Baadal Important Hai?
Hello and welcome to another day of play from Boston. The pitch report from the middle seems to have plenty of grass cover. But what is more interesting is the thick cloud cover. These are dreaded conditions for the touring Indians.
I woke up today and pulled the blinds up to find a thick cloud cover. The kind which gets Indian batsmen sweating while touring England. It is late spring here in Boston and a bit of cloud cover gave me an opportunity to order extra hot Latte without being judged by the barista. So I went in to the cool hip Australian cafe, (who doesn’t like to overpay for a cup of coffee right?) and well they had moved all their orders to app only. So, I placed a order through the app and sat in the square waiting for my order to arrive. A couple of energetic street musicians were killing it with Iron Maiden’s Wasted Years. But as usual my mind drifted away, thinking what makes coffee and cloud cover near perfect partners? I didn’t get the answer I was looking for, but a few string of memories about clouds floated by.
My earliest memory is from a school auto-rickshaw. You guys know school auto-rickshaws, the ones that have bags hanging from rear view mirrors and school students hanging from the rear. So on one cloudy day a bunch of 10 years old got into a “intelligent discussion” about clouds. The hot question was “Do clouds really move? Or is it like the Sun?”(thankfully there was no Ptolemy among us). As far as I remember we arrived at the conclusion the clouds did indeed move and Ganguly once hit the ball into the clouds. But, that was the first time I really noticed the clouds.
The second comes from a book. Not the science textbook that gives you the definition of evaporation in five lines. A better one. This series of book which I loved for various reason (like it helped me make an informed decision to add Guinea as a suffix to an already existing nickname, Piggy, that I had given my younger brother), gave me an insight that not all clouds are same. Names like Stratus, Cirrus or Nimbus just got stuck in my head because it sounded like the last names of struggling English cricketers. The names which more or less stood for the shape of the clouds, made me look up and notice the shape. The next time somebody would draw a shape of dick with a fighter jet, I could fact check.
The next comes the corridors of another school. There hung a sign with a quote, “Hopes are like the clouds, some pass by and others bring rain”. That quote, not that it had much to do with clouds, kept playing in my subconscious. Because, rain played a big role in getting the PT cancelled and hope played a big role in having breakfast with an unpolished shoe!
Fast forward to sitting in a window seat on my first ever flight, after getting told off cutely by the lady at the check-in counter for not having an ID(Yeah they didn’t check the ids and Arogya Setu App at the entrance back then). For the next 45 minutes the flight lasted, I had my Mi4i out taking pictures of everything. What amazed me was how clouds looked from 4000 ft. Clouds scattered across an Azure(brand plug very much intended) sky like popcorn scattered on a counterpane. That’s a terrible way of putting Keats, who wrote:
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven.
Anyhoo, the joy of eating a sandwich on a flight was short lived but this memory of popcorn lived on.
By this point I was totally bought into romanticizing cloud, monsoon, rains, and petrichor, the whole shebang. The creepy Red FM late night radio jockey who told emo stories like “Male, Moda, Coffee”, the continous onslaught of Saavn playlists like “Saawan Aaya Hai” or “Mazhai, Jannal Oram and Raja Paatu”, or even Zakir Khan simply putting “Baadal important hai” all played its part.
It all finally peaked with me taking a trip along Konkan coast in peak monsoon. The experience was fun. Going up all way the Matheran to see gray clouds. Goa, more gray. Allepey even more gray and Varkala, no gray.. it was fucking black by the time we got there. The moments after a rain pour made all of it worth it though. The literal breath of fresh air with all that “Mitti ki khushboo” mixed in, was special. Rumi was kinda right,
Without the frown of clouds and lightning, the vines would be burned by the smiling sun.
Storm clouds coming at you makes for a great sight and the moments after a storm has passed over are absolute bliss. The moment the storm hits, well not so much. All this realization materialized at Dyrhólaey. I remember doing a reverse Bhuvan from Lagaan praying the winds blew away the clouds and not us. The storm clouds, dark and ominous leaving a bit of gap for the sunlight to trickle in made a majestic sight. At the same time my loose jacket was on the verge of parachuting me to North Korea (Crash landing on you, anyone?).
A few months later I was watching Rohit Sharma do what he does best in Edgbaston. I had waited for this day for years. Watching a world cup match live! But alas, I didn’t imagine sitting around a bunch of uncles who were sloshed on cheap lager and sitting under a thick English cloud cover. I was tensed about the rain playing spoilsport (in what was probably a match that sealed our semifinal spot) to such an extent that TV cameras captured me being grumpy AF. The after party and the good Indian food did lighten me up. The day for what it’s worth played out like cricket commentary — “There is a thick cloud cover today. The fast bowlers must be smacking their lips right now. Expect a lot of swing.” The same could be said of my mood swings under that cloud cover. Yes, it was the clouds that caused it, not having any of that “Correlation is not causation” BS. 😉
Snapped back to reality (ope there goes gravity), the Barista was looking for “Mr. Bram” and realized that was me. I took the cup of coffee and decided to write about this hodgepodge of memories I tend to associate with clouds. And while walking back I realized the clouds were on my mind not because of the coffee but because of the existential dread that is simmering in me. The dread of having to relocate to a land of perennial cloud cover, Seattle area!
I do expect a lot of swing under cloud cover. I just hope I master it like Jimmy (Anderson).
PS: PSA, wash your hands and social distance. It is not over yet. Peace! ✌️
