In the hot month of May, hailstones came knocking at our windows. In north India, chilly showers swept away both heatwaves and traditional expectations from the dry, sapping feeling that May brings. Gujarat had unseasonal rainfall. Heavy rains will lash coastal Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and in the Sundarbans and Odisha, cyclone Mocha is coming.
It is hard to attribute all weather events to climate change. But we are undoubtedly living through not just changed climates, but also an altered understanding of what to expect as the seasons roll past us in all their fury and fickleness. Summer is an uncomfortable season for most—a time for coconut water, white champa flowers, escaping the sun at midday, covering heads with cotton, and collapsing in cool terracotta-tiled relief whenever possible. Yet, this year, the champa flowers lie scattered below trees, the tree itself whiplashed with squalls. Farmers are mourning their crops. Unseasonal flus attack us all, and the sound of coughs becomes more prevalent than conversation.
I was looking for an Indian jungle tree this summer—the palash, which blossoms only as summer heat descends. The tree relishes the heat, growing in a twisty, complex formation in well over 40°C. The flowers themselves look a lot like fire—orange-coloured, with petals shaped like a claw. Some people attribute the shape to the crimson beak of the rose-ringed parakeet, and so the tree is also called the parrot tree. Most often though, the palash is referred to as the ‘flame of the forest’, because in the dry, deciduous forest, the flowers stand out like a blaze. As I searched for the flowers this year, my gaze fell on the ground rather than boughs—the rains had caused the flowers to fall. Their orange colour seemed to have leached off as well. This was different from the tree-watching I had done in years past, where the florid boughs of the tree had provided shade; in 2023, the sky was so overcast that no shade was required.
The strangeness of an overcast summer sky seems to distil the challenge of climate change—we are facing a time not just of discomfort, but also unpredictability. The hammerhead worm, a carnivorous variety that I see coming out during the monsoon rains, was out in May. Winter flowers were still blossoming in the hot-cold weather. Some species were doing well, others seemed confused. Moths swivelled in hundreds through the night air in a manner that reminds me of fall rather than summer. And yet, confusingly, life goes on.
As we begin to adjust to unpredictability as the most predictable season, our traditional knowledge systems may begin to change. We may keep a warming pepper tea next to our summer stock of coconut water. We may see wildlife lost around us, disoriented and stranded. We may string family traditions of sitting on terraces at new times of the year; we may extend not just health, but climate allowances to those who are less fortunate.
It’s no longer certain what the rest of the year holds, but the sky is now a theatre of possibility and peril. The only thing that’s clear is that we have to get through this together—a climate community that is also compassionate.
Neha Sinha
Conservation biologist and author
Twitter: @nehaa_sinha