Every year, around the last week of April or the first week of May, the campus lights up with yellow flowers. And with the flowering of the Laburnum (Amaltas in Hindi), the harsh days of Summer starts. I always watch for the Amaltas to bloom for it is a fascinating sight. Through the winter and much of March/April, the tree is just bare branches. It is just there, easy to miss. And then the yellow blooms appear and the tree lights up. It is so beautiful to see the tree covered in yellow. The green leaves appear later.
As the South-West monsoon sets in Kerala around last week of May and starts moving upwards, the yellow blooms fade and fall. By June, when it is hot and sweltering, the tree covered only with the green leaves. By October/November, the green leaves fall off leaving behind the bare tree. So the cycle continues.
This year, May was mild with lots of rainy days. The Amaltas blooms lasted well into June, which is when I captured the following images on the campus:
The mild days of May has meant that we have not had any decent monsoon showers in Delhi. Of course, Delhi never gets the kind of rains that Mumbai does but usually we have couple of days of pre-monsoon showers followed by monsoon showers towards end of June/beginning of July. It is mid-July and we have not had any rains.
My brother and I were remembering my Periappa (Appa's eldest brother) who was a meteorologist. He would always watch the temperatures and wind direction. Harsh temperatures followed by dust storms (aandhi in Hindi) meant that monsoon would be normal and we could expect good rains. He would also say that the wind direction has to be from east for Delhi to get rains.
Climate change has of course changed everything. For the past couple of years, monsoon season has extended up to end of September to early October. Delhi now gets rains only towards end of July.
Meantime, it is raining in Chennai when it should not. Chennai (pretty much of entire Tamilnadu) should get rains due to the North-East monsoon. The monsoon season for Chennai is essential for filling up the reservoirs.
But then everything is topsy turvy this year!
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