Burnt By Water

The worst flood since 1924 had Kerala on its knees. The sun is out now. There is much to learn, and it is a long walk to recovery.

- Mathew T. George

It is an old, old love story. Kerala and the monsoon. Come June, she wades out of the sea to hold the state in a long, wet embrace. She fills the wells, rubs out the browns, and paints everything green. She bangs the windows, scurries over the roof tiles and kicks the coconut palm in the nuts. “Did you miss me? Did you? Did you?” She scoffs at the size-zero rivers and makes them pop at the seams. Then, by September, she is off to work her magic across the country.

In October she comes back in a different avatar and demands respect. For about a month she growls from grey skies and explodes in sheets of lightning. She blows out fuses, fries one screen too many and reminds everyone that she is a woman, phenomenally. And, just before the year breathes its last, she vanishes into the winter sunshine. We start missing her even before she is out of the door. This is not a relationship that Kerala takes lightly. There is no us, without her. Never has been; never will be.

This year, the tête-à-tête began very well. The India Meteorological Department’s Thiruvananthapuram centre released a chart comparing normal and actual rainfall. The normal is a red line graph crawling across the bottom of the page, peaking in the early 30s (mm). This year is a yellow bar graph, much like the Manhattan skyline. More peaks than troughs. The highest pre-August peak came on July 16—early 80s (mm).