The weather has become so crucial in our lives. We keep on making plans to cope with monsoon failure but finally end up praying and organising yagnas to appease Lord Indra.

Recent events have convinced me that we need to pray much more to the weather gods to keep us out of trouble. Take the fog situation in Delhi. Come winter and air travellers and aeroplanes do not know whether they are coming or going! Many years ago we were told that having invested in an expensive CAT and that flight schedules will purr smoothly. We are now into the third CAT, but the situation is as bad as ever. In fact, worse, because now the airlines have also given birth to new litters.

Recently, the fog put everyone into a spin once again. The Met department with its sophisticated weather prediction gadgets forecast the continuance of fog and more chaos. Someone must have prayed, because the fog cleared up the very next day and all the flights were happily back on schedule!

This is similar to the dengue scenario. Not all the defogging and spraying of pesticides could control the outbreak of the dreaded disease. The medical people said that the mosquitoes cannot survive in temperatures below 14 degrees Celsius. God heard our prayers, the cold set in and, abracadabra, the disease vanished!

Take the sports arena. In the Asian Games tennis final, the Thais were all over Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi when the rains came. When play resumed, the rejuvenated Indian pair got back on court and quickly turned the silver into gold!

... contd.