Festivities awash with rains of bliss

Outwardly, most of the people in Bangladesh were taken aback seeing the incessant rain spoil their Eid-ul-Fitr festivities. However, a lot of people took the disruption stoically. After all, the shower was designed by Mother Nature, who plans everything that occurs in our life. Moreover, the prolonged bout of rain drenched the country during the peak of monsoon. Deep ash-blue clouds gathering in the corners of the sky to finally turn into bursts of rain or continuous drizzle are a normal spectacle during the season. Any deviation from this natural cycle is considered abnormal. However, this is what has been happening in the recent years.
In the last one-and half decades, monsoon has been elusive in Bangladesh. The eagerly-awaited season has not arrived on time to soak the farmers' parched croplands. It resulted in poor harvests of paddy and other major crops in many parts of the country. Agricultural experts have pointed the finger at the impact of El Nino for our faltering monsoon. It's true. The effect of the El Nino phenomenon has played havoc with the age-old climate in the Asia-Pacific. The area belongs to the broader central and eastern tropical Pacific region. The main scourge of the El Nino impact emerged with reduced rains, prolonged summers, and the much-dreaded drought. Its reverse phase sees sustained cooling of the Pacific waters.
Tropical cyclones are also singled out as common features related to the El Nino impact. Bangladesh lies in the sphere of this natural hazard. Notwithstanding the fact that the country has not had to grapple with any severe drought in the recent years, drought-like situations have bedevilled a few parts of the country. Moreover, the frequency and intensity of rain have declined considerably.
Against this backdrop, the forecast of the weathermen added to the misgivings of peasants and others eagerly looking to a full monsoon. The Met Office had predicted prior to the start of the rainy season that the year would see a poor rainfall. Environment-conscious people did not hesitate to blame the El Nino impact for the looming natural hazard.  Basing on the experience of reduced rain in the last few seasons, farmers in Bangladesh, too, braced for yet another agricultural disruption this year.
The immaculate start of the 2-month monsoon this year in the Bangla month of Asharh, and its full upsurge in Sravana, has surprised many. A lot of others found in the timely arrival of the rainy season an auspicious resumption of seasonal cycle. Like them, people engaged in agriculture finally began feeling reassured that El Nino possibly could not cause much damage to the country's course of nature.
The worldwide environmental degradation, coupled with the off-balance ecology, has for over three decades given rise to a number of weird behavioural patterns of nature. Almost the whole northern Europe has lately witnessed calamitous flooding and prolonged summers. At the same time, winter, too, has become severe. Similar changes have occurred in the Americas, including a number of states in the USA. Repeated floods and hurricanes have battered many states in the vast country.
In the earlier times, floods and hurricanes were mostly limited to the southern Asian countries. The region was notorious for its chronic natural hazards. Thanks to the great imbalance caused to the ecology, the planet Earth has undergone a number of climatic transformations. In a span of half a century, Mother Nature developed a character with a look not seen before. However, to the relief of many it has not taken long for nature to show its normal appearance at intervals. All this has boded well as it spoke of the return of nature to its pristine times of the past.
Bangladesh has had to pass through warm winters only a decade ago. The way winter has been arriving in the country and taking leave after a short stay has distressed people. Despite being a country with temperate climate, winter used to visit us with its normal intensities. Prolonged summer and annoying rain have detracted from the winter's pleasant character. Yet winter has staged a comeback. In the last few years, the season appeared to have found its earlier charm.
To elaborate on the duration, intensity and elusiveness of winter, La Nina has been playing a great role in the season's pattern recently. In the last one and half decades, the La Nina phenomenon has been at full play on the western coast of the Pacific. La Nina impact is opposite to that of El Nino. Owing to the phenomenon's effect, large areas in the western Pacific, southern and northern Americas, have repeatedly been facing the onslaught of winter. In many regions in North America, winter kept being coupled with increased snowfall and blizzards.
Like the alarming rise in temperature, the fast intensifying cold emerges as a corollary to the post-climate change scenario. The regions on the Pacific's eastern coast are just experiencing the reverse impact of the turbulence undergone by the oceanic waters. In a sense, the climate change impact has similar features:  heat waves, storms and droughts on one hand, and prolonged winter, increased snowfall, etc., on the other.
In the chaotic global climatic scenario, the normal setting-in and exit of seasons in Bangladesh springs surprise. But given the mysteries that nature has spun over the centuries, the return of normal seasonal cycles could be a part of a greater natural pattern. The recent spell of rain could be a part of it.      
The rain during the Eid festivities disproving predictions otherwise cannot but elate us. We were deprived of sufficient rainfall for years in a row in the past. Inadequate rains have resulted in bad harvests and invited localised food crises. Although people in the country dread excessive rain that leads to floods, the normal monsoon showers carry with them a lot of auspicious signs. Rains are replete with the seeds of life in various forms. Billions of years ago when the Earth was flooded with streams of molten lava from volcanoes, it's a million-year rain that had cooled the baby planet. Mankind has rarely failed to welcome rains as it grew by way of evolution.
In the post-climate-change earth, nature has juggled with rain -- as it has with other natural phenomena. Perhaps this is also part of nature's inexplicable workings. Who can say for sure that the present-day erratic behaviour of nature will not be interpreted one day as part of a grand rule, the theory of chaos that is. The eventual return of a normal seasonal cycle can also be explained as one belonging to another set of rules.
shihabskr@ymail.com