Karnataka's Rain Man Prasad Counting Drops Of Water

Rainfall is a boon to any agrarian household. They wait for it and often count on it. Even as they count on it, they don’t count the falling drops. But there is one man who does, in the Sullia Taluk of Dakshina Kannada District and he has been doing so since 1975. Harsha Raj Gatty visited this Rain Man as he is fondly called and filed this story.

- Harsha Raj Gatty

Its 8 am. In a house in the sleepy village of Balila of Sullia Taluk which is approximately 80 kilometers away from Mangaluru, a 59-year old man carefully checks the rainwater accumulated in a glass beaker that stands securely over an approximately three-foot tall pedestal.

The man, P G S N Prasad, then walks towards his house which is less than 10 meters away and ritualistically enters his findings in a dairy. “It’s a very simple task of less than 5 minutes, anyone can do it. The cylindrical container already has measurements imprinted on it. We just have to take note of the water level in it and make a note in the dairy. One does not need too much scientific or mathematical knowledge. It’s a simple data entry,” says Prasad, who completed his studies till 2nd PUC in the science stream and then took up family responsibilities. For Prasad and his family, measuring rain comes quite naturally ever since it was first recorded by his father, PS Govindaiah (101) during the mid 1940s. “My father had a habit of writing a dairy about the house budget and so on. But on top of each page he always entered his general observation on rain and thunderstorms. I somehow got hooked onto this practice. Further, the daily weather announcement by All India Radio (AIR) always made me wonder how they forecast rain and then I decided to create my own rain gauge,” Prasad says.