Late to arrive, harder to predict, and devastating

Kalyan Varma has been documenting the monsoon in India for almost a decade. It’s becoming more and more difficult to say when and where it will hit, says the Bengaluru-based wildlife photographer. “And it’s becoming more extreme when it does arrive.”

He’s watched the effect of this on human and wildlife populations that depend on the timeliness of the seasons. “That’s also what motivates me to do what I do,” says Varma, 40. “When I see these adverse effects, I am motivated to document them in detail, so people can have a direct view of the impact.”

Varma worked on the 2014 BBC documentary Wonders of the Monsoon, racing ahead of the massive rain clouds as they made their way across the subcontinent. He travelled from Kovalam in Kerala, where the southwest monsoon first hits, to Rajasthan, always arriving a day or two in advance of the rains, so he could capture the arrival.

It was rough going, but he knew what to expect. Driving around in humid Mumbai, for instance, he learnt to keep the car windows open no matter how heavy the downpour. Humidity levels had to be the same inside the car and out or his lenses would fog up and he wouldn’t be able to shoot when he stepped out.

In hotel rooms, he discovered that the bathroom was the best place for his gear, since humidity would remain high and it was out of the range of air-conditioning, preventing moisture from condensing on the lens when he stepped out the next morning. “When shooting in Agumbe in the Western Ghats, we would dismantle the cameras at night and surround them with halogen lamps, to allow the heat to dissipate any kind of moisture,” Varma says. Ensuring the equipment stays dry is the only way to keep fungus away in a humid climate.

He got used to spending so much of the day in damp clothes and sticky rain gear that his skin was peeling by the end of it. But all that was normal.

A few weeks ago, Varma was in Ranthambore, Rajasthan, when it was hit by a sudden massive hailstorm and winds. “It was untimely weather to say the least,” he says. “The seasonal rains were still weeks away.”

A few things happened immediately. Land birds like the lapwings, who lay their eggs near water bodies, had their eggs destroyed by the hail. Bullfrogs, which lay their eggs in the first rains of the season so they have time and water to incubate, mistook the unseasonal storm for the first rains and laid their eggs early, and the eggs shrivelled up when no more rain followed.

Varma has watched torrential downpours that go on for days in the Western Ghats help life flourish as it should, and he’s watched unseasonal storms destroy entire ways of life.

It’s important to notice and document how the cycle is shifting, he says. “To understand how all living beings have adapted to largely predictable weather and how any change in this pattern causes chaos to their lifecycles.”

Varma has seen torrential rain help life flourish when its occurs as it’s meant to, as with the dancing frogs (extreme right) in the Western Ghats. Recently, in Rajasthan, he saw hail destroy birds’ nests and unseasonal rain disrupt frogs’ nests.