Last week , the monsoon – the
South West monsoon to be precise - went away.
It disappeared silently, without notice or a whimper, retreating on its
tippy toes and leaving behind mornings that have been a charming change from
the pattern of the last two months. Only
a couple of weeks earlier, the monsoon had hammered the city into submission
one macabre evening, drowning the muffled cries of its ill-prepared denizens,
stacking traffic back to oblivion and soaking up the earth (in places where
there still existed soil). It had given
notice at that time, dark, lumbering, ominous notice, a brooding face of
proclivity, a caustic grin in the clouded sillouette of intent. I had then been driving and, looking up at
the black sky, had stepped on the accelerator, but to little avail for, like
others, the car took its share of the battering. A sixty kilometres away, a bare twenty four
hours later, the pounding breached the lake by the farm, and soaked our land,
sending its wildlife scurrying to higher ground and providing the perfect storm
for the cacophony of frog-sound to commence, a chorus that continued in happy
unison through the night.
This was its swansong for 2015.
The first day of clear sky was
magical, for the air breathed clarity, lightness, vision and had a spring in
its step. In the following days, the
mornings have had a touch, a faint kiss, of mist. I can see it condensed on the windows of cars
parked outside, can breathe it in the air and feel it clouding the vision of
the skyscraper being built far away. Thankfully,
far away. The air has the feel of
winter, but from experience we know that winter, too – like the skyscraper - is
far away, and it will only get warmer in the days to come.
Yet, this is not autumn, for that
is typically British weather. We don’t
have anything like it and I am grateful.
The autumn we have read of in English books – books of James Herriot,
Dolye and Dickens, books with charming weather interludes, long drives, the
moors and the dales and monsters and murders – is an autumn of falling leaves,
shorter days, uncertainity and foreboding.
We are happy to be exempt: why have an autumn, when, as here, we can
have a post-monsoon season, a cheery, warm couple of months of happiness as the
oranges come in to the markets and the seat on the balcony under the morning sun
begs to be taken.
The birds seem to feel the change
as well, for there is greater energy in their morning perambulations – I saw
the coucal today fly in a downward arc from tree to tree and its flight was the
grace of pronounced joy. Some of the
perennial flowers have begun to blossom, months after I had expected them
to. They reach for the warmth gratefully
– gratitude for nothing out of the way.
It is a quality that we have long forgotten and that is why I love
flowers, dogs and my tea cup. There are
no expectations and each moment is welcome and bliss. Each is happy to be happy.
And, therein, lies the learning
from each moment spent with our never-swerving companion, Nature.
