Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

But too much is falling here in Oregon.

The key word there is "some."  Not a whole lot, dammit!

It has been pouring here in the Valley.  The atmospheric river, as the weather folks call it, has been dumping water into the rivers here on land, and everywhere else.

The ground is super-saturated.  True to my father's engineering claim that water is an enemy for the bitumen, roads are rapidly becoming pothole avenues.  A little bit more rain and I will have to trade in my car for a boat.

The river is running brown, full, fast, and furious.  But, comforting it is to get a visual confirmation that my home is well above on a high ground.

April showers these are not; these are April downpours!

April is also poetry month.  Enjoy the poetry that Ella Fitzgerald sings so easily, smoothly, and emotionally.

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much, too much is fallin' in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is fallin' in mine 

Into each and every life some rain has got to fall 
But too much of that stuff is fallin' into mine 
And into each heart some tears got to fall 
And I know that someday that sun is bound to shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart
But when I think of you another shower starts
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is fallin' in mine

Into each life some rain must fall

One has to be an Oregonian in order to appreciate the cartoon that rain, er, ran, in our paper:

Source

We had some showers after a long dry spell, with weather stats reminding us that rainfall has been barely a fifth of the normal.

I like the rains.  I often remark, "no rain, no green."  And without the green and the river, well, this will be southern California!

As I kept thinking about the rain, I remembered that way back in high school we studied a poem called "The Comforters."  As my daughter remarked more than once with annoyance, the nerd in me remembers such stuff that we studied decades ago.  Hey, that's the only skill I have--I don't know how to grow crops or change a car tire or even pound a nail!

Hopefully, too much rain is not falling in your life.  If there is something, may this poem ease your mind, in case you live in a place where there is no rain and wind to comfort you, and may you also find comfort in Ella Fitzgerald's song.


The Comforters
By Dora Sigerson Shorter

When I crept over the hill, broken with tears.

When I crouched down on the grass, dumb in despair,
I heard the soft croon of the wind bend to my ears,
I felt the light kiss of the wind touching my hair.

When I stood lone on the height my sorrow did speak,
As I went down the hill, I cried and I cried,
The soft little hands of the rain stroking my cheek,
The kind little feet of the rain ran by my side.

When I went to thy grave, broken with tears,
When I crouched down in the grass, dumb in despair,
I heard the sweet croon of the wind soft in my ears,
I felt the kind lips of the wind touching my hair.

When I stood lone by thy cross, sorrow did speak.
When I went down the long hill, I cried and I cried.
The soft little hands of the rain stroked my pale cheek,
The kind little feet of the rain ran by my side.   

On the Chennai floods ...

Will be a while before I get back to blogging ... time and energy spent on the catastrophic rains and floods back in the old country.

A few recent news reports:

From the BBC:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34981246

From the Indian Express:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/hit-by-torrential-rain-chennai-submerged-next-2-days-crucial/

The airport has been closed until December 6th (at least?)

It isn't over yet, by any means:

The weather office in Chennai has predicted more rains in Tamil Nadu over the next 24 hours due to presence of a low pressure in Bay of Bengal. “Due to low pressure rainfall will continue in next 24 hours in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry with some places receiving heavy to very heavy rainfall,” said Regional Meteorological Department Director, S.R. Ramanan.

This satellite map alone says what is ahead for the next few days:

Life is good!

"Why do you wake up so early?" asked my neighbor, when in our conversation I told him that I typically wake up sometime before six.  "Do you have to go milk the cows?"

No milking cows, but early do I get out of bed.  Old habits are hard to shake off.

"But, why that early?" is perhaps a question that is in your mind too.

Every once in a while, I, too, ask myself that very question.  Why not take it easy?  Why not sleep in?  Especially when the weather is so conducive to that activity.  It is not as if it is unbearably hot and humid, which makes any activity unbearable.

I get rewarded.  Rewards that one cannot possibly earn by sleeping.  Heck, rewards that one cannot earn even by earning gazillions of dollars.

Like the reward earlier today.

It was a pleasant 49 degree early morning as I pulled out of the garage.  The first thing I realized was that it was not raining, after all the gallons that poured out of the sky yesterday.  I opened the sunroof.

And, a sun that was fighting a good fight to break through the cloud cover.

I started humming "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone."  It was going to be a great day.

Even the traffic lights were all green every time I neared them.  Come to think of it, I should perhaps have bought myself a powerball ticket, given the start to the day.

Oh, but, no powerball winnings would have ever equaled what I did earn.

A few minutes into the drive, the sun broke through an opening in the eastern sky.  The sky immediately lit up with colors that I didn't even know were possible.

The sights were awesome in the side view mirror, and I kept looking over my shoulder to get a glimpse of the real thing.

"I wish I had listened to Joe" I thought to myself.

Why Joe?  He is meticulous about car maintenance.  Rain or shine, his cars are spotless, as if they just rolled off the showroom.  I, on the other hand, rarely ever even dust my car.  If I had paid attention to his comments, then I would have had nothing but awesome views in the side-view mirror, through the passenger side window.

I didn't care.  I continued to drive and fished for my iPhone.  I got to the camera function and clicked as I drove.

But, the human that I am, I was not content with that.  I looked up through the sunroof.  It was spectacular.

The problem with driving along a country road, and not on the interstate, is that often there is no shoulder space to pull over.  But, I needed to record my reward for waking up early.

I held the camera in one angle,with my eyes on the road, and clicked.

I picked up another evidence of the reward that I enjoyed throughout most of the drive.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring!  Perhaps a tasty pasta dinner, with a salad on the side, and a tiramisu with decaf to wrap up the day?

Hey, a man can dream, can't he, even though he woke up many hours ago, and bedtime is a couple more hours away?

It was a dark and stormy night

"No problems, I will go back in a taxi" could easily have been my last words!

I offered to take a cab because I felt sorry for my friend who had driven: an hour-plus to pick me up, after which he drove for slightly less than half-an-hour to the restaurant; then an hour-and-a half to show me his home and for me to meet with his family.  I figured another three hours of a round-trip driving to drop me back at the hotel is the worst punishment that I could inflict on a friend, whom I was meeting after 29 years.

As I got into the taxi, a couple of raindrops fell.  I know for sure they were raindrops.  The sky had quickly darkened like during the last days of Pompeii.  I sat in, said bye, and as the car started moving, the clouds burst open sending down gallons and gallons of water.

The driver, who was probably in his late twenties, drove like any taxi driver in his late twenties.  Sudden lurches to the right or to the left whenever he thought he saw an opening to go forward amidst the chaotic traffic that was getting insanely chaotic with the rain that was not letting up.

Lightning and thunder and gusty winds.  A couple of miles in, the roads were already flooded.

The driver couldn't care about all these conditions. He picked up his cellphone and chatted with whoever it was in Kannada, which was beyond my comprehension.  Meanwhile, he shifted gears, adjusted the air-conditioning, increased/decreased the wiper speeds, and occasionally remarked something to me, which I could not understand anyway.

I am always ready to die.  But, not a painful and torturous death, which I feared awaited me that evening.

Meanwhile, pedestrians were jumping on to the road seemingly out of nowhere--after all, there were very few streetlights--and on every occasion I was convinced that the taxi would knock them down dead.  As if that weren't enough, motorcycles and scooters zoomed in from the left and the right, and sometimes continued along on the sidewalk.

It was as if I had been inserted into a videogame.  And I am not good at videogames.  The last time I played I had a little bit of youth left in me and even then I didn't care for those games.  Here I was in a videogame reality show.

I kept scanning the landscape for any bit of "I remember seeing this when going to the friend's place" but always drew a blank.  Were we going in the correct direction?  Did the cabdriver figure out I was an easy prey?

"How much more?" I asked him at one point.  He didn't know what I was asking him.  "Innum evvalo dhoorum?" I asked him in Tamil hoping that he knew at least a little bit of that language.  He did.  "10 minutes" he said.  I know India enough to know that when people say it is only ten minutes more to go, well, it is anything but ten minutes.

More urban flooding. More honking. More swerving. More road rage.

Suddenly he swung left to turn into a main road.  "Ring Road.  Kyaa hotel sir?" he asked me now in Hindi.

I, of course, had no freaking clue.  "Park Plaza" is all I replied.

A minute later, I told him, "ask somebody."  I forgot the Hindi word for "ask" else I could have said that in Hindi

He crawled, while honking at the pedestrians and autos.  I spotted the signage and pointed out to him.  The hotel was on the other side of the road, with a median in between.  "U-turn kahaan hai, sir?" he complained.  I suspect he wanted me to get down right there, and then cross the street dodging the insane traffic.  No way was I going to play that videogame.

"Go main road. Then u-turn" I used simple English.

He was not thrilled.  But he agreed.  The turn was more than a mile later.  Another mile in the other direction and we entered the hotel driveway.

Neither the cosmos nor I won this round ...
... to be continued ;)

My old friend is back!

I did swing by the optician's.  And I did tell her about the problem with the new glasses.  And, yes, she laughed a good laugh.

"Did you have a good week?" she asked.

"More like did I have a good summer.  It is over" I said referring to the light rain that was falling outside.  "I suppose there is a time for everything."

"Yes."

We knew it would happen. That the summer would come to an end.  Our days on the porches and patios would soon become a distant memory.

When the sun shone brightly and with enormous warmth, and even when we complained about the terrible heat, we were fully aware that it was a passing phase.

Without fail, it happened.

Like that, summer is gone.

The clouds are back. The rains are here.

"I don't have to water my yard anymore" remarked the clerk at the grocery store, which was my intended destination.  "It will save me at least twenty dollars a month."

Always the party-pooper, I reminded him that it would also mean something else. "You will pay a lot more than that in heating bills" and I smiled.

"Ah, yes, any which way nature gets you to pay" he added with a nodding head.

In a way, we are glad that the seasons change when they are supposed to change.  Else, it is trouble.  To everything, "turn, turn, turn."

The gentle wind that invited me to keep the door open through the summer evenings is now cool enough for me to lock up the doors and windows.  My memory reached back into my school years in the old country and desperately tried to recall a poem about the wind. Growing old means that there is gradual fading. A word here and a word there is all I could recall.

But, I remembered the poet's name: Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Google and "transactive memory" to the rescue!  Here is that poem:

Who has seen the wind?   
By Christina Georgina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by. 
   

How do you say hello in Tamil? மேக்க மழ உண்டா வேய்

Way back, when joking about the old village ways of the old country, we would ask ourselves at home in the typical Tirunelveli dialect, மேக்க மழ உண்டா வேய்  (any rains in the west?)  That question seemed like it was pretty much the standard greeting among the menfolk in Pattamadai.  For all the reasons: the place was in a rain-shadow region east of the mountains, and the monsoons over the Western Ghats were critical for the river flow.

All kidding aside, the visits to Pattamadai also were valuable lessons on how precious water is--something we would never have known otherwise.  In Neyveli, where we grew up, water--and tasty water at that--was in plenty.  And piped too!

Thus, even now, talking with my father about the rains in Pattamadai is not rare, especially now that it is the monsoon season.

"It has been abundant rainfall all over India" father said a few conversations ago.  He added that because of the substantial inflow into the rivers and dams in the west, those states have had no choice but to release water downstream into Tamil Nadu, particularly to Mettur Dam.

A few days ago, he reported that the water level at Mettur Dam, which had been at 15 feet a few months ago, had rapidly gone up to fifty. Then sixty. Then seventy.

"The intial rise will always be rapid" father said.  "As you know, as the water level increases, the area over which the water spreads also increases, which means it will require a lot more water inflow to get it up to seventy-five and eighty."

The retired civil engineer hasn't lost anything at 83.  Good for him!  I hoped that he would not test me with a math problem of "if so many cubic-feet/second is the inflow, and the dam's height is ..."  I was just short of  yanking my hair out of the scalp--whatever is left in my balding head--in trying to recall the formula for the area and volume of a cone.  Thankfully, father moved on to how Chennai's water will depend on the rains later in the year.

Two days ago, father was excited.  "Mettur level has gone up really well, which means that they will release the water for ஆடி பெருக்கு" (a pre-planting festival time in early August.)  The Hindu notes that the water level at the dam is just shy of 90 feet.  Later today, when I call up my parents, I bet he will be thrilled and will have more to say on this.

While water level there is something to celebrate, here in Oregon it has been a remarkably below-normal precipitation over the year thanks to which the Willamette River looks like a feeble trickle.  As I was eating blackberries off the vines by the riverbank, a neighbor asked me "have you ever seen those rocks in the middle of the river there?" as she simultaneously pointed them with her finger.

"Nope" I said.  "Throughout the walk it is that way.  I see boulders and stretches of pebbles that I didn't know existed in all these eleven years that I have lived here."

"And it has been so hot" she complained.  "Looks like the California I ditched is catching up with me" she added with a laugh.

Even though we joked about the Pattamadai men talking about rains all the time, it is only thanks to them that I was made aware of the importance of rain and water.  The water that makes life possible in Pattamadai and anywhere on this Pale Blue Dot.  Maybe my life here by the Willamette is nothing but the continuation of the life my people had by the Tamrabarani.

May the farmers in Pattamadai, and everywhere else on the planet too, and the rest of us also, always have plenty of water, and may we never, ever, forget its importance.