Clouds in the valley...

There are few things that can be more relaxing than dusk on a riverside. The unwinding seems even more well deserved if you had had a hard day’s work. Struggles and nerve-racking deadlines sometimes seem to compress time - things run too fast, the backlog is always overflowing, and a day seems to shamelessly underperform if it ticks for only 24 hours!  Which is when a small opportunity to stop still makes you really ‘feel’ the dilation of time. You can literally hear yourself breathe out, and all the bookish lessons of the sadhguru on meditation and mindfulness begin to make a lot of sense. My first job helped me learn exactly this. Straight out of college with stellar marks, I was expecting to design and configure transformers, induction machines and microprocessor chips. C’mon, I had read of Faraday and Tesla for four years - should I have aspired any less? The closest I ever got though, was when I had to approve delivery invoices that had scanty mention of these goods. The well-...

It was a cold November morning, and we two vagrants were, almost insanely, hiking through a freezing drizzle in search of a castle. There was hardly a soul on the wet and shiny asphalt roads, with even the cows in the paddocks giving us that these-guys-must-be-crazy looks. For the second least visited country in the world’s most visited continent, we could have jolly well been the only tourists that day. Or maybe even month (come winter, Europe happily shuts shop). I walked uphill with a trudge, smoke billowing out of my rasping nose, yet I couldn’t help notice the swathes of emerald green alpine forests that seemed to stretch ahead, and even up, higher on the hills. It was then that I froze, as my addled brain failed to process what I saw. Brain freeze, literally. Through my rain-specked glasses, I seemed to note a kind of bleaching on the green forests high up on the hills. And it was spreading fast, coming downhill. Wet, bedraggled, bereft of piping hot tea, it took a few seconds be...

And here they go to chase again, Those empty clouds that never rain, Raising dirt, kicking dust – As the only stream that flows is rust   And here they go to seek again, Clemency from the sun in vain, To burn us all, our truths and lies And then redeem us, at what a price   And here they strive, a Sisyphus each A goal that they will never reach, Yet every day, they roll with care A rock, a dream, an unblessed prayer   Why don’t I stop them, is that you ask? Why do I let them play the masque? Lessons that they have to learn – No words can teach us what’s a burn   But also perhaps, deep inside – Wants to wake a part that’s died – A part that wants to hope again That someday, it may start to rain…   9 th July’2021