Rain in Mayapur
By Madhumati devi dasi
No one told me that rainy
season means hot and humid weather. It gets more and more humid, until you
think you can no longer tolerate. Your cloth becomes damp in the humidity,
sticking so you can barely walk. Perspiration trickles down your face, and
drops with a splatter from your chin.
But the rains ease all this,
bringing down the humidity and blowing cool breezes. If it rains at night,
this coolness stays and one can sleep peacefully, but if it rains in the
morning, the sun simply begins to heat everything up again, and with it
comes the humidity.
But my goodness! I awoke and
thought I was back in Vancouver, the steady drizzle a reminder of home.
Dawn brought little light, just that filtered grey that is so familiar in
Vancouver. Steady rain, and masses of clouds running across the sky, and
no break in them for sunshine to come through.
I missed Mangal Arati, and
stayed home to chant japa, thinking that I would wait for the end of the
rainfall. Seven o'clock came, time for greeting the deities, and still no
end to the rain. There was some let-up so we dashed to the temple, but
once inside, winds and rains came with a vengeance! Trapped in the temple
with God!
And every night since has
brought more heavy rains, and wind and thunder and lightening. And it
rains most mornings and most afternoons too.
We decided to go to visit
Ganga today to see how far she has advanced - but it began to rain!
Instead, we took shelter in Prabhupada's Samadhi, climbing to the roof to
perch under the cupola and get a bird's eye view. Wow!
All the nearby paddy fields by
the river have been swallowed by Ganga Mata.
There were high banks on the
far side as well, which sheltered the paddy fields behind. Those banks are
dots of islands now, and boats traverse the area which was fields. Ganga
is twice or three times wider than she was, dotted with many islands which
are the only remnants of her former banks.
She's covered our ghat, and is
licking the backs of the stores, which line Bhaktisiddhanta's road outside
our main gate.
Looking in the opposite
direction, over to the Gurukula and Goshalla, the paddy fields at the site
of the new temple are lakes, since the water has nowhere else to flow.
We're gradually becoming an island here.
Yesterday I took a trip across
the Ganga to the other side of Navadvipa out in the Bengali countryside.
We were on an expedition to find old sites of terracotta temples, which
are crumbling away in the jungles. That's another story, but I wanted to
say that as we were scouting around, we kept on finding our way blocked by
washed out roads. We'd go another way, only to find our that road closed
as well.
Much of that side is already
submerged, so that instead of a small road passing through rice and jute
fields, we found ourselves in a land of lakes reaching to the horizon. At
one point, two lakes converged over the road, but we managed that one
safely. Not without trepidation though as we saw the current surging
across the road.
Villagers there have begun
their preparations, moving up onto the roadway, since the roadbeds are
elevated above the level of the fields. The water will come last to the
roadways, and thus they become living places during flood times. Already,
cows, goats and sheep are tethered along the sides of the roads. In other
places, farmers have their animals out to graze, since grass and greens
won't be so readily available as the flood levels come higher. We saw
firewood being collected, edges of paddy fields being shored up, drainage
ditches deepened, and fields being ploughed.
I was wondering why they're
ploughing right now, and I'll have to ask around to see who might know,
but I suspect that since Ganga does such a wonderful job of fertilizing,
that they're making the ground more receptive.
The children were fun to
watch. How they can make any situation fun! Kids throwing stones into the
water, kids casting with nets, kids splashing and running and shrieking,
and kids watching streams which overnight had turned into small rivers.
It's still calm on this side
of the river. We're not so inundated yet as on the Navadvipa side, but
still, each night as the monsoon rain thunders down, we awake and peer out
to see if Ganga has decided to give us her darshan at our front steps!
I'll keep you posted. Hare
Krsna!
Your servant, Madhumati devi
dasi
© CHAKRA 7-August-2000
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