The whole purpose of scientific weather prediction techniques is to enable us to plan our calendars several months in advance. Who wants their daughter’s wedding rained out after spending huge sums of money on the preparations? But our metereologists succeed in predicting rain when the skies are cloudy and foretelling a dry spell when birdsong has ceased due to the oppressive heat. As if that helps.
Indra, the storm god in the Rig Veda, is the numero uno of all the divinities to whom the seers addressed their awestruck hymns. Capricious, unpredictable, easily angered and whimsical to a fault, Indra sent down storms that could strike terror in the hearts of the virtuous. A majority of the hymns were therefore addressed to him, perhaps in an effort to calm him and make him more amenable to reason. Kaale varshatu parjanya—“may the rains descend upon us on time” is one of the phrases uttered during the Shantimantrah or the concluding prayers of Hindu rituals.
Social science textbooks in the nineteen eighties were replete with references to the “fatalistic Indian farmer” who would gaze up at the unyielding skies, dour-faced and helpless, waiting for the monsoon. The term has become unfashionable now not because the farmer is better equipped with weather-prediction support but because he has become politically significant and so derogatory references to his personality in a school textbook would not look good.
The past few days in my city have been marked by unseasonal and unexpected rains. When one sets out of home it is bright and sunny but by afternoon one is helplessly wishing for the umbrella one cast aside a few months ago. Thundershowers are louder than ever before and a friend got struck by lightning while on his evening walk. My sensitive pet huddles closer to me each time the heavens decide to put up a son et lumiere.
A colleague recounted how he was filled with increasing trepidation as an unplanned-for wet spell continued for about three days before his son’s wedding. Not wanting to risk heavy rain on the two days prior to the event and on the day of the function, he consulted an astrologer who prescribed a remedy from the Lal Kitab—a system of “remedial measures” followed all over North India. “Place some empty tawas (Indian frying pans) upside down on the roof of your house.” The colleague did so and sailed through the event with perfectly dry and cool weather just made to order for the bhangra moves and brocade angarkhas at the ceremony. “Perhaps it was meant to simulate the capping of a cloud,” I mused.
“But if you ever want to summon rain, you needn’t pay the astrologer, just talk to me,” I told my colleague. Curious, he wanted to know what my magic potion was. “In the 22 years since I set up house, no matter what the season, there has never been an occasion when I coloured my gamlas (flowerpots) ochre and the rains did not arrive the very next day,” I informed him with utter seriousness and complete honesty.