual national headline thanks to the southwest monsoon. The clouds that begin to gather over this gateway to the seasonal showers can humble no less than the union finance minister and the central banker to the rain-awaiting nation. This time, the two have shared a common anxiety on the matter, variably emphasised. Within the state itself, the response to the delayed monsoon is less anxious and more varied. The impact is felt right across vocations not always in sync —farming to fishing and umbrella making to tourism. The monsoon out here is more physical than statistical and this physicality isn’t always easy to handle. With the very trade winds that brought an early sailor to this coast, came clouds that burst even as he stepped out of the flagship to call on the local king. The ill-tempered Vasco da Gama wasn’t amused by the clumsy trek across the swampy lowland through pouring rain and never regained composure on these shores. In the not-so-distant past, an Englishman saw the monsoon more favourably, “I found an occasional pair of fishermen in an open shed, shielded on the seaward side from monsoon rains, mending their nets… This glimpse of a Malabar Sunday morning photographed itself in my memory. It fitted exactly into the picture of a sound economy and a homely culture which matched so well the ecology of natural resources and climatic conditions: a simple life but a whole life”. Sir Robert Bristow, the fabled engineer who between the world wars dredged Kochi’s natural port into a naval maritime harbour, wrote this in his memoirs, Cochin Saga. We could do with another Bristow to save the state’s rivers. Meanwhile, nothing reflects the progress of the monsoon better than the 44 rain-fed rivers that run across this longish land strip. Kerala flaunts this factoid, not the fact that none of them retains much water. All but three flow into the Arabian Sea in a Sisyphean urge to drain out. So when Bharata Puzha, Kerala’s second longest river, looks its patchy self, you know that not much of a monsoon has happened. It takes a steady downpour to make this sad sandy paste look anything like a river. Overexposed by lamenting poets and overeager journalists, it looks doubly naked. A full hour into mid-June Kerala, and no sign of rain. And when it finally comes in the next hour, it is a short shower over the Agriculture University, on the highway at Mannuthy. Is the rain god out to bless the agronomist or the farmer? Have no worries, assures a young businessman, no less rain-dependent than the farmer. Jopu, who manages John’s Umbrellas, says a torrential onset of the monsoon will stress his assembly line with panicky spurts in demand. “Of course that will make me feel like a king, but it’s better to be a bit less regal. An evenly spread season is easier to handle.” He asks in passing if journalism too has become a rain-driven sector. “Quite a few TV crews from the north have come already.” There are other visitors from the north from his own industry. By no stretch a competitor for his equipment-moulded, battery powered branded products, Manisha from Rajasthan has set up shop at Kochi’s marine drive. Umbrellas for a bargain price, bulk purchased from Mumbai, are displayed generously along the body of a parked container trailer. Thanks to the inactivity of the Cochin Port, the vehicle seems in no hurry to move. Manisha’s roadside sale would go on. The irony of an enterprising wayside umbrella seller all the way from the parched Rajasthan will not be lost on Lal Kalpakavadi. This longtime president of the state Congress party’s farmer wing lives in Kuttanad, the state’s rice bowl, and is no stranger to such inversions. He is livid about an intelligent polity that unerringly produces negative outcomes. “Neither coalition front, including mine, does anything to harness as big a resource as the monsoon and all that comes with it, including an alluring landscape. A broad-based package to save the region was prepared by the distinguished agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan, himself a son of Kuttanad. The state government just let it lapse. These below-sea-level Holland-like farmlands have to be sheltered from excessive and untimely rain,” he says. More, rather than less rain, is what worries Sunil Sreedharan too. He runs Sea Lagoon, a resort at Cherai Beach, and has reasons to be wary of water. Hit by the tsunami in 2004, he and his colleagues managed to wade out of the hotel they were working for in Kunfunadhoo island in Maldives. He didn’t flee the world’s lowest lying country at the first opportunity. He stayed on for many more years before he chose to return. “You don’t overreact to disaster, which is what the administration does routinely here. Whenever the rains turn predictably heavy and there is that equally predictable and preventable landslip in a hill station like Munnar, the authorities get hyper. Enough to drive away even adventure tourists.” The early monsoon tourists at his beach resort are for now sitting back and watching the odd rain cloud play truant. There will be a problem only if it doesn’t pour through July and August. The holy month of Ramadan will be over by then and visitors from the Middle East would turn up to celebrate the rain-soaked green. The monsoon deserves to be celebrated. But is it with “a simple life but a whole life” as Robert Bristow put it? In these complex times, the closest to any such lifestyle is in ayurveda, says Dr Krishnan Namboodiri, the director of Nagarjuna Ayurvedic Centre in Kalady. He sees the human as part of nature. “It is good to detoxify during the monsoon because that is when the rain-lashed environs are flushing out toxins too. Again, don’t bother if the rains are erratic. The human body can cope with bigger upsets like jet lags”, the globe-trotting physician sums up an hour-long shower in wellness words. In three long days of rain search, this is the best rain-like feel you get. The story appeared in print with the headline Upon us all, some rain must fall
