Le Poids du Réel

Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow (India map),
a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway)
floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon
rains.

So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this
year's monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year's deluge killed
some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone.
Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster
among the city's roughly 17 million inhabitants.

In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer.

According to the Indo-Asian News Service, some rural Indians are
holding frog weddings in the hopes that the amphibians' bliss will
inspire farm-saving storms. After marking the bride and groom with
vermillion and turmeric—traditional adornments in human Hindu
nuptials—villagers take the supposedly happy couple to a nearby pond to
honeymoon.

"If we get the frogs wedded, the Varuna, the god of the oceans,
will bless us with rains," Beni Prasad, a farmer in the village of
Khapa, told the news service on Sunday.

—Ted Chamberlain

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