What is a cyclone?

As the daughter of a Geography teacher I should probably know the answer to this question. I'd always thought, and been taught, that hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes are all the same thing, it's just that people have different names for them all over the world.

I didn't find out about the cyclone in the USA until Thursday, when Ramana told me to go on the internet and look at what was happening in New York. Scrolling through the pictures of the flooding and reading about the deaths, it scares me how out of touch with the world I am; if something happened in the UK I would never know. I asked Ramana to help me to subscribe to an English newspaper to read more about the hurricanes. He replied with "ah, yes, hurricane, cyclone, same". So maybe I was right about cyclones?

In the evening I went to use the computer and was rather unsuccessful. My first attempt failed because for some reason Gopi had the keys to the office room and was off 'playing' somewhere. My second attempt hit a dead end when the power went as soon as I'd turned the computer on. On my third attempt I got as far as opening my email account before the office was invaded by tenth class girls. First they force fed me their snacks, then they asked to see pictures of my family, and next they wanted my phone. Bad move, I forgot it had a camera. Next thing I knew they were taking photo after photo on my phone and on my camera. I must have had about four photos with every girl there, almost all of them blurry. Suddenly the power went again. And we had been so loud that we hadn't even noticed the rain beating down on the window. We rushed outside and stared out at the boggy road and the flooding, which was already springing up. "A cyclone is coming ma'am." whispered one of the girls. Slightly worried, I led the girls back towards the house by the light of my torch and were ushered inside by Ramana Sir. Huddled around a battery powered light, I kept hearing the girls whispering about the cyclone. Outside the thunder was getting louder and louder. I thought I misheard when Ramana asked me if I wanted Raja or Balu to sleep in my room as a bodyguard. But then, by way of an explanation, he said, "If you open your door, the wind will blow you away".

School was cancelled in the morning because the flooding was so bad. Raja even brought dosa and sugar to my room - breakfast in bed - because the rain was apparently too strong for me to go outside. That evening, when things seemed to have calmed down, I watched the sky turn a reddish brown, and knew that the storm was back. The rain was beating so hard that is found its way under my door and even seeped though the walls. For the next few days my classes were half empty. Apparently the flooding in some of the villages was head height. The blackboards were soaked through making it impossible to write on them and two of the classrooms had flooded, so some classes had to share classrooms. There was a strange atmosphere in the school, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

When I mentioned the storm to Ramana, he didn't understand. So I tried the word "cyclone", to which he immediately replied. Then I asked if the cyclone here would be like the one in America, but that provoked a response of, "You mean the hurricane? No, no, no". So what is a cyclone? In India it seems to mean anything from a small storm to a huge hurricane. For that reason Ramana, I think I'll decline the bodyguard.