<p>The Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) is a large-scale circulation pattern that influences worldwide weather and climate. The interannual variation of the ISM rainfall (ISMR) has a direct effect on millions of people living in the Indian subcontinent. The teleconnections of this variation have changed significantly since the major climatic shift in the late 1970s. The second dominant mode of the interannual variability for the recent four and a half decades after the late-seventies of ISMR shows an intriguing north–south dipole pattern, with in-phase loading centred over east India (including the central and eastern Gangetic Plains) and out-of-phase loading centred over south-east peninsular India. This variability arises from the complex interactions among the anomalous cooling of the sea surface temperature over the Indo-Pacific warm-pool (IPWP) and the gradient of surface air temperature between Iran and the Arabian landmass. The gradient of heating of the (Iran minus Arab) surface air temperature is compatible with an area of dipole surface pressure with low-pressure at Iran and high-pressure at Arab. This lower-level dipole pressure is accompanied by the northwesterlies over Saudi Arabia, converging and pulling the climatological background cross-equatorial monsoonal flow northward, further downstream curving cyclonically towards eastern India, supplying moisture towards the Gangetic Plains, producing flooding. Moreover, the cooling of the warm-pool region corresponds to an anomalous widespread surface high-pressure, also pushing the cross-equatorial monsoonal flow northward. Contrarily, as the monsoonal flow is shifted northwards in either of the cases, it is supplying less moisture towards the southern peninsular India, resulting in depressed rainfall. Thus, the surface temperatures of the Middle-East and IPWP are playing a decisive role in setting up the dipole rainfall pattern between the east and south peninsular India. This teleconnection could further be examined in the climate forecast models.</p>