Monsoon is here again, with its several gifts and blessings. In its many-splendoured charm, endowing the valley with its cool showers, turning the entire landscape into a painting of various hues of the colour green.
Doon valley comes alive in this beautiful rainy season, forgetting all its heat and dust, all its tiredness of summer. The pollution settles down, the tourists begin moving back to their homes and the valley can breathe better and easier. It is simpler to be in the valley during this season than in the hills. In the mountains, the rain can force people to remain indoors for many a day due to its incessant quality and force. However, the valley allows one to enjoy the rains to the best. Armed with umbrellas and rainsuits, people go about their business as usual. Only when the rain gets too heavy do people wait somewhere till it mellows down. And then they are on their way again!
Doon has always been the chosen place of the raingods. They like to stay here not only in monsoon but also in winter and some other months of the year. Rain is very close to the valley’s heart and enhances its beauty at all times. The local rivers like Rispana, Bindal and Song begin overflowing with water in the monsoon.
People living near them have to be very careful or shift away for a while. There was a time, when I was a child, when water used to be seen in these rivers round the year. They were proper rivers. Now we see water in them only during the rainy season. Water does not stand on the valley’s roads due to the slopes in its topography. So there is hardly ever a problem caused by rain for the traffic.
It rains here almost every day beginning late June and stretching upto early September. One can say that there is immense potential here for “Monsoon Tourism” for those visitors who come from places of low rainfall. Once a friend of mine from Delhi said soon people will have to bring their children to place like Doon to show them what rain looked like! I sincerely hope such a day never dawns. However, the rainy season can be a good time to visit Doon for people who are not dependent on school and college vacations for planning their holiday.
Bhutta shops are doing brisk business and the valley is immersed in the aroma of corn being roasted in every nook and corner. Added to these are the many chai pakora shops which Doonites love and patronise. For those who like to have coffee and burgers, there are many cafes serving these too. Umbrellas and steaming cups of tea are the most common sight in the valley at the moment. Most schools are yet to re-open and when they do, children in colourful raincoats will add to the beauty of the scene.
Meanwhile, one is taken up with the rumbling and grumbling sounds in the sky, followed by wondrous rain that refreshes not just the mind and body but also touches the soul. It gives one the chance to appreciate once again the blessings which the changing seasons bring, the many occasions for happiness that nature gifts us with and the beauty of the rains which never fails to fascinate me. Memories of festivals like Janmashtami and Rakshabandhan spent with the family in childhood always come flooding back to my mind during this time.
I long for those days of simple joys and strong emotional bonds. My brother and cousins will go to watch a film on Rakshabandhan after the festivities were taken care of. One film we really enjoyed on Rakshabandhan day was “Don”. People change, times change, things change. Nature keeps repeating itself through its pattern of seasons. Thank God for that! However, we must not take even nature for granted .As we all know, it can fight back if we tamper with it too much. So let us celebrate nature and its splendid magnanimity. So that it keeps showering us with its goodness. let this rain keep falling and inspire me to write more and more. This piece too has been written while seeing and hearing the sweet rainfall brought abundantly to our valley by the raingods every year. Keep it like this, dear gods.