Monsoon lands
There is a scene from the movie Forrest Gump that reflects very well the arrival of the monsoon season in Southeast Asia: “One day it started to rain, and it didn't stop for four months. We had all kinds of rain: a finite rain that punctured, a thick and thick rain, a rain that fell sideways and even, sometimes, a rain that came up from below. It even rained at night. "
If I had to choose a trait common to many Asian towns, it would be monsoons. Asia is, in addition to many other things, a meteorological system: the monsoon; a huge place on the map battered for several months each year by typhoons, storms and rain-laden winds. To speak of the monsoon is to invoke images of torrential rains, floods, floods and overflows in tropical and subtropical countries in Asia and the Pacific, but also in South America and Africa. In reality, monsoons are the "engine" of global water cycles.
The monsoon is a wind and the word for it comes from the Arabic (mosem), which means season or change, precisely because it is a wind that changes direction throughout the year. Strictly speaking, there should be two types of monsoons: summer and winter, since the monsoon is a wind that blows in opposite directions at different times of the year. Thus, in summer it blows from the sea to the coast, from south to north, loaded with rain; In winter, on the other hand, when the land is colder than the sea, it changes direction, generating a dry and warmer season, with hardly any rainfall. These changes are caused by the thermal contrasts between the land and the continent, in a similar way to what happens in any of our coastal populations, but at a gigantic, continental level. For this reason, the monsoon is, in Asia, above all, a seasonal change, a tuning fork that prints a characteristic rhythm in the lives of billions of people, their customs and their economy. In fact, in countries with a markedly monsoon climate, the four conventional seasons are barely distinguished; These are summarized, in most Asian countries, into two: the rainy season and the dry season.
It is no coincidence that the largest population concentration on the planet occurs in the part of the world governed by monsoons. It is the monsoons that, with their abundant rains, allow flood or very water-intensive agriculture (rice, cotton, soybeans, etc.). Wherever the monsoon affects, there are invariably many people. If the birth rate is very high because the crops are very labor intensive, or if there is a lot of labor because the crops are very fruitful, I cannot say. The truth is that the monsoon discharges 80% of the annual precipitation wherever it passes. More and more catastrophically. Progressive global warming is also contributing to an increase in the volume of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn causes increasing rainfall and extreme atmospheric phenomena.
Despite the devastating effects of the monsoon at times, the rainy season is a happy time for locals as the monsoon ends drought each year and is crucial for hundreds of millions of farmers in Asia. Their arrival is greeted with festivals and celebrations throughout the region. The main Buddhist festivals, throughout the calendar of Asian countries, are directly related to the rain cycles and harvests. Life doesn't stop with the monsoon. Despite the inconveniences that, annually, in transportation, communications and daily chores, living daily with mud, puddles and waterspouts causes, life goes on. In flip flops, under ponchos, with katiuskas, sheltered by awnings or umbrellas, life goes on. We are, to a large extent, the weather to which our lives are exposed and there are those who, like the Japanese philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, believe that the monsoon is embedded in the deep essence of Asian thought, culture, character and cuisine. The inclemencies and meteors shape us and, thus, the monsoon conditions, to a great extent, the rhythms of life, the way of looking at the world and of behaving of many Asians: their resilience, their patience, their belief in the cyclical nature of the destiny, tenacity or his resigned confidence in the future.
I remember the beginning of my first monsoon season, just recently arrived in Shanghai. From the top of the 25th floor of the skyscraper where I worked, I watched in amazement as the sky fell over in a surprisingly fast and greenish way, moments before it started to rain. Within seconds, a biblical rain curtain completely blurred the view of the city. When, after a while, a Chinese colleague came into her office, I asked her if it was still raining a lot on the street. She answered me in a way - deeply Asian - that I have not yet forgotten: "I can't answer that question, Julio, because I don't know what, for you, it is to rain a lot." New paragraph.
