Overexposed in youth, no doubt, to Shakespeare's famous tide in the affairs of men that never failed to lead to victory, Rudyard Kipling composed his own version, which many might say is more in touch with grim reality:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken any way you please is bad,
And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks
No decent soul would think of visiting.
Such a place - perhaps even the very one that Kipling had in mind - is called romantically the Great Rann of Kutch. But there's an end to the romance: it is a large, bleak, god-forsaken salt marsh just a few feet above sea level which straddles the disputed border between India and Pakistan on the Arabian Sea. It was there last week that a cyclone crossed the coastline about 20 miles inside the Indian border, and exacted a human and economic toll that has still to be assessed.
A cyclone is the name given to a tropical revolving storm in the Indian Ocean, and also in the vicinity of Australia and New Zealand. When such a storm occurs in the Caribbean or the North Atlantic we call it a hurricane, while in the China Seas and in most parts of the Pacific they are called typhoons.
And speaking of names, there was something odd about that cyclone in the Rann of Kutch: it was called, in a kind of Star Wars fashion, "99-2A", rather than having a girl's or boy's name, as is more usual in other parts of the world where tropical revolving storms are common. This desire for alpha-numeric anonymity applies only in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, for no particular reason that I know of except that the authorities there do not seem to wish to do as weather people do elsewhere.
The hurricane season in the North Atlantic starts officially on Tuesday, June 1st. This does not mean we must expect a hurricane immediately, but it is an indication that the time may well be ripe. As always, a list of names is ready and waiting, with Arlene already chosen for the first. Arlene will be followed in order by Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, Floyd and Gert and maybe more in the guise of Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lenny, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Phillippe, Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. And just in case these 21 are not enough, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on are waiting in the wings as names for any supernumerary storms.