Monsoon Myths

Living as a foreigner, in any society I suppose and not just Mumbai, means that life is just one long series of startling revelations.
Because you are learning from scratch, you are constantly running up against a theory or sight previously unknown to you. What’s more, if you have a curious mind and want to ask “er, why is this so?”, somebody is usually there to give one (or more) explanations to you of what’s going on.
But – and it’s a Big But - the advantage of being an outsider is that you do not have the same in-built belief system as everyone around you. You have the advantage of being able to be sceptical of these so-called explanations.
And, having tested them, then you might rightly wonder if people’s explanations sometimes might contain no truth at all.

This is most evident in the case of The Monsoon, which comes here in the months June to August. You wouldn’t believe how many old wives’ tales there are, and how contradictory the pieces of advice can be…


Myth 1 - Swimming Is Bad for You in the Monsoon

The seas around Mumbai are probably not very healthy, so it’s advisable to bathe in swimming pools - at all times of the year. And because it’s also very hot in the monsoon (despite the grey skies and rain), I head out to the sports-club even more regularly at this time of year. It has an outdoor pool that is huge, so it’s very relaxing, and - for some reason - very empty during the monsoon months. My presumption was that people were worried about lightning striking, even though lightning is rare.

But when one day I told the man in the flat downstairs that I was going swimming, he got very agitated: “Don’t!” he said. “Think of all that pollution coming down from the skies!”
Now, he’s an intelligent man (though not, admittedly, a meteorologist) but I couldn’t help but wonder - what pollution? After all, the rain comes in from the southwest, from the lovely Arabian Sea. But then, he has the local knowledge….

After that, I spoke to a friend who has young children and she also said she avoided the pools. Why?, I asked. Because the high monsoon winds bring in spray from the sea and that gets in the pools, she said, and I cannot let the children risk catching what comes with it. But – what’s in the spray, exactly?

But, I suppose these fears, irrational or not, explained the lack of swimmers in the pool.

So I thought I should reproach the swimming-pool manager for his lack of care for his clients, and explained to him what had been said, and advised him that, if this were all true, he should shut the pool for the monsoon months.
He thanked me for my concern, but gently pointed out that the pool water – drenched as it was in cleaning chemicals and filters – was probably healthier than the air we breathe in this city.

So I asked him how he explained the paucity of swimmers. He
shrugged his shoulders: “Who knows why they think what they think,” he said.


Myth 2 Eating Fish (Not)

When we met a group of friends at a restaurant in early July, they immediately told us not to eat the fish.

Now one thing that is always enjoyable to me is to find a group of people who all adhere to a long-held and passionate - but quite irrational – belief; and then watch them as each try to explain the reasons for it to each other.
For example - people who believe passionately that wearing glasses weakens one’s eyesight even more (it doesn’t) come up with all kinds of amazing rationalisations for their belief and even start arguing with each other about their incorrect theories. It’s slightly crazy.
The fact is that often when people hold a belief that has been with them, probably since childhood, they never ask themselves – do I have real evidence for believing the thing that I believe?

Something similar happened at this table. Everyone had an opinion why not to eat fish in the monsoon. Here are a few of the opinions uttered….
*The fish is inedible because it is not fresh; and that is because it is not locally-caught in the monsoon, but in fact is shipped in, some said. (What’s wrong with that?, I wondered). They explained that the fish is not fresh because the local fishermen (the Kolis) are afraid of the fierce monsoon storms, so they stay in port.
(I thought I would check on this and later went to the Sassoon fish dock, and yes, it seemed to be true that there were no fishing boats around in July… yet a week later, on August 1st, suddenly all the boats were in the bay again. Admittedly, this was strange, and I haven’t worked out why yet. Anybody know?)
It still didn’t explain why eating fish at this time of year is bad. Unless you don’t like imported, frozen fish…

*No, said others, there are in fact fishermen out at sea, but they often net dead fish, which have been shaken upwards from the sea-bottom as the raging monsoon storms stir the seas, and then are taken in the catches. Restaurants, they said, use these old fish as much as the fresh fish.
(Personally, I thought this was ludicrous, but I’m no marine biologist.)

*Ah, said someone else, it’s not dead fish that are shaken up, but the very silt of the sea-bed (by the turbulent stormy seas). The seabed is massively polluted, they said, therefore the fish – which consume the stirred-up pollution – are poisonous. (Blimey!)

It was all very confusing, and yet sounded all very unlikely, despite the firm opinions.
The next day I checked the local fish-market, and the women were screaming their wares as usual (it gets to be quite a din in those market-halls) – so it looked like someone at least was going out to catch fish. No great dearth of locally-caught fish there, apparently.
I bought some, cooked it and tasted it. Seemed okay to me; but then maybe it will take a week or two before any effect takes place?

Nevertheless, at lunch today, at the sports-club, the café manager shook his head: “No sir, no fish on the menu for the next two months. It’s because of the monsoon, you see.”
Funnily enough, however, he couldn’t explain exactly why.


Myth 3 The Monsoon is a Good, er Bad Thing

Depending on whom you talk to, and the day you talk to them on, the monsoon is Good – or Bad. Strangely, people rarely consider it simply a bit of both, as you might think.

Of course in Mumbai, the monsoon can cause great damage to both life and property; the floods that resulted from the incessant rain in July 2005 led to the deaths of over 500 people in the city.
The danger from water-borne diseases also rises of course in flooded areas, and the incidence of malaria increases too because there are so many pools of standing water - which encourages mosquitoes to breed faster. Thus monsoon can be BAD.

But the same conditions on rainless days can also turn Mumbai into a sort of balmy English summer – fluffy, grey, and cooler than the usual Mumbai heat – a relief from the baking and sweaty sauna-like state of affairs that is the month of May. The rains also bring green back to the recreation grounds (the “maidans”) allowing the cricket pitches to re-grow. GOOD.

What is hard in this debate is to accept is the fearful state of the pavement-dwellers and in the slums.
Everywhere suddenly, in June, great swathes of blue stiff plastic are attached to the makeshift roofs, but it doesn’t provide anywhere near complete protection from the rain, and inside these tiny shelters/homes, the new insulation simply produces an intense breathlessness – forcing many to choose to sleep outside on the paths until the rains come to wake them, and then they crawl back inside their dwellings. What’s worse is that the really heavy rains will just flood and even sweep away homes. BAD.

But hardened Mumbaikers will also tell you that this is the great time for cheap holidays just a few miles outside the city. The rains make hiking in the hills possible, the rains make the landscape intense and green, the rains make river rafting possible on the main tributaries. If you don’t earn a lot – and the vast majority here do not – and you have time to take a holiday – and the vast majority here do not – the monsoon can give you a good reason for a weekend away. These holiday-starved city-dwellers yearn for monsoon. To them it is GOOD.

**

I guess we all have opinions and preferences. What’s odd, and you really do observe this when you are an outsider, is just how fierce and aggressive people can get in defending what are really quite weak positions. It makes you think about those "beliefs" you have back home too…


Addendum
One nicely weird fact is the contrast of the days pre-monsoon with the fortnight post-monsoon.
Before monsoon, some people are almost giddy with excitement, looking at the skies for rain-clouds (just as the English stop and smell the winter air for hints of coming snow). When the first drops plash down, they squeal: “I love the train; I love the rain!!”
But, two weeks later, the same people are miserable with the grey cloudy sameness of it all: “Monsoon. I hate Monsoon!” they whisper.

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