As a cloud watcher, my gaze automatically saunters the skies. A passing cloud is a hook to look up, and, as often as I can, take a picture. Everyone knows by now that I live with my head up!! It’s a reflex action, of course, but it wasn’t so to begin with….
The dominating blue of the skies of my homeland, was once disturbed only by flocks of birds and occasional aircrafts. But now, its dull smoggy grey reverberates with the sonic boom of an unending stream of aircrafts that hover incessantly, waiting their turn to land. The birds seem to have disappeared.
Now, throughout the year, the blue resists, even as the grey persists, emerging briefly when thunderous monsoon showers clear the skies—a momentary triumphal declaration of its past glory. The arrival of the monsoon is always heralded with delight and wonder. Songs, swings, dances, and festivities sway the mood even as the cool eastern wind, the Purva, sways the leaves that dangle for dear life on sun-scorched trees. The cool winds and cooler showers instantly erase all memory of the blistering summer heat, and the earth turns shades of green under the auspicious dark grey.
Long ago I had an inexplicably close encounter with a monsoon cloud. No, no, not the kind which drenches the mind, body, and spirit with its first showers at the beginning of the season! That one one merely looks at in anticipation as it readies itself to pour down its all to alleviate the parched earth. This one, though thick, black, and ominous like any other monsoon cloud, bellowed and thundered as it loomed above the darkened hill, as I drove up the winding road to Sindhugarh Durg in the Deccan. It seemed to be waiting for me, there, on the hilltop, still and serene!
In all mindfulness, it looked quite like a 3D diagram of the water-cycle in my geography textbook, looming live in front of my eyes. The world was not digital yet and the scene mesmerized me. Yet, I was also disappointed, woefully anticipating the unceremonious end of my excursion! The long drive from Pune was about to be literally dampened.
But the cloud had plans of its own. Instead of offloading itself, as it was prone to do as per my textbook, the cloud chose to merely sit on top of the hill. But when I reached there, it seemed to have vanished! Instead, a mist had taken its place. What emerged through it was incredible! Below lay beautiful emerald and ruby fields, patched together like a vibrant quilt, nestled in a valley of faraway ghats. The majestic view was centuries old, and the mist that enveloped me even older, having been born and reborn endlessly over eons!
This wasn’t the mist I had known, that descended from the Himalayas to the plains in the winter months. This was wet, cold, bitterly cold, in fact, freezing. Within minutes its icy droplets surrounded me, condensing on my warm breath and skin. I was drenched through and through, shivering helplessly. The ramshackle stony ramparts of the long-destroyed fortress of Shivaji offered no protection from the intensity of the cold mist. On the contrary, it seemed to revel as the mist melted and soaked its dark volcanic stones. Their camaraderie was an old one, and the song, their own! I was the intruder, caught in a cloud.
Ever since I inhaled that eternal cloud, and let my skin soak in its wonder, it has been a part of me. Years later, when another cloud, a white fluffy one this time, gulped me on top of the Table Mountain in the Cape in South Africa, it seemed to whisper the same song in a different language. It came from the same ocean that had engendered the monsoon cloud, but rode on the memories of different people in different lands.
Now I live by the seaside, and clouds are on my cornea, I can say. The rising steam from the sea roots in the umbilicus of my mind which snaps instapoems every day….