Varsha, Varun, Baarish, Barkha, Barsaat, Sawan, Parjanya, Vrushti, Dhara …. Many are well versed with these names for rain.

In the last part, I told you about how water stressed Thar desert and water abundant Meghalaya hills have something in common. Read on.

While in Meghalaya, especially in the Khasi Hills, home to Mawsynram – wettest place on the earth, it is the multitude of names for rain used by the locals to describe the different kinds of rains; in Thar desert, it is the various names of clouds and also types of rain.

In his August 2012 write up for Down to Earth, Kynpham Nongkynrih, writer and associate professor at the department of English at the NorthEastern Hill University (NEHU), wrote: “It is because of this multifariousness and its divergent nature that Khasis have many names for the rain: slap (rain), lapbah (heavy rain), lapsan (immense rain), lap-theh-ktang (pouring rain, or literally, pouring-from-the-bamboo-tube rain), lap-lai-miet (three-night rain), lap-hynriew-miet (six-night rain), lap-khyndai-miet (nine-night-rain), lapphria (hail-rain), lap-erïong (dark-wind rain/black storm), u kyllang (stormy rain), lapiwtung (smelly rain, because it continues for many days, causing clothes to stink), lappraw (light rain), lap-boi-ksi (louse-swarming rain, because it looks like lice when it settles on hair and clothes), lap-ñiup-ñiup (soft, flaky rain, very light drizzle), lapshiliang (partial rain), laplynnong (rain confined to certain locales), lapkynriang (slanting rain), lapmynsaw (rain of danger, which has both literal and metaphorical meanings) and lap-bam-briew (human-devouring-rain, because it does not stop until some human has fallen to some rain-triggered disaster).

Source for Khasi names: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/capturing-the-monsoons-38896

Image credit: GulfNews.com
https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/mawsynram-in-india-the-wettest-place-on-earth-1.1214823


---- to be continued