A tolerant summer

Summer has been very tolerant this year. There have hardly been days when temperatures have touched 40 degrees. On the contrary, there have been long spells of brooding melancholy - overcast skies, crackling thunderstorms, drizzling days and redeeming rains lingering on for day after cloudy day. For the pluviophile in me, it has been nothing short of pure monsoonal delight, the body ferrying from workplace to home, but the child-like mind already running through the muddy meadows and splashing in the rains. Unlike the locals here, whose coastal legacy has been to thrive on sunny days by the beach, I rejoice with the clouds - the sun is often too bright for me.

But this is not the norm - it is an exception, with the La Nina bringing in wet summer for eastern Australia. The resulting bounty though has been phenomenal - regional and outback towns which were counting D-Day based on the number of days of water left in their reservoirs are now splashing in abundance, the muddy dying rivers now pregnant with turbulent waters with even cautions of flooding in some places. SO stark a contrast compared to last year, when the driest continent was further being parched and burnt. There were fishes dying in the thousands from the lack of oxygen in the drying waters of the dying rivers, while all around the east and south, the forests were burning in unprecedented bush-fires. The skies in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne would turn a dreaded shade of blackish-orange for days, resulting from the soot in the skies from the bushfires. The sun would appear as a pale disc of gold, visible in the day. I even heard a child asking his mother on the train, if it was the sun or the moon. It was a nasty summer, the likes of which was unseen in this sunburnt country. The El Nino effect had lingered for long, desiccating the lands to such an extent, that the forests had turned to tinder waiting for a single spark. And when it came, the inferno left deep scars in the minds of its people. Villages and towns were burnt, and people were stranded on the beaches as the refuge of the last resort, waiting for the navy to rescue.

The world looks so different in a single year. The grey skies wafting with clouds seem so much more acceptable than an orange martian firmament. The rains bring so much of a change - the lush green landscapes on the neighbouring islands of New Zealand and Tasmania prove how beautifully different the world can be with a continuous supply of rains. As for us, each year is different. And we need to wait with caution for the indignant ones, while celebrating the ones where summer is more tolerant.

For the poet though, no scientific explanation is required to cherish a wet summer. The mind gets so easily distracted when nimbus clouds arise on the horizon, the heart already composing lyrics by the time the first raindrop kisses the earth; when the gum trees get deluged and the red earth reciprocates the love with petrichor, there is wanton abandon and all of the structured everyday life of a banker-consultant seems trivial, almost in-existential. It is then, that I thank the summer for its tolerance and smile, that there is still a bit of hope in the skies…

15th Feb’2021