The Monsoon Maiden: A Love-Hate Affair with the Goddess of Rains

 **June 2006 — Monsoon**

There is a love-and-hate relationship between the showering maiden and the Indians, especially in North India.

In a way, this phase of agony and ecstasy, convenience and inconvenience, floods, mud, dengue, malaria, rich harvest, green foliage, life, death—all this and much more—defines each other's real worth.

During the baking summers preceding the monsoonal unleashing, life seems fastly vaporising away from the flora and fauna unless the life-saving system arrives.

First monsoon showers on parched land, famished herds of cattle, shameless leaves, sandy dry faces, thirsty fields, are one of the most propitious, benevolent blessings proffered over the seeker's self.

How it feels and what it actually signifies is amply summed up by the almost devout outpourings in folk music, dance, literature, mythology, etc.

But the irony of this natural blessing is such that all of it is poured into the frail bag of the seeker in big swathes, gusts, bursts—voraciously.

So many a time, it seems to corroborate a local saying which goes like this:

*He, the king, gave gold but bruised the subjects' bodies by throwing gold bricks at them.*

Thus is the case with monsoon as well.

After its incessant outpourings, when there is mud, slush, leaking roofs, clogged drains, when there are reports of victims of this furious blessing, it starts during those wet, humid nights to take the shape of a curse.

People then start to pray to the weather gods for clear skies.

But we, despite the miserable losses, are immensely forgiving when it comes to the petty crimes committed by an overzealous monsoon on its charitable spree—the spree of relentless showers.

Before we forget the miseries, we again start loving it, almost after the first sunny day following a week-long deluge.

Why?

Because we are grateful for the immeasurable boon these drops hold in store for our collective identity, growth and prosperity.