The rains have come

In England, if two persons meet they generally start talking about the weather. When an important occasion takes place on a fine day, it is called Queen’s weather. Here, the only talk about the weather is if it will rain or not and we only have two seasons – the rainy and the dry. The Weather Bureau has announced that the rainy season is officially in and people welcomed the rains as a respite from the oppressive heat. It is a common saying that farmers welcome the rains that sailors curse. The truth is that we need both the rain and the sun.

The folk have certain weather terms that are not understood by the educated class. A classic example is siyam-siyam, meaning "nine-nine." It refers to rain that lasts from nine to eighteen days. In urban areas, the siyam-siyam became the popular phrase for any long wait. Any long delay is a siyam-siyam. The tedium is the message. In agricultural areas, the siyam-siyam is San Isidro Labrador’s answer to the farmers’ novenas for rain. Nine days of prayers went up and nine days of rain came down. The medium is the message. The numerical correlation between the novena and the nine-nine was a form of sympathetic magic. Effect must have some resemblance with the cause. Other coincidental similarities entered the picture. There are nine choirs of angels so each choir was assigned a respective day to deliver rain during a nine-nine.

When I went to school, I came across an epigraph by Ralph Waldo Emerson that fit perfectly to the nine-nine lore. It said:

The rounded world is fair to see

Nine times folded in mystery.

All one has to do was change the worded "folded" into "clouded."

The Weather Bureau has officially announced the start of our rainy season, at the same time also warning us of El Niño. So we don’t really know just where we stand weather-wise. To our farmers, the rains are vital. It makes the whole difference to the plants. A drought means no harvest. And that is about the last thing we need in our present economic predicament. So our future is tied to the weather.

We are an agricultural country. Yet, we don’t even officially celebrate a Farmer’s Day. Since the Spanish period, the farmers commemorate their day on May 15, the feast day of the patron saint of all farmers worldwide – San Isidro Labrador. Here, we celebrate Labor Day on May 1, but totally disregard the much older feast of San Isidro Labrador. We really wish that our government officials will put things in their right perspective. Let’s have Labor Day, fine, but let us not forget our farmers. Even the rains coincide with the month of San Isidro Labrador’s feast day.

Let us see to what extent global warming will affect the rainy season this year.