When rain is not 'just' rain: South-East Asia and Sri Lanka have a message for the rest of the world

A phrase I’ve heard different writers from South-East Asia use is: the forest is not just the forest. By that they tend to mean that the region’s rainforests and jungles, some up to 130 million years old, are not just collections of trees and wildlife. They are regarded as almost having a power of their own, with many believing they are home to spirits and djinns that must be treated with wariness and respect.

Neither in this region is the rain “just” the rain. It can be a light shower, of course. But just as often it can mean a storm so violent that going out in a car is unadvisable, winds driving sheets of water horizontal and visibility reduced to a few feet. Two months ago, I was caught in such a downpour and had to shelter for an hour under a flimsy tarpaulin next to a man selling buffalo curd in Kuala Lumpur’s Little India.

Neither of us dared run for the greater protection of the next-door temple as lightning seemed to tear through the very fabric of the atmosphere around us, accompanied by thunderbolts so ear-splitting that I’ve seen European tourists jump in fright when they’ve witnessed this apocalyptic weather for the first time. It was as well to have stayed in place. My cycle route home was barred in several places by tall trees that had been felled by the elements, tearing enormous chunks of concrete out of the pavement. Either the lightning or a tree would kill you, as a local pathologist who’d examined bodies struck by both once told us.

Roads become swamped, cars become unsafe rafts in the rising waters, and I’ve seen the mighty Gombak and Klang rivers almost burst their banks and threaten to submerge Masjid Jamek, the Moorish-inspired mosque that appears to “float” above their confluence in the heart of the Malaysia