A Detour to discuss Rains in Wadi-Shahabad
Frankly I was waiting for JC’s comments before I proceed. Now that he is in, let me continue. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, schools then closed for summer vacations precisely on the 10th of April every year after declaration of results and reopened on the 22nd of May. The monsoons started by the first week of June and continued till August end. Though the monsoons were not a very special season in North Karnataka because it was an essentially dry area and the farmers mainly subsisted on dryland crops, there was some excitement sometimes.
Rains were always special in Wadi-Shahabad-Gulbarga. It started in the afternoons mostly. As we stood in the balcony of our STRTs watching, the western horizon slowly darkened with the winds blowing over from that direction. Dark clouds gathered and there were a few lightnings followed by peals of thunder. What started as a drizzle, soon became a dense shower and lasted for about two hours. The first few rains of the season went into filling the huge cracks on the parched black soil, that the violent summer had inflicted. Thereafter episodes of rains ended with the whole area being flooded as the black clay was too dense to allow the water to percolate through. As people started walking through these puddles we were left with what we called “chikkad”, the rough equivalent of the Hindi “Keechad” or slush. Chikkad remained for about four months till October, by which time the ‘back to form’ sun dried it up.
The ‘excitement’ I mentioned in the earlier paragraph came about when the Kagna was flooded. The bridge across the Kagna which we had to cross to reach Shahabad was rather low and many a time the river reached upto the bottom of the bridge sometimes submerging the bridge. Drivers like Rasool were heroic enough to take the bus across the submerged bridge while the likes of Sudhakar were not. They took a circuitous route via Chitapur which took about four hours with the rains pouring outside. The darkness outside and the lights inside, with the late hours and rains adding to the adventure and romance of the journey, with some of us bursting into songs, narrating ghost stories, or sweet talking with the girl students, much to the annoyance and distraction of the already tense drivers were events that will not come again in this life or next. I am sure many people may have had similar experiences, but for us Wadi kids, these were experiences akin to a walk on the Moon on an Earthlit night. The Rains thus brought about a lot of fun, thrill and romance.
It was also the rains which brought out the frogs (or Rana Tigrina as NRB would call them). Since frogs were aplenty during this season, anatomy classes in biology, which involved the dissection of a frog was invariably scheduled for July- August. It was this dissection that prevented me from taking up biology and becoming a Physician later in life, but more about that later.
Rains were always special in Wadi-Shahabad-Gulbarga. It started in the afternoons mostly. As we stood in the balcony of our STRTs watching, the western horizon slowly darkened with the winds blowing over from that direction. Dark clouds gathered and there were a few lightnings followed by peals of thunder. What started as a drizzle, soon became a dense shower and lasted for about two hours. The first few rains of the season went into filling the huge cracks on the parched black soil, that the violent summer had inflicted. Thereafter episodes of rains ended with the whole area being flooded as the black clay was too dense to allow the water to percolate through. As people started walking through these puddles we were left with what we called “chikkad”, the rough equivalent of the Hindi “Keechad” or slush. Chikkad remained for about four months till October, by which time the ‘back to form’ sun dried it up.
The ‘excitement’ I mentioned in the earlier paragraph came about when the Kagna was flooded. The bridge across the Kagna which we had to cross to reach Shahabad was rather low and many a time the river reached upto the bottom of the bridge sometimes submerging the bridge. Drivers like Rasool were heroic enough to take the bus across the submerged bridge while the likes of Sudhakar were not. They took a circuitous route via Chitapur which took about four hours with the rains pouring outside. The darkness outside and the lights inside, with the late hours and rains adding to the adventure and romance of the journey, with some of us bursting into songs, narrating ghost stories, or sweet talking with the girl students, much to the annoyance and distraction of the already tense drivers were events that will not come again in this life or next. I am sure many people may have had similar experiences, but for us Wadi kids, these were experiences akin to a walk on the Moon on an Earthlit night. The Rains thus brought about a lot of fun, thrill and romance.
It was also the rains which brought out the frogs (or Rana Tigrina as NRB would call them). Since frogs were aplenty during this season, anatomy classes in biology, which involved the dissection of a frog was invariably scheduled for July- August. It was this dissection that prevented me from taking up biology and becoming a Physician later in life, but more about that later.
posted by Ramdas Iyer at 10:06 PM
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