As a kid, I always fancied rains, may be I still do. Being brought up in Kerala, the tip of India in the south, monsoon was always curiously watched upon. On June 1st every year, two events used to happen.
The re-opening of schools after summer holidays
The first pour of monsoon.
Hence, Alexander Frater’s ’Chasing the Monsoon’ brought to me fresh and ’drenched’ memories of those lively days. Splashing of water in puddles onto each other, the smell of pristine earth on receiving the first showers, the umbrellas, swaying coconut palms, amma’s gaze into the wet dress ’Where the hell have you been? ’... As Frater puts it in Acknowledgements - ’this book is largely an anthology of information, advice, help, anecdotes and stories proffered by countless people throughout India’.
Frater visits India during 1987 and moves along the monsoon path stopping over at some key locations.
Though monsoon itself is vast enough to be a stream of science, Frater beautifully juxtapositions the science of monsoon with equally interesting events of his journey chasing the rains. He starts expectedly from Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) which is the capital city of Kerala. However monsoon gets late that particular year by a few days. Frater lists down the encounters and meetings he had with the officials in the Meteorological Centre, local people, writers, journalists etc and their views on the monsoon. He moves from Trivandrum to Cochin( now Kochi) to Goa to Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chirapunji( the place of highest rainfall). At Goa he attends the Monsoon party. Frater recalls the extensive communication he had with the officials in Delhi for getting permission to visit Chirapunji. Because of the law and order situation in North East, foreigners were not generally allowed to visit the place. Yet his persistent attempts bore fruits and finally he visited Chirapunji. Monsoon is much a part of culture of the land of India, atleast wherever it touches. There are lots of cultural nuances so intricately intertwined with the coming of rains. Many poets have sung the glory of rains. And newspapers often report the immense destruction caused by nature’s downpour.
In short, Chasing the Monsoon is a good book to read, if not an unforgettable one. ’Altogether and enduring liquid discovery of India. In a genre that is ephemeral, this book is likely to survive because of its brilliance and its insight into how the monsoon makes India...’-Economic Times.
After reading the book I asked myself ’Why a foreigner had to chase the monsoon in India. Why not me?’