A Rainbow Cloud

A Rainbow Cloud

Just 9:00 a.m.

Rays hitting me at 60 degrees

It doesn’t happen often

To see a rainbow colored patch

Of cloud…clouds in the eastern sky

That too on a sunny

Fair weather morning

Yet

I watched such things

As water colored cloud fringes

Fluffy petal-like vaporous clouds

In all colors –

Pale rose

Navy blue

A bit of brinjal violet

Are they cirrus?

Is it only me?

How lucky am I to discover

Such a pure joy!

Pity! Only I can see these 

Semi-transparent colors

Many people miss them

Often we just 

Drive through life in a hurry

Barely we got time to bend

See our reflection, ponder

These waving autumn

Acer saccharum1 colors in the canal waters

Alas, we are utterly blind to

Such beautiful celestial scenes

We lack “the third eye vision”

We are stuck in the muck, 

Ever sinking deeper, welded to this earthly gravity

To the daily grind

Is that why?

Siva is always peaceful

With half-closed eyes

Though the world goes

Through all sorts of upheavals, pain

Through wicked inane wars, ruthless plundering

Yet, He is forever in deep meditation

Because the answer to violence

Is not more hurtful action

The Trident(s) must be put away

All the treachery, man made, of course

Luckily it’s countered by

Enormous beauty in nature

The eye-piercing dark blue skies

Of the northern latitudes

The Aurora colors, the breathtaking

Paintings of evening westward sky

The (sky) blue is nothing but Siva’s neck –

It is trying to keep out the

Timeless poisonous flames of 

Cosmic rays and bursts of ionic radiation

Of

The solar flares

Who can get this? Who can feel this?

What I am describing here -

Who can really?

A Tagore can understand, he was blessed 

With the inner eye

Perhaps a modern Krishna too

Certainly, Sir Raman can even 

Derive a correct explanation, an exact equation

Put it into an exact mathematical expression

But here, now

Explanation is not the point

Just looking at such clouds

Makes my day

It is a gift from our sun, 

(Adi-Narayana)

Yes - rain, moisture, cloud, water

And light – it’s all due to the sun

It keeps reminding me

There are things in the world

Beyond my imagination, my limited vocabulary

It tells me to look high up

Reach those skies, it’s beckoning me:

“Come, float in my lap

Touch these cool wispy clouds

And lose yourself in my gentle embrace”

If I ever find my 

Sweet loving angel, my Urvasi

It will be there, in those

Rainbow clouds

There I float on 

The wings of imagination

Resting on the bosoms 

Of

Soft silk-cotton vapors of

Aromatic lotuses, fragrant 

Michael Champaka, and

Freshly showered beds of

Parijatas2

And wandering between the

Hanging celestial gardens

1. Sugar Maple 2. Nyctanthes arbor-tristis Copyright 2021 by the author

Little Paradise

Little Paradise

Brought up in the lap
Of multilayered colorful Hindu
Mythologies, stories,
And having
Witnessed numerous plays
Musical ballads and the early
Mesmerizing Black and White movies
With
Exquisite costumes and stunning characters
Paradise is not strange for me
I could daydream and lose myself
In a trance – there I would vividly
Imagine and see in the fluffy tropical clouds
The sensuous and out-of-world
Beauties – beauties
Like Damayanti, Urvasi, and Menaka
And -
Not only that I even came across
Extraordinarily sweet and gorgeous
Dames – maidens that would put all
The average movie actresses to shame
I’ve met them
In our village
In my high school, college,
And at the institute
At the typing classes
In the corridors
And of course none could match
The beauty of imagination
Woven in
My own sweet dreams
Like the cotton candy
Sold in my village during
The annual fair near the tank
During winters in December

But today
As I was sitting for breakfast
A simple breakfast of chai and toast
I glanced gently at our deck
With the peeling paint
There’s nothing special about
The wooden deck
Yet it offered me the pleasure
Of visiting a little paradise
Across the sliding glass door
There
Barely thirty yards from the
Backyard waterfall
This deck hosts dozen plants
With delicate flowers and vegetables
There is a mango, sacred basil
The papery-petaled Royal purple bougainvillea
Red single hibiscuses, little finger eggplants,
One-foot high tamarinds, citrus, and
Tasty amaranthus
And aha! The betel leaf creeper too
Some times we’ve cilantro and fenugreek
In rectangular pots on the side
The only thing the garden lacks -
Is a greenhouse!
A shelter for those cold months
That precede spring and suddenly
Follow the vivacious autumn
You can grow a few more tomatoes
Eggplants or okra
But still this little garden
In the shade of tall maple trees
Is almost heavenly
Mother would’ve been ecstatic
With such a little garden
Next to the kitchen
In the village she’d often
Grow fresh tall amaranthus
Gongura, beans, snake gourd
White pumpkin, and tasty aromatic
Bananas
She provided her children
With nutritious meals
Grown almost entirely in our garden
With backbreaking hoeing and tending
Decades later I realized how lucky
We’re
To have such a mother
She gifted us good eyesight
Strong bones and well-formed teeth
And most important – “dharmic upbringing”
Yea
Paradise can happen anywhere
If the courage to dream
And
Willing muscles for hard work

Exist

Copyright 2020 by the author