Growing up

"The loss of our [elders] fixes us next in the firing line and makes life suddenly so finite. It is the moment when we finally grow up."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Aims of Indian bureaucracy

"...I wondered why the apparent aims of India's bureaucracy seemed to be the creating of chaos where none had existed before."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Colours of Renewal

"...what I like especially about the monsoon is the way it restores the colours of India. Lambent green plains verging on emerald, lavender hills, grey skies, that wonderful soft light. And also the way it restores your peace of mind."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

The Rainforest

"...this place had been made by a happy accident of rich volcanic soil and Niagara-like precipication; the result gave rain a new dimesion. Rain had helped build the superstructure of the forest, become part of its fabric and texture. Here it was the stuff of alchemy. An army of gardeners labouring for a hundred years could never have achieved anything so beautiful."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Monsoon, the Unpredictable

"If the sky fails, the earth will surely fail too"
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

The first June showers

"The cloud-base blew through the trees like smoke; rain formed...a bank of hanging mist opaque as hill fog."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Waiting for Rains in June

"Sleep becomes so difficult we dream with our eyes open."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

India during Monsoon

"The wind drops, it get very dark, there is terrific thunder and lightning and then--the deluge! Suddenly the air is vey cool and perfumed...It is a time of rejoicing. And renewal...It is also when I feel perhaps most truly Indian."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Comforts of a watery curtain

"I liked the sense of privacy [the rain] invoked, the way towering curtains closed around an island and sealed it off from the rest of the world."
- Alexander Frater in Chasing the Monsoon

Clarity of hindsight

"A contemporary historian never writes such a true history as a historian of a later generation...The personal equation has dropped out, and you will remember facts as facts without seeking to put your own interpretation upon them."
- Agatha Christie in The Mysterious Mr Quin

A bush at hand...

"A bush at hand is good for many a bird."
- Ruskin Bond in Book of Nature

Hindsight

No shade tree? Blame not the sun, but yourself.
- Chinese proverb