Respect nature. It can teach you many things

One evening it was raining heavily and I ran to take refuge in the guard room of my apartment building. There were two guards, one electrician, a driver and another person in the room.

One of them advised me to share an umbrella with another resident since the rain would not stop for two hours. I wondered how he could he be so sure that it would rain for two hours? He added: “I’m from Odisha and I can tell the duration of rains accurately”.

I asked him how he determines the duration of rainfall. He replied confidently: “Look at the size of the rain drops. Now see, they’re all falling straight, the light breeze is not enough to disperse them.”

I was still puzzled. “But how do you know the duration?”

“The drops are still falling straight and they’re large and the space between them is reducing. The raindrops are now falling partially on other raindrops and the splatter is close to an inch high, so this rainfall will last two hours,” he said.

This didn’t seem to be a logical explanation. I went home and checked the time when the rain stopped: It was 1:46 minutes from the time it began. I pondered over the guard’s words.

People who live close to nature, especially those whose life depends on the vagaries of nature, make better predictions than the technological instruments and the weather forecasts.

No wonder our grandparents always asked us to respect, watch and learn from nature.