Daily Times

The summer is here with more than its usual ferocity. As I sit in my study writing these lines, with the ceiling fan whirring above my head at full speed (on the crutch of a UPS), drops of sweat from my head trickle down my body and drench my posterior thoroughly. This phenomenon is peculiar to the monsoon heat. At dawn, I look at the northern sky, wondering listlessly if there is a stray cloud that will come to my rescue but there is none for my relief. The trees stand silent in obedience to nature, no birds sing nor do any leaves stir. The hot, humid wave of heat is relentless and its cruelty can only be matched by the description of this weather in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, a portion of which I cannot resist quoting:

“No hope, no change! The clouds have shut us in

And through the cloud the sullen sun strikes down

Full on the bosom of the tortured town,

Till night falls heavy as remembered sin

That will not suffer sleep or thought of ease,

The lightning fly

In vain. No help the heaped up clouds afford

What truce with dawn? Look from the aching sky

Day stalks, a tyrant with a flaming sword!”

Even when some clouds appear in the firmament and there is a hope of some truce being affected between the sweltering heat and the clouds, the dawn hopelessly sets the blazing sun once again in motion, which appears, as if it were a “tyrant with a flaming sword”. This graphic picture of the sizzling heat of summer could only come through the mighty pen of a man of Kipling’s genius. It is sad that Kipling, who was born and bred on this soil, could never acclimatise himself to the ways of our culture and climate and remained an alien in this land, but what he penned about our land is nothing but the bare truth. We, the natives of this land, particularly our peasants in the fields and our workers in the factories, have learnt to take this in our stride. They courageously brave the intensity of this hot and humid weather despite its extreme harshness. Our urban population, which found the means of fighting the severity some decades ago by using electrical appliances, now finds it hard to escape its cruelty in the current energy crisis. Our energy minister already announced that this summer would be yet another test of the nation’s patience with at least 10 hours of load shedding every day for the next two months. This being another of the many tests of the ordinary man’s patience, he would be well advised to endure it all with fortitude, whose reward, as promised, is with Allah.

Now let us beguile ourselves for some moments from the harshness of our summer and see what summer means in the western world, especially the colder regions. Summer indicates a season of ‘mellow fruitfulness’ in the west because it provides relief from the freezing cold of winter, turning the earth green and verdant with fruits and vegetables of multiple varieties and is therefore celebrated with much fervour because of its refreshing warmth and mild temperature, which normally varies from 45 degrees Fahrenheit to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It is a wonderful time of year. Everything comes to life, marked by festivities, fun and frolic, evoking images of the love and romance with which their life and literature is full. Despite its cruel heat, summer in our country has its blessings too. Agriculture is one of our largest economic sectors. The rabi (spring) crop that is sown in or around winter is harvested in the summer. The harvesting of our major staple crop, i.e. wheat, begins in the middle of summer before the monsoon, alongside other crops like barley, mustard, sesame, peas, linseed, gram, etc. Thus summer is a period of rejoicing and festivities for our peasants and farmers who reap the dividends of their hard year’s labour. For this reason, all our rural festivals take place in the summer, which with all its harshness is also a blessing in disguise for them. The rainy season, from end-June to August, is an integral part of the summer, which brings immense relief and merriment to all sections of society. Heavy rainfall is due to vapour-laden monsoon winds rising in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, which account for nearly 65-75 percent of the total annual rainfall. The rains bring down the temperature and provide much needed relief to the common man from the scorching heat. They also provide ample water to dams for power generation and irrigation.

The rains bring excitement to all, particularly to children who, with the first drop, run around in the rain, playing silly games, splashing in rain water and getting themselves thoroughly soaked while enjoying every moment of this rare extravaganza. The delicious aromas of spicy delights like pakoras and samosas waft from every second house. Everybody seems to be celebrating the beginning of the rains. Our poets and writers also appear to be greatly overwhelmed by the onset of barsat (the rainy season) and trumpet its arrival with great fanfare. Our literature is therefore full of the joys and pleasures of the rainy season, knitting around it all the romance of life one can dream of. Ironically, this relief is short-lived. Out of a total monsoon period of 60 to 70 days, the actual duration of rain on average never exceeds 10 to 15 days. In between this time, extreme humidity plays havoc with the lives of the people, making it the most miserable time of year.

Notwithstanding all the fun and pleasures associated with the rainy season, the season often brings in its wake a lot of distress and devastation for the masses in the shape of widespread floods and high levels of humidity. Concomitant with this is the menace of outbreaks of epidemics and of pests and insects of various types threatening human lives as well as crops. Distress is compounded by a poor drainage system when water collects in small ponds and stagnates, providing a breeding space for the bacteria responsible for spreading dangerous diseases. The havoc of floods is made worse due to the lack of adequate safeguards to combat water spilling from rivers when they are in spate, which is normally due to administrative corruption and inefficiency rather than a lack of resources.

The summer is thus full of strange paradoxes whose resolution is a challenge for man’s conscience and intelligence. We note that even when heat and rain ravage the land in their full fury, the rich and well to do are seen sitting comfortably on the balconies and terraces of their palatial bungalows or air-conditioned chambers enjoying the bounties and pleasures of the weather. But it is another story for the poor and less privileged sections of people who are fated to burn in the heat and drown in the rain, and even freeze in the extreme cold. Do we stand absolved of this unjust dispensation when a majority of our fellow beings become victims of the vagaries of the weather in such a cruel way? The rain teaches us that we live in a society that is far from egalitarian.

The writer is a former member of the provincial civil service and can be reached
at zafar.aziz.ch@gmail.com