In love with the many moods of the monsoon
PRACHI PINGLAY
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The monsoon is a special source of inspiration for Alexander Frater who has followed its course in India.
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Fascinated by rain: Alexander Frater
THIS may not be the best time to talk cheerfully about the rains in Mumbai but then the city takes pride in not dragging its feet but moving on with a trot. Alexander Frater, author of the travelogue Chasing the Monsoon, got a first-hand experience of this spirit when he was in Mumbai recently. Picador India relaunched Chasing the Monsoon, earlier published by Penguin India. Apart from the launch, this time again, his visit to India has something to do with the monsoon. He is visiting Rajasthan for a writing project on the monsoon in the dry State.
The city was grappling with floods, disease and collapsing buildings but Frater was more concerned about the people. In his book too, when he literally chased the monsoon in 1987, he celebrates the spirit of the people along with presenting particulars of weather science, history and observations of the different regions and cultures of India, where the dialect and way of life changes every few kilometres.
The journey must have been as difficult as the book is easy to read. The amused look when he speaks about the Delhi bureaucracy tells of some of the problems the then Observer journalist might have had trying to get permission to visit Cherrapunji. He also spoke about how he sustained the long haul, peppered with problems and yet full of rich experience. "It so happened that it was India. There was a combination of things. First of course, it was the monsoon I was writing about and secondly it happened in an extraordinary country. It was quite self-indulgent. I had a ball," he smiles with a twinkle.
He takes little credit for having completed a difficult journey like this. "If it was any other country, I may not have continued the journey."
The witty writer, in his sixties, took questions about inspiration, journeys, the relaunch, Mumbai floods and tropics with ease and friendly humour from a small gathering of expatriates, media people and friends. As he read out extracts from the book, he had the crowd quietly slip into an amusing monsoon mood, leaving behind worries of train problems, drainage systems and fear of flood-related diseases.
Frater decided to do this journey on the spur of the moment in a hospital in the U.K., where he was receiving treatment for neck pain. An enthusiastic couple at the hospital tickled a dormant bond with the monsoon buried in his subconscious. That became the first line of the book:
The first sounds I ever heard were those of falling rain. It was tropical, the kind that seems to possess a metallic weight and mass...
The prologue that sets the tone of the book depicts a vivid bond with the tropics, a keen interest in the weather inspired by his father, a spirit of adventure, observations about people and an innate bond with the rain. He writes in detail about Kerala, Goa, Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi, Kolkata, Shillong and Cherrapunji.
"I spent more than a year to come up with the first line. That is always the most difficult line of the book. I was writing about such a huge, complex subject. But once I had got that line, I finished writing the book within six months," he says.
When asked what inspired or influenced him to undertake such a long journey, he mentions his father: "My father had a great interest in the weather science. He used to exchange letters with a friend from Cherrapunji. He used to talk about going there. I remember we had a landscape picture set in Cherrapunji." The picture was so much a part of his memory that it could pull him out of his "bouts of homesickness" in Australia.
He lives in England, where the most important part of any bulletin is the weather report. How was the journey through India, which offered a generous helping of myths and anecdotes? What is the difference between the rains in these two countries? He chuckles. Several anecdotes in the book confirm that he takes much pleasure in exploring the myths and stories about music and prayers that compel the rain gods to oblige. Moreover, theories about the healing qualities of rain also manage to get his attention: "Seasons in temperate climate are quite boring. Here, it is such a huge phenomenon. In Thiruvananthapuram, you actually see this entity coming. At least 40-50 people make a chain, holding hands and welcoming the monsoon! It is sent to nourish India. The sheer joy of watching the advancing monsoon! It is an event."
The journey was not a one-time fascination for Frater. He has made the journey thrice. He has made a documentary on monsoon in India for the BBC. He sounds absolutely convinced about the excitement the season offers, "This is the only season that has moods. It can have wonderfully sublime moods. Sometimes it is grumpy, sometimes it is happy. And it is the same monsoon."
For someone who seems to swear by the energies and charms of lashing raindrops, he also observes and absorbs the dark side of it. He says, "There is romance in the season but there is a reverse side as well — floods, death and deprivation. People in Bangladesh suffer terribly. Because of deforestation, the rainwater hits the plateau very badly. In India I feel sorry for pavement dwellers. How they conquer the monsoon is an annual miracle. Even on a day when it is pouring and hutments flooded, I have seen little school children come with perfectly starched, spotless white school uniforms. It is extraordinary."
He celebrates the quirks of a simply-crazy-about-the-rains country, in his writing and out of it. The harsh facts of deforestation, landslides, environmental hazards, floods, population pressures and death all stay as well. A month-long chase is more than just an interesting and adventurous journalistic experience. As he writes in the concluding pages, "The loss of our second parents fixes us next in the firing line and makes life suddenly finite. It is the moment when we finally grow up. The rains had helped with that. I felt younger, stronger, better, curiously at peace."
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