Farmers in India do a lot of talking about the
weather—especially, it seems, when there is no weather in sight.
During the month of May, when the land heats up like a furnace
and most fields lie fallow, when wells have run dry and the sun
taunts from its broiling perch in a cloudless sky, there is no
topic more consuming—or less certain—than when and how the
summer monsoon will arrive. The monsoon season, which normally
starts in early June and delivers more than three-quarters of
the country's annual rainfall in less than four months, will
begin gently, like a deer, the farmers say, and later it will
turn into a thundering elephant. Or it will start as an elephant
and then turn into a deer. Or it will be erratic and annoying
right through, like a chicken. In other words, nobody really
knows. But still, everybody talks. This was the case one day in
2008 when an extended family of farmers from a village called
Satichiwadi climbed up to the hilltop temple of their village
goddess, planning to ask her for rain.