From Floor 13

As if, the clouds would drift

From the Airport Control Tower crew

In a modern dystopian version

Of yesterday’s Meghdoot written anew

 

Knowing perhaps, I would sit there alone,

Watching clouds broodier than me,

Drifting past, going beyond

Into the invisible hall of melancholy

 

Floor 13, in this newfound exiled land of mine

I, in my bitter-sweetness looked out

Staring – at the worlds above and far away

Lost in despair, dismay, doubt

 

Until I looked down like a satrap snob

Upon the peasants of my kingdom land

Urchins dancing in the rain,

Yet somehow, a joy that only they could understand

 

I descended from Swarga to the Martya lands

As in another one of Vishnu’s dream

Drenched in a second from head to toe,

The rains falling like a cascade stream

 

That day, the city woke up from its sepia tones

And seemed livelier than a marionette play

It was there in the drenched cesspool of the lands

You could see the sunshine of a cloudy day

 

In those arteries, the noise shone red

Full of life, crimson hued and carmine deep

Unwashed by the streams of rain:

In that chapter, none had to weep

 

It was there I found a new found zeal

To feel the city’s heart beat again,

The yaksha’s message delivered long time back

In the fragments of the monsoon rain…

 

27^th August’2022

 

As can be guessed, I used to live in Floor 13 of a multi-storeyed complex in Mumbai – it was fabulous to be able to see the world all around from a thin shard of a so-called balcony – adventurous flights arriving and departing from the airport far away, the energetic rush of students at a nearby college, the meditative slowness of a geriatric population walking in a nearby garden…but nothing could beat the experience of being there in the crowds, and feeling the gusto – there was a collective social energy that would inevitably get into you and wake you up to full mindfulness, And if it rained on top, the downpour would inject dopamine in plenty. Many a day, to rediscover colours in my monochromatic world of melancholy, malaise and monotony had I decided to take a walk in the rain in those streets; each time, not surprisingly I had realised why Kalidas could discover there was a messenger in the rains….