Every year, when the monsoon hits Kerala, I take out Alexander Frater’s Chasing the Monsoon from my bookshelf and read a few pages. Frater’s book feels like a delicate love letter to the monsoon—the subcontinent’s lifeline. He welcomes the arrival of the southwest monsoon in Kovalam, then moves to Goa, Bombay, Calcutta, and finally ends his journey in Cherrapunji. For 25 years, I have been reading Frater and still love the intimacy of my own monsoon ritual. Somehow, even amid climate change, the book, which is an ode to the monsoon, feels like a warm hug.
When you live in hot, arid places, the monsoon feels like another magical world. It is like hope wrapped in love, ecstasy, and joy. Living in Ahmedabad means we have to really wait for the monsoon, long after it hits Kerala. But when it does, I say to myself, “The worst is over,” even though the sun outside still looks dazzling and ferocious. I prod my mother-in-law to tell me her childhood stories of Kerala rains. For her, “Rains in desh (she refers to Kerala that way) are not from this world. They’re from another world.”
Like the chatak bird waits for the rains to quench its thirst, I wait for the rains to come so my parched soul can receive its share of manna from the skies.
The monsoon—its name borrowed from the Arabic mausim, meaning “season”—is an elemental drama played out on the stage of the Indian subcontinent with unmatched fervour and elegance. It doesn’t arrive in a single sweep but in a duet: one branch surges from the southwest over the Arabian Sea, the other coils in from the southeast across the Bay of Bengal. Together, propelled by a hidden orchestra, they make the magic happen. Riveting is the word for the monsoon in India.
Waiting for the monsoon is a ritual many of us live for. Whether you live in Kerala, Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, or West Bengal, the monsoon feels intimate and magical. Every time I look at the falling raindrops from the windows of my Ahmedabad apartment, my mind goes back to Odisha. The rains there have a different personality.
The memory of Odisha’s magical monsoon carries a range of emotions—from joy, ecstasy, and beauty to a sense of time lost or passed by. My childhood monsoon memories are all about enjoying one of nature’s most precious gifts. When the sky turned dark with its share of lightning and thunder, we used to dance like little birds in the garden.
Listening to raindrops on a dark night felt like God singing a lullaby. My most vivid memory is of coming home drenched from school, with my mother wiping my face and wet hair with a clean towel. After changing into dry clothes, I would always be treated to a hot cup of Horlicks or Bournvita—my mother’s prescription for not catching a cold.
Later, adulthood brought its own beautiful monsoon images—like sitting on a rock in the last range of the Aravallis, from the campus of my erstwhile university, JNU in Delhi, watching the lashing rain and feeling the full intensity of the opening line of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: “Ours is an essentially tragic age, but we refuse to live it tragically.”
Monsoon magic in our literature, music and films
We all have our own intimate monsoon rituals—and that’s what makes the season so special.
In Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava, Parvati’s experience of the first rain reflects the richness of ancient literature and imagination. She is deep in meditation to win Lord Shiva’s love when it happens: “The first drop of rain stayed momentarily on her eyelids, dropped on her lips, shattered on her hard breasts and trickled down the triple fold of her stomach, and after a long time disappeared in her navel.”
One need not say more. Anything more would dilute the beauty of both rain and life.
In Assam, the annual arrival of the monsoon is a much-celebrated event—almost like welcoming a goddess. She is called Borodoisila. Every monsoon, people keep out a small mirror, a bottle of hair oil, and a comb for her to look at. The belief is that the rains are strong because she is rushing home to see her mother.
In Kerala, the Malayalam month of Karkidakam, which falls in July–August, is associated with the southwest monsoon. It is a time for ancestor worship, when families offer prayers and offerings to departed relatives, symbolised by the rain’s “tears of joy” from the departed souls.
In the subcontinent’s literature, religion, and mythology, rain is synonymous with life, and evokes myriad hues—love, romance, longing, and new beginnings. Radha asked Krishna to knock on the wall of her hut such that the sound would merge with the thunder. The exiled Yaksha in Meghdootam asked the cloud to carry his message to his wife, pining back home. Odisha’s Sadhaba Pua merchants set sail for Java, Sumatra, and Bali only after the monsoon had departed. Kartika Purnima marked the auspicious time for voyages—after the monsoon’s end, when wind patterns favoured sailing.
Tagore’s rain is all about love and life—each seamlessly embracing the other. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, in his inimitable style, wrote: “Let there be clouds, let there be wine. After that, it doesn’t matter what calamity comes.” Gulzar once said the monsoon is “the most physical of all seasons”. His monsoon songs are timeless. One early 70s three-line verse takes me back to my newspaper days:
Why is this newspaper so wet?
Change the hawker from tomorrow!
‘Five hundred villages washed away this year.’
From music and theatre to films, the rains have always found their place. On a rainy night, you can sit in the comfort of your home and watch Ullozhukku, a poignant yet empowering Malayalam film released in 2024. Set against incessant rains, it tears you apart with its emotional weight (no spoilers here), but eventually warms the cockles of your heart. The Cannes winner All We Imagine as Light also has its share of monsoon moments in the decaying metropolis of Mumbai—another tale of the rains and the never-ending misery of the common citizen in a megacity.
Our personal rains
The monsoon has its own rhythm. It may start with drama, then become languid, and sometimes simply stall—refusing to move, taking a holiday on its own terms.
This reminds me of a 2018 trip to Kerala. Three of us from different parts of the world met at Kochi airport on a beautiful July mid-morning. Monsoon lovers that we were, we craved Kerala’s ethereal rains.
One friend brought along his grandfather’s giant umbrella, hoping to put it to good use. But we never experienced the much-talked-about rains—only a faint, worn-out version. We were disappointed.
We returned to our cities, and within weeks, the devastating Kerala floods struck, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. The images on social media were heartbreaking. We still talk about that trip—and how the monsoon chose to give us a miss.
Of rains and development
If you live in a big city, enjoying the rains has become a luxury. It’s a privilege to soak in the beauty of rain. If you’re lucky, you can inhale the heady fragrance of petrichor from the comfort of your home. But if you’re commuting by train or navigating pothole-ridden roads, the monsoon becomes a nightmare.
Mindless development with little regard for human life has resulted in the total collapse of urban infrastructure during rains. It’s exhausting to hear the same old jaded stories of Mumbai’s “indomitable spirit.” And how do we make sense of newly built bridges and roads being washed away by the first downpour? Many of us feel angry—bad governance has robbed us of the joy of reveling in the romance of the monsoon.
Even as I write this, I am eagerly waiting for the monsoon to arrive in Ahmedabad. This year, it hit Kerala on May 24. After reading a few pages of Frater’s Chasing the Monsoon, I returned it to its designated place on my shelf. Now I wait.
My act of waiting is all about hope—a slice of life. Hope is the only thing I am holding in my palm right now… until the raindrops fall on it.
To my fellow rain-lovers: join me in this journey of hope across the subcontinent. An annual ritual, yet magnificent in its repeat act. Year after year. Time after time.
Deepika Sahu has been a journalist for 29 years and she has worked with some of India’s leading media houses. Right now, she is independently engaged in content creation and curation. Twitter: @menondeepika | Instagram@moodydeepika | Facebook: Deepika Sahu
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🌧️A nostalgic ode to the #monsoon, blending childhood memories, literature, films & climate realities. 📚 From Kerala to Odisha, rain evokes longing, joy & loss. 🌦️ Amid urban chaos, it remains a timeless ritual of hope. 🙏 #TheIndianSun @menondeepika
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