The change of seasons 20/03/09

Last night, I woke around midnight and lay awake, trying to figure out what it was that had woken me.

After a few sleep-dazed moments, it hit me: instead of the usual nightsounds (trains passing, people talking, babies crying, termites chewing), I could hear nothing but the roaring of the wind. The wind! Usually (well, up until now, anyway), there isn’t any wind here. There might be the occasional pleasant breeze, but nothing that would qualify as actual wind. And this wasn’t any old wind – it was a full-on howling gale.

I jumped up and ran to my balcony, hoping it was raining (I’m longing to feel rain on my skin at the moment, it’s so dry and dusty here). Instead of rain, however, there was just the furious, relentless wind. I watched for a few seconds as the palm trees outside my bedroom, illuminated by the street lights, were lashed like something in TV news coverage of a faraway cyclone. Then all of a sudden, the power went off across town. Where moments before there had been palm trees flailing desperately against their windy assailants, there was suddenly nothing. Just the roaring wind and the dust it was picking up and wantonly redistributing.

For some reason, the sudden darkness and the relentless wind frightened me. I slammed the door to my balcony and dived back under my mosquito net, to bed. I lay there, breathing hard, watching the suggestion of lightning play across my ceiling and counting the seconds to the thunder. Eight seconds. Seven seconds. Outside, the corrugated iron of my neighbours roofs began to bang and whine. Eventually, lulled by the storm, I drifted off to sleep.

*

The next morning, everything looked pretty much the same, except for the fine layer of debris that had gathered beneath each of the windows I’d forgotten to close. Bits of banana leaf, twigs, scraps of plastic, heaps of dust. On the way to work, I looked out for signs of damage. A couple of trees now leaning at drunker angles than they had been the previous day. Piles of dead leaves already being swept up by women and children to use in cooking fires.

According to my colleagues, the storm was a mini-cyclone, and it damaged a lot of the flimsy corrugated iron houses of the poor. Apparently, such storms will be fairly common for the next two or three months – one characteristic of the new season. Bangladesh has 6 seasons, I believe, although I’m yet to get my head around the different ones. And the current season, the new one, is characterised by dryness, heat and sudden storms. Fun times ahead.

The Change of Seasons has taken on almost mythical significance for me here. For the last month or so, every slight headache or tiredness, every discomfort and major illness, has been blamed upon The Change of Seasons. While I can’t say I necessarily agree with this identification of cause and effect, it’s certainly true that the seasons are on the turn, and it’s all change here.

The mango orchards are in bloom, filling the air with an almost sickly sweetness. In just a few months, green mangoes will be ready for making pickle, and a few weeks after that the sweet mangoes will be ready for making daiquiris (I have great plans I tell you, great plans). Everywhere, the bright energy of new growth is juxtaposing itself against the dust-laden greyness of old. The paddy is every day more strident and irrepressibly green. In the heat of the afternoons, the cicadas are beginning to whir, and during the load-shedding blackouts that are growing more and more frequent, the cockroaches are multiplying like nobody’s business.

And then there is the heat. It’s gathering, day by day, like an old disused machine cranking up to speed. Each day is a squint brighter and a gasp more humid. The weather is hunkering down upon us, and I’m beginning to worry because there is going to be no escape.