SOUNDING THE
MONSOON
WEAVING THE NAKAIY
From the former SSRC-funded project Sounding the Monsoon. Adapted from text contributed by Jonathan Cane (University of York, UK), the project´s principal investigator, and co-written with Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa.
Nakaiy Almanac, 1994-2022.
Indigenous understandings of monsoonal circulations, woven with weather data
The
Nakaiy – as a translocal mapping of monsoonal windways and lifeworlds – serves as a multivalent metaphor for this entire counter-atlas.
Transoceanic diasporic, climatic, and aqua-futuristic cartographies
story their converging worlds, through tales of manifold human and
more-than-human subjects – foodways, spirits, songs, sediments,
vegetal life, aquatic beings and more. In depicting intersectional
spaces of knowledge-production, the idea of “sounding” depth,
currents, circulations, and stagnations offer metaphors and materials
with which to probe their narrative un/remaking, rather than to fuse
finished stories.
Monsoonal timescapes –
Reverberative archives of ‘earth memory’
In historically stable climates, the Indian Monsoon has been a regular and globally scaled atmospheric and oceanic event, governing and driving local weather patterns in relation to wind circulations, atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, rainfall and non-human movements, growth and migrations. Societies within the monsoon’s domain and territory have each established an understanding of these phenomena which has been in part possible due to its mechanical and regular patterning over centuries. As natural scientists ascribe notions of “memory” to biopolitical and geological temporalities just as deep-time, particularly in a politically embattled Age of the Anthropocene characterized by a politics of forgetting (as much as remembering), how might - as Szerszynski (2018) posits - “thinking of the Earth as something that remembers and forgets” co-shape transcultural and historically contingent modes of sensing, dis/remembering, and archiving something as vast as monsoonal transformation? In the archipelagic Maldives, an intimate understanding of monsoonal flows, oceanic and atmospheric currents have historically governed life and livelihoods in the atolls through the establishment of theNakaiycalendar.
In historically stable climates, the Indian Monsoon has been a regular and globally scaled atmospheric and oceanic event, governing and driving local weather patterns in relation to wind circulations, atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, rainfall and non-human movements, growth and migrations. Societies within the monsoon’s domain and territory have each established an understanding of these phenomena which has been in part possible due to its mechanical and regular patterning over centuries. As natural scientists ascribe notions of “memory” to biopolitical and geological temporalities just as deep-time, particularly in a politically embattled Age of the Anthropocene characterized by a politics of forgetting (as much as remembering), how might - as Szerszynski (2018) posits - “thinking of the Earth as something that remembers and forgets” co-shape transcultural and historically contingent modes of sensing, dis/remembering, and archiving something as vast as monsoonal transformation? In the archipelagic Maldives, an intimate understanding of monsoonal flows, oceanic and atmospheric currents have historically governed life and livelihoods in the atolls through the establishment of theNakaiycalendar.
Reverberations as dis/rhythm
Epistemic pluralism conventionally flecked temporal rhythms across the Maldives, which historically drew from knowledge across five calendars – the Hijri (Islamic) calendar, the Gregorian in more urbanized spaces, two solar calendars (Indic, Arabic), and the Nikaiy (Maloney, 1980; Amin et al., 1992). The contemporary Nakaiy calendar combines environmental observation through oral transferal of knowledge with annual Sanskritised Nakshatra ´star´ based astrological cycles, adapted in the Dhivehi language. Yet Nikaiy materially and symbolically is understood to be more than a calendar. Some see it as a distinct ethnomathematical form and practice in its own right (Adam, 2020). At the very least, it was possible to develop generalised weather and environmental understanding within set periods of between 13 and 14 days (constituting a single “Nakaiy”). Retention of this indigenous knowledge could then be used to predict local weather and environmental happenings the following year for the same period given the stable and mechanical workings of the monsoon seasons.
As a mathematical form of counting and categorising, it served to pattern activities governing everyday life (Amin, 1950; Amin et al., 1992), from harvest times (e.g. Maaand Fura), fishing (e.g. during the Furahalhaand Viha), to appropriate times for kite flying (the windier Noraor the Mula). Arguably, an observational and (originally) orally kept calendar would likely not have developed without such regular and mechanical local weather patterns.
Patterning circulations: What do the winds carry?
At a macro scale, communities were then able to plan on the Iruvaa(northeast wet monsoon) for safer seafaring trade with neighbouring atolls or transit the Bay of Bengal to other South Asian countries. They also served to mark specific periods in the Hulhangu(southwest dry monsoon, spanning 18 nikaiy, roughly between mid-April until mid-December), focusing on the cultivation of local produce such as millet and fruit trees, or predict better fishing strategies with migrating species. The Iruvai/Iruvaawet northeast monsoons follow after with 9 nikaiy (Adam, 2020), while both bi-annual periods intimately intertwine diverse cultural practices through embodied sensibilities and local environmental understanding. Island-specific livelihoods have inevitable developed around the Nakaiy as everyday practices and continually evolving artefacts from oral histories and folklore, to religious form, music, magic and ritual. Evolving in tandem with Nakaiy knowledge, stable livelihoods and cultural production– often gendered – such as rope-making and the weaving of Thundu Kunna mats prevail. These practices have historically lent islanders, particularly women and girls the ability to weave between these scales with daily life, or the ability of Nakaiy knowledge holders to know the weather.
Temporal Dis/placements
In recent periods due to climate change, the once stable and reliable predictions of Nakaiy are increasingly fluctuating, deviating or breaking from their previous reliable structure due to changes to globally scaled monsoon patterns which affect locally formed weather. As a result, these changes disrupt the micro to macro understandings of the Nakaiy and the ability to ready environmental queues such as the interpretations of subtle indications in the formation of westerly clouds at sunrise, the location of bait fish on the island’s reef during morning fishing or the afternoon breeze and increased in sea surface chop. All are increasingly becoming more fraught or meanings challenged with unpredictable changing weather patterns.
As more-than-archive? Counter-mapping lived, embodied experience
The Nakaiy Almanac aims to visually weave together qualitative and embodied indigenous knowledge across the Nakaiy periods and bring this into conversation with, typically inaccessible, quantitative daily data from meteorological archives from 1994. The value of Nakaiy observations and knowledge allows knowledge holders and the calendar to reach further back in time than available weather data. Today the Nikaiy knowledge co-exists uncomfortably alongside contemporary Islamic cosmologies and continues to evolve into an exoticised tourist infrastructure, reduced to an almanac of winds. Graphic designers in the Maldives draw inspiration from its pictorial representations, following the creation of apps such as the Nikaiy Nevi.
Reading
Reverberations
The data visualised is a selection of windspeed, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, cloud cover, temperature, and humidity which directly or indirectly connect to core observations in the Nakaiy, and allow both macro and micro patterns, yearly anomalies and extremes to be discerned as patterns. Such as the difference between the Iruvaaand Hulhangumonsoons. Or sub-periods within these seasons such as periods of typically higher temperature, wind and rainfall. Line weights and colour gradients are used to further embed data in potted data, and make it possible to read changes in patterns through time (thin to thinker lines) or colour (high intensity or values). An accompanying video helps to show the construction of the calendar graphic and the layers of information and data embedded in it.
As a technical tool, its ambition is to work as an almanac that values traditional understandings and framings of weather while offering insight for viewers to interpret current weather data and patterns with their own embodied understanding or experience of weather.
The ability to know the weather might no longer be possible with the rates and trajectory of climate change, but as a tool, it can hopefully help to generate deeper cultural and more locally tangible appreciation (i.e. not a projected Western-centric understanding or framing), of the threats and challenges of climate change.
Mapping data:
- Open Street Map
- Allen Coral Atlas maps, bathymetry and map statistics are © 2018-2022 Allen Coral Atlas Partnership and Arizona State University and licensed CC BY 4.0
Field notes and project material recorded by the project team on location in Gadhdhoo, Gan, Vaadhoo, Fiyoari & Notikora in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, Maldives.
The data visualised is a selection of windspeed, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, cloud cover, temperature, and humidity which directly or indirectly connect to core observations in the Nakaiy, and allow both macro and micro patterns, yearly anomalies and extremes to be discerned as patterns. Such as the difference between the Iruvaaand Hulhangumonsoons. Or sub-periods within these seasons such as periods of typically higher temperature, wind and rainfall. Line weights and colour gradients are used to further embed data in potted data, and make it possible to read changes in patterns through time (thin to thinker lines) or colour (high intensity or values). An accompanying video helps to show the construction of the calendar graphic and the layers of information and data embedded in it.
As a technical tool, its ambition is to work as an almanac that values traditional understandings and framings of weather while offering insight for viewers to interpret current weather data and patterns with their own embodied understanding or experience of weather.
The ability to know the weather might no longer be possible with the rates and trajectory of climate change, but as a tool, it can hopefully help to generate deeper cultural and more locally tangible appreciation (i.e. not a projected Western-centric understanding or framing), of the threats and challenges of climate change.
Data sources and references:
Weather and Climate data:
- Maldives Meteorological Service, Faresmaathoda Airport daily records,1994-2022
NOAA GHCN v4
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Weather and Climate data:
- Maldives Meteorological Service, Faresmaathoda Airport daily records,1994-2022
NOAA GHCN v4
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Mapping data:
- Open Street Map
- Allen Coral Atlas maps, bathymetry and map statistics are © 2018-2022 Allen Coral Atlas Partnership and Arizona State University and licensed CC BY 4.0
Historical Nakaiy Precedents
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Field notes and project material recorded by the project team on location in Gadhdhoo, Gan, Vaadhoo, Fiyoari & Notikora in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, Maldives.