If you ever get the chance to sit in a room made of windows located higher up in the mountains you would notice how the clouds resemble thoughts. Big loose fibres of cotton wool flying past you at different speeds like being sucked in and out by a vaccume cleaner. Just like in the nature of our mind where thoughts came from somewhere and go somewhere without any control that can be exercised on those thoughts clouds. One just could watch them like a film being played on television 24 frames per second.
I kept tugging at memory to recall more about how to watch clouds as told by Diane Ackerman in her book called ‘A Natural History of Senses’. She had written about how as humans we had the accented ability to derive visual pleasure out of the world we saw. The eyes given to us as a species were slowly upgraded over the evolution to be able to perceive minute texture and tones of colours. This tendency to derive pleasure out of watching was so acute that there were examples of how in some places like Northern America even unlikely connoisseurs of visual art like Cowboys would lie down on the grass with their little daughters and spend endless hours watching cloud turn into elephants camels and apples in the sky.
That morning as I was sitting up on my bed besides a friend, who was peacefully asleep, I loved the metaphor of clouds being like thoughts. It was really like one had caught the essence of the way our mind was assembled and wired. I wanted to follow this metaphor and learn more. It was a lovely place to be. In one’s mind flying with the thoughts or sitting here on my room on the roof in Shogi looking up the clouds swishing past like holy swans.
A huge strand of cloud suddenly blocked my window. For a minute it looked it had blocked everything. It was vanilla white and yet it looked formidable. For some time it looked that there wouldn’t be any other shape passing the sky. This majestic powerful cloud would leave no space for other playful shapes to flirt around my window. It was like that huge ominous thought cloud that eclipsed me for the last 3 years. I remembered the day I had taken it up on myself to give it a good look during me rebirthing it startled me with its immensity. It stretched from one end on my mind to another leaving no room for oxygen or good sense. When it was around I never could have known that It would end or pass or move on!
Lying warped in the foetal position with my eyes closed I was shocked to see the thoughts of that tall white haired man following me even there in that retreat. He was standing right on my upper aura unconscious and ignorant that he was squeezing my space. He was too big for me to fathom manage or understand. He stood there like a white elephant stamping anything smaller than him under his feet. He could only be moved by might much larger than what I possessed. Lying there huffing and puffing knowing fully well that it was just a meditation retreat I still felt oppressed. I of no might. I the small playful cloud had been trampled upon by this big white majestic elephant even as I felt one with him in his majesty and grace. I shuddered shrieked and cried and my teacher came to me. She held my hand and sat by me, rubbing my hand. Just saying let it be..it will pass..After sometime that big cloudy gloom cleared up at the window. A little pitter patter started on the roof. That was nature’s way of washing big stubborn clouds.
Again the sky became a place action like a radio whose on and off button goes bad and it always keeps catching one thing or the other. On the window there were other magical shapes flying past me at a lovely comfortable speed. I could see Taradevi temple on the peak straight in line with my nose. I hadn’t been to the temple but I wondered if it would be the same Taradevi who is supposed to be a manifestation of the third eye of Devi. The tantric godess with skulls hanging around her .
As I tried to remember the process of formation of clouds to know them better at my renewed attempt to be pally with them all those stupid diagrams in my 10 th Standard Geography book called Monsoon Asia came alive. I was 16 when I read that and instead of getting to know about clouds I got interested in my geography teacher. His name was Joseph Francis, he was a tall dark and handsome army man with little imagination to be a teacher and yet he got me thinking about Asian monsoon like nobody else! He never talked about his family and he always used to give me a wicked smile at my glazed look at him. I still blame him for not teaching me about different kind of clouds in Asia.
So many layers of life fitting like a puzzle in the sky and in my mind like bulbous clouds. It was such a fascinating magical thing to possess a mind full of clouds. This mind that sometimes was sick of things passing by or staying too long. It felt good to know however that whatever came in the shape of a cloud would pass like a cloud. And everything that Monday morning from my hotel room looked like a cloud. Jobs, friends, dreams, enemies, blocks, money, journeys, lust everything was cloud which came floating to me in some strange alien shape that I could never have chiselled into my liking, but only followed kindly with my eyes.
It was such epiphany to watch clouds for those two hours that morning. I had to strain my eyes and then keep them loose. Sometimes I had to fit a shape at the corner of my eye; the cloud moved faaar away from my limited vision. They turned pink and they expanded and shrinked and went on and on. They followed some strange suction of the heaven and they went with the flow, effortlessly. They didn’t care if I watched or not. I suffer from myopia and cylindrical vision. I looked at those clouds from scratched glassed and less than perfect eyes. But by and large I followed their dance. I think it’s a good sport. Watching Nimbus clouds!
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