Weather: The Ultimate Conversation Starter

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

If that were true, there would be pictures of skies, clouds, trees and people to show what the earth looked like just after the rains.

There would be no romantic reverie into the unpredictable nature of Nature itself, or the peep into the weather forecast to conscientiously plan the day ahead.

Beautiful as it may be, a picture does not have a beginning or an end. It is the sum total of two dimensional space to be treated as liked by the observer. A picture is rarely ever read, and the significance of it strikes only at an unconscious level, very seldom at an intellectual level. The result being, one seldom learns from it.

Thus, a picture can say that the trees are green, the roads are clean, the people are carrying umbrellas and the skies are dark, with no sign of the Sun. What does that mean, expect for the fact that it is how 'a rainy day' looks like?

On the other hand, when one writes that a south-easterly gale was also blowing, bringing in the warm weather, providing relief from the winter chills, even if it accompanied dreary, monotonous rainfall, one understands that the circumstances were really not that bad. Add to that, when one writes about the air smelling of fresh earth, without any agents of pollution one is so wary of in the city, and the picture becomes nearly complete in the reader's mind.

Bring on the auditory stimuli, describing the cycle bells and rustling leaves, and the chirping of birds and humans alike in such joy that one would never imagine what all the fuss was about with the picture of gloomy weather, and one can only feel the goosebumps, with every little description as if it were really surrounding him.

The nature of the challenge called 'English weather' can only be described in words, and not explained away in a million pictures. It is not as if here the seasons change from time to time. Of course, with the revolution of the Earth around the Sun there comes the summer and the winter with the gentle interludes of the spring and autumn in between. But that is hardly adequate enough to explain the cycle of Sun and rain which the island nation experiences with clockwork regularity.

While the geographical latitude of UK ensures that any amount of Sun can never be oppressive, it does not ensure the same kind of effect from falling rain. Rain, when it falls, gentle or with force always brings about some kind of discomfort, whether by bringing the chill, or by bringing the sniffles. To protect against it is the main aim of all who live here.

Thankfully, there is technology and the easy availability of data from satellites monitoring weather changes. Once such information reaches the earth through the internet, those at the throes of this enigma are forewarned, and are able to plan accordingly. Therefore, an individual wishing to walk from his home to his place of work on a day when rain has been forecast, will ensure that he wears a stormproof jacket and carries an umbrella before leaving his house.

Alternatively, he is at peace with his shades and sunglasses, and floral-patterned linen shirt on the warm sunny day out on the greens. There will be joy, but more importantly, there will be the certainty that the rain will not spoil his shirt and make it stick to his paunch on a day he wishes to bask in the bright colours of the outdoors.

But how can one think of all this in a picture? One has to read the script here. That script runs inside the brain, taking different forms, in beautifully moving words or bursts of images concatenated by logic. The moving of the eye over the picture occurs randomly, or in a way unconsciously determined, on most occasions. But in the mind's eyes, where the imagination lies, there can be no doubt that a movie is being played whenever there is a chance, a script being written, a moment being defined by a sequence of events culminating into an emphatic climax.

Dwaipayan Adhya