Staff Correspondent:

The rainy season has started with the month of Ashar with showers to cool the earth from on Sunday (June 15).

The rainy season, and especially the month of Ashar, has a big impact on Bengali culture and lifestyle, which is represented in literature and the performing arts, even though the weather is unpredictable due to the effects of global climate change.

The blossoming Kadam with its cloying fragrance generally marks the advent of the month with newspapers featuring their front page with a picture of the flower.

Different cultural groups have staged functions to mark the arrival of the month in the country for decades together under a detailed schedule and one such leading group, the Udichi Shilpigosthi, said they would organise “Borsha Utshob (Rainy Season Festival” at Nazrul Mancha at the Bangla Academy on Sunday.

The monsoon has been an integral part of Bengali life and literature since its earliest days, with a treasure trove of poetry, songs, hymns, novels and short stories glorifying the season and the beauty it infuses in nature.

The author of Bangladesh’s national anthem, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote a number of poems on Ashar manifesting its influence on Bengali mind and lifestyle.