The land’s people, both the scholarly sections and the unlettered, are known to have had an intimate connect with divinity as well as nature, going by their abundantly available and well-preserved lyrics, verses and prose, marked by literary elegance and refinement. Juxtaposed to their lines exemplifying their unalloyed faith in divinity and trust in nature, both in praise and unbounded gratefulness for the bounty showered on all life-forms (humans, animals and plants), is the verbal diarrhoea of self-appointed leaders in society, mere vote-seekers, talking mindlessly and ridiculing faiths and beliefs of common people. The fervent prayers of the land’s ancient people can be summarised in a simple shanthi mantra invoking God to be kind and gracious with timely rains for lush greenery so that people can live in comfort.

The time-endured water cycle, familiar to even primary school-going kids, has just got fragile with vast stretches of water bodies such as lakes in both urban spaces and in the vicinity of agricultural fields made to go dry for raising brick and mortar structures for housing, roads and industry, amounting to vandalising gifts of nature by both stock-holders and stake-holders.

Time and again the forecasts about rain, its precisely happening dates, closeness to normal amounts in different regions (whatever the term normal may mean), beginning of monsoon season and its ending (categorised as South-West and North-East, as well as pre-monsoon and post-monsoon), being disclosed by the Meteorology Department of the government, has left the farmers high and dry. Laughably enough, as it has been happening during the past two or three years, whenever the department has done its routine forecasting, Rain God has been having the last laugh. In short, the farming fraternity is better off with their own rudimentary knowledge about rain and the seasons that bring timely rains, that has served them for centuries long.

Good Samaritans of Mysuru, a fraternity that the functionaries in administration have shown scant respect to, have been sounding alerts about romancing with rain as it were by practicing a) Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) in urban open spaces and residences and b) Avoidance of indiscriminate sucking of ground water by sinking borewells, leaving RWH as a slogan and sending water table beyond 1000 feet. Only Rain God should shower mercy and save life forms.