Reading 1: What is a Monsoon?
(The following selections are abstracted from Chasing the Monsoon: A Modern Pilgrimage Through India, Alexander Frater, New York: Alfrd Knopf Inc., 1992, p.26-32.)

Since childhood, Alexander Frater has been fascinated with the sound of rain. He spent his childhood staring at a photograph entitled "Cherrapunji, Assam: The Wettest Place on Earth. * It is in Cherrapunji that the Indian monsoon produced the world's heaviest rains. In 1987, he decided to 'chase the monsoon from Kerala in southern India to Cherrapunji in Assam, a south to north journey.

"Do not fear, sir, monsoon is on the way," said the lady at the newsstand. The Weather Special Bulletin of the Indian Express announced the 'South-West monsoon is advancing over the South Andaman Sea... The normal date of the onset of the monsoon is May 20."

Always, in the latter part of May, attention starts to focus on Trivandrum, a tropical city on the Malabar Coast ... The Trivandrum Meteorological Center is the most famous provincial weather office on the subcontinent. Built in the 1840's by a maharajah interested in Western scientific disciplines, it overlooks the Arabian Sea. It is from here that the monsoon is formally announced or 'declared.'

"Are you wishing to see the Monsoon Officer?" asked the man at the desk.

He took me into the room where Mr. Julius Joseph, the Monsoon Officer, was speaking on the telephone. "At 8 a.m. it was cutting through upper Sri Lanka. Yes, forty miles north of Kandy ... Well two days, perhaps, maybe three ... We are watching it carefully."

He put down the receiver and said, " I cannot afford to make false prophecies. I speak as a scientist but people always listen with their hearts and emotions. The basic physics of the monsoon - the word comes from the Arabic, mausim, meaning "season" - has been known since the 17th century... The monsoon is a huge natural engine driven by the temperature differences over sea and land; in summer the air over the land grows very hot. It expands and rises, so cool sea air must flow in to equalize the pressure. This sets up a massive aerial current from the Indian Ocean, south of the Equator. It heads for India and the evaporating water it picks up from the ocean falls as rain when it reaches the land. This condensation releases energy which warms the air, pushing it upwards and allowing even more wet air to come in from the sea. But it also cools the land, always driving that heating and upward convection further into India. That is why the monsoon is a travelling phenomenon. Are you with me?"

"Yes, I think so."

"It is further complicated by the fact that it has two branches. The Arabian Sea is one, which we get here in Kerala, blows on to the Western Ghat (mountains) and drops so much of its moisture that there is little left as it flows over the rest of the country. The other branch comes up from the Bay of Bengal (on the eastern side of the subcontinent). It sets in at the same time but it turns in at the Himalayas and falls over the plain of the Ganges River.

"So each summer, " I said, "India is embraced by these two great wet arms?

"Yes, in a sense you are right. The two currents eventually become one; indeed, when it approaches Delhi my colleagues don't even know from which arm their rains will come.

How does the monsoon affect life for people in South Asia?