An account by General Burton of the monsoon weather in Madras, and the storms which swept along the Eastern coast
At no season of the year is the climate of Madras very pleasant. The heat is great, the atmosphere close and steamy, but tempered in the afternoon by the cooling sea breeze. At its first sighing gusts all the heavy cane blinds are drawn up and the grateful wind enters the rooms, stirring the chandelier drops with a tinkling sound from which they are not inaptly designated the ‘joy bells’.
When the north-east monsoon arrives, and heavy clouds mount up tier upon tier, wind-driven over the darkened sky, and when rain falls, first in heavy drops and then in rushing torrents, the roadside ditches run fast with reddened water swirling along under a buoyant covering of leaves, sticks and straws accumulated during many months of dry, hot weather. When the thick coating of red dust is washed from the reviving shrubs and trees, then does Madras enjoy, for a while, a purer, cooler climate.
Croaking frogs squat on the margin of every puddle. Snakes, driven from their hiding places by the flooding rain, crawl into the huts. Scorpions and centipedes also invade the huts, and hosts of less noxious insects creep, hop and fly over the moistened plain. Winged white ants, bursting from their deep-seated nests, especially swarm, the flickering flight of their gauzy wings glitters in the occasional sun-gleams. Hundreds of beetles, great and small, drone and whirr in every open room and flop on floors and tables, lying with feebly scrabbling legs on their sharded backs. These are mostly inoffensive, but two species, commonly called ‘green bugs’ though on of them is a russet brown, are disgusting in smell and if touched, or worse, crushed on one’s person, emit a most nauseous odour. Every damp coppice and every little swamp is alive with fireflies, their green light sparkling like living emeralds among the leaves.
A cyclone on the Coromandel coast is a terrible exhibition of the power of the winds and the waves. With the moaning gusts of win preceded by drenching rain, and ragged drifts of cloud flying before the storm, the full fury of the hurricane rushes up, seeming the blend the leaden sea and dull grey vapour, the drifting rain and salt biting spray, in one bewildering mass of confusion. Tortured trees groan and twist. Grass roofs, torn from their supporting walls, rise in the air, and career like huge bats over the plain. All animal life, human and quadruped, seeks shelter, and many wretched birds are whipped to death by the lashing branches of trees in which they have taken refuge. Such ships as have not slipped and put to sea strain furiously, high pitching at their anchors, and occasionally are driven broadside on to the fatal beach.
**********************************************************************************************
Flypaper by Robert Musil (1880-1942)
(Translated from German)
Tangle-foot flypaper is approximately fourteen inches long and eight inches wide. It is coated with a yellow poison paste and comes from Canada.
When a fly lands on it - not so eagerly, more out of convention, because so many others are already there - it gets stuck at first by only the outermost joints of all its legs. A very quiet, disconcerting sensation, as though while walking in the dark we were to step on something with our naked soles, nothing more than a soft, warm, unavoidable obstruction, and yet something into which little by little the awesome human essence flows, recognised as a hand that just happens to be lying there, and with five ever more decipherable fingers, holds us tight.
Here they stand all stiffly erect, like cripples pretending to be normal, or like decrepit old soldiers (and a little bowlegged, the way you stand on a sharp edge). They hold themselves upright, gathering strength and pondering their position. After a few seconds they’ve come to a tactical decision and they begin to do what they can, to buzz and try to lift themselves. They continue this frantic effort until exhaustion makes them stop. Then they take a breather and try again. But the intervals grow ever longer. They stand there and I feel how helpless they are. Bewildering vapours rise from below. Their tongue gropes about like a tiny hammer. Their head is brown and hairy, as though made of a coconut, as manlike as an African idol. They twist forward and backward on their firmly fastened little legs, bend at the knees and lean forward like men trying to move a too heavy load: more tragic than the working man, truer as an athletic expression of the greatest exertion than Laocoon. And then comes the extraordinary moment when the imminent need of a second’s relief wins out over the almighty instincts of self-preservation. It is the moment when the mountain climber, because of the pain in his fingers, wilfully loosens his grip, when the man lost in the snow lays himself down like a child, when the hunted man stops dead with aching lungs. They no longer hold themselves up with all their might, but sink a little and at that moment appear totally human. Immediately they get stuck somewhere else, higher up on the leg or behind, or at the tip of a wing.
When after a little while they’ve overcome the spiritual exhaustion and resume the fight for survival, they’re trapped in an unfavourable position and their movements become unnatural. Then they lie down with outstretched hindlegs, propped up on their elbows and try to lift themselves. Or else seated on the ground, they rear up with outstretched arms like women who attempt in vain to wrest their hands free of a man’s fists. Or they lie on their belly, with head and arms in front of them as though fallen while running, and they only still hold up their face. But the enemy is always passive and wins at just such desperate, muddled moments. A nothing, and IT draws them in: so slowly that one can hardly follow, and usually with an abrupt acceleration at the very end, when the last inner breakdown overcomes them. Then, all of a sudden, they let themselves fall, forwards on their face, head over heels; or sideways with all legs collapsed; frequently also rolled on their side with their legs rowing to the rear.
This is how they lie there. Like crashed planes with one wing reaching out into the air. Or like dead horses. Or with endless gesticulations of despair. Or like sleepers.
Sometimes even the next day, one of them wakes up, gropes a while with one leg or flutters a wing. Sometimes such a movement sweeps over the lot, then all of them sink a little deeper into death. And only on the side, near their legsockets, is there some tiny wriggling organ that still lives a long time. It opens and closes, you can’t describe it without a magnifying glass, it looks like a minuscule human eye that ceaselessly opens and shuts.
This is how they lie there. Like crashed planes with one wing reaching out into the air. Or like dead horses. Or with endless gesticulations of despair. Or like sleepers.
Sometimes even the next day, one of them wakes up, gropes a while with one leg or flutters a wing. Sometimes such a movement sweeps over the lot, then all of them sink a little deeper into death. And only on the side, near their legsockets, is there some tiny wriggling organ that still lives a long time. It opens and closes, you can’t describe it without a magnifying glass, it looks like a minuscule human eye that ceaselessly opens and shuts.
**********************************************************************************************
