India receives its monsoon rain every year in June. This has been happening without fail year after year for the last so many millennia.
Annual Rains in Ramayana times
Even in the Ramayana text, there is mention of this annual rainy season period. In the year 5076 BCE, Sugreeva and his army had to wait for a couple of months before starting their march to Lanka, because it was the rainy season. This shows that this rain is an annual, regular feature.
Correlation between rain, year and land
Rain, in India, is called Varsha.
The year is also called Varsha.
The land is also called Bharatha Varsha.
So, there is a distinct correlation between rain, year and land.
Varsha, Varsha, Varsha
The arrival of Varsha, the rain, at a regular frequency of once a year, gave the notion of Varsha, the year and the land on which she poured, gave the notion of Varsha, the nation.
The cause for Monsoon in India
Have we ever questioned as to why it rains every year without fail?
What are the forces of nature that brings rain every year to this land?
Have we ever thought what brings us these rains?
To answer these questions, we need to step back a bit and look at not just the landscape of India but look at the world as a whole.
Heat generates wind flow
In the month of May, it is summer in the Northern hemisphere, especially in India, with the average temperature in the inlands of India touching over 45 degrees centigrade. This extreme heat creates a low pressure in the central parts of India as well as over the Thar Desert of Rajasthan.
Similarly, in Northern Africa, in the Sahara desert, the temperatures are also in the range of 45-50 degrees centigrade, due to which there is also a low pressure created there. At the same time, it is winter in the southern hemisphere. The great Australian desert is cooler and hence higher pressure prevails there.
In the case of swirling winds on earth, it is well known that winds always move from a higher pressure region to a low pressure region.
The pressure zones are created by heat and cold, among other factors and the winds keep swirling all over the world, trying to neutralize these pressures. Due to this reason, the winds move from cooler and high pressured, Central Australia, in a northwesterly direction, towards the huge Sahara Desert because it is hot and low pressure there.
Ferrel’s Law in action
But, as soon as the winds cross the equator, they change direction and instead of blowing in a northwesterly direction they blow in a northeasterly direction and start approaching the Indian subcontinent, because of which India has been experiencing its bountiful Southwest monsoons every year.
William Ferrel was an American Meteorologist who lived between 1817 and 1891. He developed many theories which explained atmospheric circulations.
Ferrel’s Law states that “high pressure systems, as seen from space tend to spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counter clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and low pressure systems spin in the respective reverse direction.”
Graphical Depiction of Ferrel’s law
This means that, the moment the winds cross the equator or go from one hemisphere to the other, they automatically change direction. Thus, the rain bearing winds, going towards Africa, change their direction while crossing the equator and blow towards India, bringing the monsoon rains to India.
What is of interest to be noted here is that, the equatorial bulge is believed to be the cause for this change in the direction of the wind flow.
Source of Monsoons
All this shows that the world is One. While the lands may be many, Nature’s way of reaching out is indeed interesting.
Whoever would have thought that the copious monsoon rains, that this land of India receives, starts as dry, hot winds in the Australian desert which pick up moisture in the Indian Ocean, turn direction after crossing the equator, come towards the land of India and then pour out all the moisture as monsoon rains year on year, to make this land a prosperous one?
Do we harness?
What do we do with the waters brought to us by these benevolent clouds, which have travelled all the way from the Great Dessert?
While nature pours a bounty on this land, unfailingly, year after year, do we take the effort of harnessing it for the rest of the year?
We have discussed this in our earlier Rishimukh article – Fill a Pail of Water, in the month of July 2011. The same can also be accessed from our Bharath Gyan website.
Wind churn – Earthly, Solar and Galactic
This churn of winds on the face of the earth is beneficial in bringing rains of our land. Similarly, there is also a churn of solar winds in the solar system and also a churn of galactic winds at a galactic level, which have got their own effects on us.
This we discuss in some good detail in our book, 2012 – The Real Story.
2012 – The Real Story
As we await the annual visit of Varsha this year, let us marvel at the precise, principled and predictable way of working of Nature.
Let us relish the rains this season and the shower of knowledge.