Poem Review: Monsoon Magic
I look at the sky. It is cloudy, but rain eludes. I believe that rain clouds carry hope, and when it rains, that hope is delivered. Today, there is a promise. The announcement on television and a post on Facebook suggest that a cyclone is on its way toward our city, and it would make landfall tonight — or tomorrow.
Ah! The monsoon. Each year, the story of the monsoon varies. During some years it is abundant — so abundant that it floods, and during other years, the rains fail, like a fickle lover, teasing to come but not turning up.
India is a country whose fortunes are tied to monsoons. There is joy and sorrow, bounty and starvation, poverty and wealth, that the monsoon season leaves behind.
“What the four seasons of the year mean to the European, the one season of the monsoon means to the Indian. It is preceded by desolation; it brings with it hopes of spring; it has the fullness of summer and the fulfillment of autumn all in one.”
― Khushwant Singh, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale
I have loved monsoons differently in different cities and phases of my life. Nothing like sitting at home with a cup of green tea and a book, or sometimes chai and onion pakoda, or hot vada pav, or just getting drenched in the rain. Rains were romantic for me in Mumbai, torturous in Chennai, cozy in Bengaluru, and adventurous in Calcutta.
Now, I have the additional privilege of enjoying monsoon through poems that flow as torrential verses from these four amazing poets.
‘Mango in the Rain’ by Priya Patel, ‘Sudden Death’ by Leslie Xavier, Rain Poles’ by Amitabh Ashesh, and ‘Monsoon’ by Chitra Iyer bring out the various moods and moments of the poets when they see the rain as sour or succor.
The poems are an ode to the Indian monsoon, which nourishes about one-fifth of humanity. I am so excited about this review.
Poem 1: Mango in the Rain
The monsoons of India,
like a cool blanket
on sweating shoulders,
tantalizes me with sweet mangoes
The soft leathery skin bursts
with the colors of a stressed sunset
and promises the sweet taste of summer
Beneath the peeled skin,
I bite into the soft, sticky nectar
that drips like honey
from burning lips
And so, in the monsoon rains,
I run like a child in puddles
reaching for the succulence
of the summer mango
© Priya Patel, 10/12
Commentary on Poem 1:
Is the poem Poet Priya’s yearning to be in India? Mangoes and Monsoons are special in tropical countries, particularly in India. But has ever a poet suffered in imagination for the lack of words to bring out the real experience that everyone in India experiences — the magic of monsoons and mangoes?
Mango is called the King of Fruits. It is the nectar of the tropics. Monsoon is the nectar of livelihood. When we add the two nectars, we receive what we call the ‘mango rain’. Mango rain falls in April, in Southwestern parts of India — Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, and Maharashtra, where mangoes grow in abundance.
When the pure and warm drops of the summer rainfall land on the golden flesh of the ripe mangoes, a lick of the pure water soaked in the sweetness of the mango fibers, transports us to what we call the ‘tropical heaven’. Mango rains are fun because it is the best of three things — summer, rain, and mangoes.
The monsoons of India,
like a cool blanket
on sweating shoulders,
tantalizes me with sweet mangoes
Like how a slightly cooler night hugs a sweltering, sunny and hot day in summer, the monsoons sometimes put out their eager hands into the hot lap of the Indian summer, wrapping our sweating shoulders like a cool blanket. The summer rain is warm, yet it is cooler than the salty sweat. It is the ‘monsoon time’ and it is also the time for mangoes to ripen.
The soft leathery skin bursts
with the colors of a stressed sunset
and promises the sweet taste of summer
Mangoes appear in different colors based on their type and stage. The young fruit’s skin is light, matt finished, in contrast with the shiny, dark green mango leaves. As they ripen, the light green transforms into reluctant and then bright yellow, much like the sun of the summer afternoons. Slowly, the taut matt finish becomes leathery, while the yellow slowly changes to orange — leathery orange, and that looks like the stressed sunset. The life of the mango fruit is similar to the sun — ripe and golden before they disappear.
The taste of mango also travels like the sun on a summer day -from bitter while young to sweet when ripe. The remarkable packaging of three analogous journeys together in a few words is the magic we spot here — the riping of the skin, the changing of the taste, and the journey of the sun.
I bite into the soft, sticky nectar
that drips like honey
from burning lips
And so in the monsoon rains,
I run like a child in puddles
reaching for the succulence
of the summer mango
The nectar of mango is the ‘elixir’ of monsoon rains. The poet cuts through the leathery skin and reaches the soft, sticky nectar, held by the golden fibers. The intoxicating sweetness of the mango juice is like honey which drips slowly against the burning lips of the poet.
The poet runs like a child, in the monsoon rains. The puddles of succulence of the summer mango form on her lips, and as the tongue reaches to taste the divine nectar of the mango juice, the monsoon rains drench the lips, forming a puddle of water, on her lips and on the roads, where she as the child runs for the succulence of the summer mango.
This is a looped metaphor, if you visualize the lips as the ground for puddles and reverse imagine the sticky nectar and the summer raindrop, the poem becomes an intertwined play of words, meanings, and visuals of the summer mango and monsoon rains.
Ah, sometimes a picture, this time an ad, that describes what I could visualize in my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysxZAya5S ( This is an ad for Mango Slice, featuring actress and model Katrina Kaif)
Poem 2: Sudden Death
It rains,
but why? I wonder.It is but the guilt
trapped in the clouds.
a load, a bit too much
to bear or hold.
unleashed upon us,
the pavement dwellers,
the seekers of lores,
the keepers of mortality.It rains,
a steady downpour,
as relentless as the tears
I saw the shed last Sunday
at a slushy burial ground.
or this gloomy day
on internet’s
social cremation page.There, everywhere,
lie buried some dreams,
some larger meanings,
some lesser aspiration.
A tale mortally eternal:
The desire to live long
succumbs to nature’s verdict.
It rains, I wonder why?— Leslie Xavier
Commentary on Poem 2:
Poet Leslie Xavier’s poems have started to grow on me. I picture him sitting on the balcony of his Bengaluru home, seeing the rains splash and with a deep sigh, penning his poems. His intake of breath during his sigh is the indication that he has decided on what he has conceived (that is when his poems are mentally born), and the outlet of his breath brings out the impact of the poem. Of course, it looks imaginably wondrous, but I cannot replace this feeling.
In a last-minute decision, I replaced his poem ‘Amazing Grace’ with another one, mint fresh from his latest ‘sigh’, and it made sense to write after the cyclone Mandous passed through Chennai (where I stay) to his city, Bengaluru.
It rains,
but why? I wonder.It is but the guilt
trapped in the clouds.
a load, a bit too much
to bear or hold.
unleashed upon us,
the pavement dwellers,
the seekers of lores,
the keepers of mortality.
An explosion of words from the clouded mind of the human who sees the cloud burst after the dark grey clouds that loom above which suddenly open up and unleash a downpour on this city, both on those who expect the rain for joy and livelihood, and the unsuspecting mortals whose lives are disrupted in a not-so-happy way.
The urban dweller, who we shall call the citizen, struggles to make his ends meet in a bustling city. If life were an economic pyramid, the base is the broadest, and that is where our citizen lives. The mind of the citizen is laden with problems — physical, mental, social, cultural, familial, and economic — that he lives through his daily life. The pavement dweller, the daily commuter, the hawker, the undertakers of the city’s cemeteries and crematoriums — all who struggle to live, and those who live with the dead get back to their home, seeking a day’s rest from their daily struggles.
The guilt in the poet’s clouded mind transfers to the dark grey clouds above, for like the poet’s words pouring as a torrent in this poem, the clouds weigh down and unleash a downpour on the unsuspecting citizens beneath. The load is a bit much to bear or hold, for both the cloud and the poet’s mind, the last straw has been reached, but it is also the simile, connecting the burden of the citizen’s body and mind.
The forces of nature and destiny are sometimes too enormous and unscrupulous, for they happen when they happen, and the citizens will have to bear their brunt, the torture of the torrential rain, for they are exposed to the elements — the pavement dweller, the undertaker, and the vagabond.
The ‘keepers of mortality’ can be interpreted as the city’s undertakers, but I dare to extrapolate it to humans — the urban dwellers, who think that their routine is eternal and immortal, but the rains unexpectedly remind them that there are forces beyond, and their eternal routine can be rudely disrupted.
It rains,
a steady downpour,
as relentless as the tears
I saw the shed last Sunday
at a slushy burial ground.
or this gloomy day
on internet’s
social cremation page.
The death of a routine is also the death of life as it is practiced. But there is more here, as we discover in the next stanza of this layered poem.
The rain is steady now, a ‘relentless downpour’. The guilt bursts like a cloud. Copious loads of water flow, from the eyes of those attending the burial in the cemetery, where the mud is slushy due to the incessant downpour. The feelings of the living for the dead, and the ground that holds them dear, both drenched in wet, on a quiet Sunday. Of course, for those who could not make it, the gloom seeps into their drawing room so that they can see the dead on the Internet or social media memorial pages.
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of the earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before — more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Tears unburden the hearts of their guilt and the rains unburden the clouds off their load, making them light, and even clean dust from the air; so in the end, there is peace in the city and the citizen’s mind.
There, everywhere,
lie buried some dreams,
some larger meanings,
some lesser aspiration.
A tale mortally eternal:
The desire to live long
succumbs to nature’s verdict.
It rains, I wonder why?
Oh, the dead had dreams. So when they were buried, quietly their dreams were buried too. To live is to have some meaning or purpose, or aspire for something, and to live long means there is a desire, a yearning to achieve something meaningful, and there are more dreams to conquer. But hasn’t destiny, the fickle, invisible yet powerful hand of fate, in one big unexpected sweep, wipe out the little dreams that the citizens chase all their lives?
So, what is the real purpose of rain?
“I love all those who are heavy drops falling from the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightning, and, as heralds, they perish.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
The lives of raindrops however powerful they are, for they are born in the flash and flamboyance of the bright lightning, yet they die moments after they reach the dusty ground, much like the dreams of the citizens — all flashy and flamboyant, and fickle when their lives reach an end.
Poem 3: Rain Poles
A bamboo grove speaks in cryptic creaks,
Lends a neighborhood-elevated mystique,
Causes living beings and nature even
To rejoice in its arc of influence,
To imbibe with disciple-like deference,
Its essential mannerisms…
A fact noted by litterateurs
In China, Vietnam, and other lands Asian.Once during a monsoon deluge,
While visiting friends at bamboo’s
Native home… to the world as Bangalore is known,
I noticed this magisterially fused
Scene… revelatory, Vedic-ally pristine.
A private road by a tall, arching grove,
Began to paint itself into internodes…
Broad, resembling a culm watery smooth.
At its base, fallen branches and leaves blown
Appeared to shoot out of rhizomes.Bamboo-filtered rain fluttered like leaves
Or connected to ground in bundled streaks,
Wet with sliding, trickling light drops,
Many formed bending poles
Overheads of walkers in the rain grove.
My friends returning home told
Of the experience… as entering an
Onomatopoeic vocal zone where words
They shared produced musical tones,
Pulling speakers to the altar
Of the one supreme behind all souls.~Bolbul
Commentary on Poem 3:
A poem that tells a story with its folding sentences, yet unfolding meanings. A hydrophilic and hodophilic verse that takes us across the rains of South East Asia and then brings us back to India, all connected by lush and tall bamboo and monsoon rains. Like the mango and the rain, there is a symbiotic bond between the bamboo and the rain.
A bamboo grove speaks in cryptic creaks,
Lends a neighborhood-elevated mystique,
Causes living beings and nature even
To rejoice in its arc of influence,
To imbibe with disciple-like deference,
Its essential mannerisms…
A fact noted by litterateurs
In China, Vietnam, other lands Asian.
I always linked bamboo with Buddhist mysticism, for which I could be pardoned, because the poet also leans towards the reverence that both hold in South East Asia. If you sit with folded hands and legs, close your eyes and let your mind absorb the sounds and smell, you will realize that you are mentally and physically in a serene place — then you are either in a bamboo grove or a Buddhist monastery.
The silent breeze, swaying the erect bamboo, like the ramrod spine of the meditating mystics, embraces the lesser mortals, who learn and rejoice in the ambiance of serenity and silence. The poet says that literatteurs have noticed this transcendental connection between bamboo and mystics.
“...When the wind passes through a bamboo grove, and the cracking bamboos, and he is not far away from them: he is amidst them, one of them — he is a bamboo.”
― Osho, The Secret of Secrets
The ascetics of the yore sought forests to perform penance in silent solace. Nature provided them with the ability to connect with the divine path that they sought. In a bamboo grove, there is something more. It is the divine place that the paths lead to. The person who is amidst a bamboo grove acquires this silence, solitude, and solace and he becomes the container of the divine.
Once during a monsoon deluge,
While visiting friends at bamboo’s
Native home… to the world as Bangalore is known,
I noticed this magisterially fused
Scene… revelatory, Vedic-ally pristine.
A private road by a tall, arching grove,
Began to paint itself into internodes…
Broad, resembling a culm watery smooth.
At its base, fallen branches and leaves blown
Appeared to shoot out of rhizomes.
While we embrace the sagacity of the bamboo story, a story that brings the mystic bamboo to the magical monsoon of India. The tropical setting of the bamboo forestry does not change, but this is the poet’s home town and he also calls it the ‘home of bamboos’.
So the tree rustles in the evening when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte
The colorless rains are like the watercolors of a brush, painting the scenery that the poet portrays. The scene is magisterial and fused, blending in with his soul and mind; yet revealing its pristine spirituality ( ‘vedically pristine’).
There is a difference from the South East Asia bamboo though. This bamboo grove, albeit as magical, is manmade and is located on private land. A private road leads to his friend’s home, says the poet, and turns our attention to the bamboo grove itself. The internodes and culms of the bamboo shine ‘watery smooth’, watered by the monsoon rains. The beauty of internodes, which connect nodes that eventually form the culm, represents the way our lives are structured — a series of interconnected and interdependent events connected by decisions (nodes).
The bamboo, like gurus, teach us not only about life, but also about the afterlife, starting from the root of life, on the ground from which everything is born and which now holds the dead ( fallen leaves and branches), but they resemble rebirth, taking us back to the beginning of life again (appear to shoot out of the rhizomes).
Bamboo-filtered rain fluttered like leaves
Or connected to ground in bundled streaks,
Wet with sliding, trickling light drops,
Many formed bending poles
Over heads of walkers in the rain grove.
When the rains fall on the mystic and wise bamboo, their dalliance takes different forms and shapes. The rainwater is formless, odorless, and shapeless. The water flutters and dances like wet leaves and forms puddles in ‘bundled streaks’, taking the form and shape of drops and pools as they trickle down, filtered by the bamboo.
The bending bamboo poles also form an effective canopy ‘over the heads of the walkers’ in the grove forming the protection from the relentless rains that they love to soak in.
The relationship between the water and the bamboo takes myriad shapes. They co-exist and confront, cuddle and copulate.
Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. ~Bruce Lee
Another life lesson from bamboo and mother nature is here. Two teachers and forces of nature — the magical bamboo and the monsoon rains, dally with each other and dawdle in various planes. Even human relationships are not unidimensional, and they take different shapes — like bamboo water.
My friends returning home told
Of the experience… as entering an
Onomatopoeic vocal zone where words
They shared produced musical tones,
Pulling speakers to the altar
Of the one supreme behind all souls.
Beyond the mysticism, wisdom, and life lessons, there is one thing bamboo brings. The magic of sound. The sound of music. From the hollows of its culm, where air twists and turns, in a dance of its own, creating a sound of music, that resonates with the presence of peace and divinity. After all, isn’t that what we aim for — peace and solace, with a dose of divine experience?
“the flute is the true magical rod that changes all it touches in the inward world; an enchanter’s wand at which the secret depths of the soul open. The inward world is the true world,” said Vult; “the moonlight that shines into our hearts.”
― Jean-Paul, Walt, and Vult, or The Twins
That rod of bamboo, the flute, is the wand that opens the soul, and the key to the inner world, where we can see and experience the ‘one supreme behind all souls’.
Like us, the poet yearns for this divine, spiritual experience, and cherishes the bamboo and the monsoon rains in his life.
Poem 4: Monsoon
When it first arrives to pacify the scorched earth,
It is grandly celebrated, as a conclusion to dearth,
All of life seems anew — blades of grass to pasture fences,
As rains fill the air with compelling fragrances.But soon, there is dullness and haziness around,
Mirroring the outlook of man, no doubt,
Drenched in scepticism and soaked in fear,
He conducts himself poorly, his dignity smeared.Why doesn’t he stop and learn
When nature has so much to impart?
Like day and night, darkness and light,
Aren’t joy and sorrow parcel and part?I’ll tell you what I see when the rains stop,
Aspirations lucid, the green path clear,
Holding a clean canvas to begin things anew,
Go paint your life with rainbows, without any fear.~Chitra Iyer
Commentary on Poem 4:
Can the monsoons be a lesson for the dreary human life? Can they be an inspiration for those who fall off the rails into the dreadful abyss of despair?
Poet Chitra Iyer leans on the inspiration from the monsoons and Nature to illustrate that despite the desperation, all is not lost. Nature rejuvenates and revives, and the human mind can simply follow.
When it first arrives to pacify the scorched earth,
It is grandly celebrated, as a conclusion to dearth,
All of life seems anew — blades of grass to pasture fences,
As rains fill the air with compelling fragrances.
In the South Indian farmlore there call the plains the ‘the earth that looks at the sky’(vaanam paartha bhoomi). It means that the earth that bears the grains is looking expectantly at the sky. The summers of South India are scorching. The rains that come are the manna from heaven, pacifying the heat and thirst of the scorched earth and people.
The cracks of the dry palid earth let the water in as if a thirsty throat gulping water, and smiles in happiness — green happiness. ‘Blades of grass to pasture fences’ sprout, ‘all life seems new’. The petrichor that emanates from the ground fills the air ‘with compelling fragrances’. A new, aromatic world announces its arrival.
But soon, there is dullness and haziness around,
Mirroring the outlook of man, no doubt,
Drenched in skepticism and soaked in fear,
He conducts himself poorly, his dignity smeared.
The opportunity for hope is as fickle as the rains. Rains don’t pour all year long, but the scorching sun does. But with that, the dryness kicks in, evoking the dusty landscape. The landscape is dull and hazy, reflecting the state of the people as well as the land.
I wonder why the poet switched from a positive opening in the first stanza to a dreary outlook in the second. Man is ‘drenched in skepticism and soaked in fear’. Desperation and doubts drive his mind to the brink, not far away from the proverbial cliff, resulting in poor conduct and loss of dignity.
There is an abstract layer here; without chasting humankind for their woeful state, there is depth in their sadness and from that depth, springs the hope.
“Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud- falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I’m not the only thing that falls apart. It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter.”
― Lone Alaskan Gypsy
Raindrops like mirrors reflect human life — the fickleness, the despair, and the hope.
Why doesn’t he stop and learn
When nature has so much to impart?
Like day and night, darkness and light,
Aren’t joy and sorrow parcel and part?
Humans are part of nature. Oh, they are anything but natural. But then why do humans think otherwise? His so-called modern thoughts, abetted by technology, have stopped him from considering himself as part of Mother Nature. Nature’s wisdom is its abundance and scarcity, its ‘day and night, ‘darkness and light’, and ‘joy and sorrow’. The yin and yang of nature are what life is all about. The poem ‘If’, by Rudyard Kipling comes to my mind.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
The imposters act like Jekyll and Hyde, contrasting and contradicting, but that is what makes life interesting. The journey of life then comes an experience. No one looks forward to sadness, but when it arrives, one can be balanced and not lose balance. The rains and droughts teach us this simple yet profound truth of nature.
I’ll tell you what I see when the rains stop,
Aspirations lucid, the green path clear,
Holding a clean canvas to begin things anew,
Go paint your life with rainbows, without any fear.
Oh, when the rains stop, let us despair. There are puddles that you can splash; there is the bright sun that can cast lucidity on your aspirations. Soak yourself in the sunshine and enjoy the shiny ‘green path’ ahead of you. With sunshine and clean air, what can’t you do? The poet has created the most magical place for us to be in and to begin.
Isn’t the simplicity of nature the most profound learning? Nature recycles, rejuvenates, and restarts. Get to a fresh start and ‘go paint your life with rainbows’, without any fear.
Monsoon Magic
The poems vary from the little mango to the tall bamboo, the woes of the citizen to the hope of the after-rains. The rains of India, the monsoon that set from the South-West and the North-East seas, bring hope and despair, joy and sorrow, all together.
“As a romantic ideal, turbulent, impoverished India could still weave its spell, and the key to it all — the colors, the moods, the scents, the subtle, mysterious light, the poetry, the heightened expectations, the kind of beauty that made your heart miss a beat — well, that remained the monsoon.”
― Alexander Frater, Chasing the Monsoon
The poets have lived, experienced, and observed this magical dance of monsoons, and have captured it in bottles of verses. Alexander Frater’s quote says it all. The monsoon is truly Indian. If you love India, you should live the monsoon at least once in your life, or read these poems and this review, to relive the monsoon magic again and again.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2022
