Monsoon matters

Thu, Jul 24 03:57 AM

You can ill afford to open a photo album or crave crisp pappads or biscuits in the rainy season. Finding a dry and stink-free towel is unthinkable. Peeling-off plaster on the walls makes spooky images appear, as if a long season of showers isn't enough to give one nightmares. Irritable creatures not only breed quickly during the rainy season, they also come out in the open, slithering, fleeting and flying. In an urban setting we are mostly jolted out of the thrill and romance of the rains when we experience electricity flowing through walls and taps in the washrooms and hitchhiking on the potholed roads.

In our Haryanvi parlance, we called it jharee, which meant intermittent rains spread over a week during the monsoon. If the paddy is sown well in time, rains are good feed for the crop, and if there are any laggards then the showers are a godsend to them. This year's first torrent made watermelons go out of the market, substituted by blackberries or jamuns. The farmers' agricultural sense confirms that rain-kissed jamuns develop a sweet taste overnight. Hot and sizzling gul-gulas, made of sweet kneaded flour rounded into balls and fried in mustard oil, and crisp and sweet suhalis do enormous good to the palate.

Barsati, in general parlance, and chaubara in typical Haryanvi meant a one-room penthouse - considered to be a romantic structure. They were airy and located at a height to make you actually feel "on top of the world". The importance of a barsati or a chaubara could be known and felt only during mild showers or torrential rains. These country dwellings filled the heart with awe and enjoyment.

A final word on the various nuances of the term barsati: it has connotations of temporariness. In the army, a barsati major is promoted because of the vacancy of another officer, and will return to the post of captain. And there are barsati mendhaks - opportunist frogs - who show their presence only when it suits them.

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