Word: monsoon
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...Monsoon of the Heart. Han Suyin's A Many-Splendored Thing is frankly autobiographical. It makes uncomfortable reading because it so willfully, often tastelessly, exposes the deepest private feelings of its principals. Yet there are occasional moments of passionate feeling that almost give dignity to generally unpleasant revelations. Mark Elliott, who had merely been looking for a mistress, soon found himself swamped by a monsoon of the heart. Said he: "I had wanted something beyond the figments of reality, beyond the specious solidity of this rock-bottom world. A steady, passionate flame. A singlehearted ecstasy...
Actually, the Indian food situation has greatly improved, thanks to i) good monsoon rains which have produced bumper crops; 2) 4,000,000 tons of grain ordered from abroad, mostly the U.S.; 3) a gift of 1,682 tons from the U.S. this year with no strings attached...
Wharton decided that koupreys are about the toughest cattle alive. For half the year they contend with drought; for the other half, with monsoon rains. But they thrive better than domesticated breeds. He suspects that some of man's earliest cattle (i.e., the long-tailed, lyre-horned cows of Egypt) may have descended from the kouprey or a close relative. When Cambodia is deloused of Communists, he hopes to bring out red kouprey calves as the start of new strains of hardy cattle for hot climates...
Nature's vagaries were not so simply faced in Australia. Monsoon, rains sweeping in from the Indian Ocean across the northern hump of Australia have created a rich patch of cattle-raising country about the size of Texas. But in the recent monsoon season (November to March), for the first time in living memory, the rains did not come. Not only the northern pasture land, but the whole top half of Australia began to dry up. Within six months there was hardly a blade of grass in an area the size of Western Europe...
Last week the aborigines, who have been holding nightly rainmaking ceremonial dances, gave up in despair. Government medicine men also admitted defeat, radioed northern cattlemen that no relief could be expected until next November's monsoon-if it came. One result: there will be no beef available for export to Britain this year...