The sky has been changing colour. I have been noticing the
sky – for weeks on end, and usually rather intensely during the weekends
barring a couple of weekdays which now seem to have been from a sleep-dream
sequence. One weekend the sky impinged upon me and my dim senses, and the more I
tried to ignore it from my window the more loudly (and utterly silently) it
demanded that I take notice of it. Now it demands to be written about – and I’m
not sure why. I even gave in to the sky and one very early morning while
writing in my diary, dedicated some long, involved and loving paragraphs about
and to the sky and its moods and how it appeared to me – but now it demands
that I write a few lines here – and after weeks of trying to ignore the demands
of the sky – I am writing here.
I have to say at the onset that I have loved the sky. One
cannot hate the sky or find it obnoxious or even dislike it or harbor ill-feelings
or anger towards it or be irked or irritated or annoyed by it but I guess one
might find it rather too obvious and all-present to harbour too many feelings
about the sky. Unless one is a genuine poet or a genuine writer, one also feels
that it is a trifle silly or a little ridiculous to express the feelings of rapture
or ecstasy or in fact, any feelings, about the sky that one might experience in
private. But I can’t help feeling that there probably are many human beings who
have at some point felt something beautiful inside or even in company while
watching the sky. The sky insists that I turn my attention to it and not to my
own explanations and excuses or apologies for writing about it. I apologise
still.
I have seen rather strange skies – and not merely in my mind’s
eye, which would be of little interest here. I remember January 2003 when I had
awoken very, very early one morning and with great anticipation for Fimh was telling
me something or the other, and I had gone and sat in my chair to look out of my
dorm window and had seen a pure black sky with a blood red gash of a horizon. I
couldn’t really believe that I was seeing what I was and put on my glasses –
but there it was. The sky was the blackest shade of black that I had ever seen
and a little lower a liquid inky blue, and just at the horizon there was a
streak of orange and right below it – a streak of pure crimson. Nobody believed
me when I told them later. And I didn’t have a camera but I doubt the camera
would have picked up that strange sky. I had sat there in my chair mesmerized and
had felt that the sky somehow made sense. It was almost as though it were
reflecting a particular mood – it felt like the sky was in a rather
swashbuckling mood or even a quietly wicked mood where it was smiling softly
and even grinning and was putting on a show to let whoever was awake see how
utterly splendorous and enchanting and desirable it could be. Yet
another time – and it was sometime in the middle of 2011 – I had gone outside
to go for a walk rather late in the evening. Now in the mid-west, there is some
daylight till past 9. But this was closer to 10 and it was dark but there was
something a little odd that I sensed. I looked up and by God, I do not quite
know how to describe what I saw. There was a humongous white elliptical band of
a fuzzy white light covering the sky and the centre of the sky contained within
that elliptical band looked like a puffed up black and grey cloudy swirl – and it looked as though it was trying
to descend or ascend but couldn’t make up its mind completely as to what it
wanted to do. I cannot remember whether I actually called a neighbour to ask him
whether the aliens were finally coming or whether he just happened to be
strolling into the apartment – but he was utterly unfazed when I told him to look
up at the sky. He looked at it and described it as something, which I have
completely forgotten, and said that it was a known occurrence in Indiana skies.
He had seen the same when he was a child and it was called the “ring…” (of
something that I have clean forgotten) and had seen it a few times while
growing up. But even so – I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the sky while I
went out for my walk up and down the hill; if the aliens were landing their spaceship - I didn't want to miss that. I also remember the huge hanging
moon in the Indiana sky. The moon was incredibly large during some of the full
moon nights – it looked frankly unreal, and would change colours – the dense
black sky with wispy white streamers would be all there overhead and even in front of my vision in certain stretches, and I remember feeling
that the moon seemed to be undecided as to whether it should keep growing
larger and larger and softly descend to earth or stay in the sky. I remember seeing
that dense black sky with the wispy streamers and the scudding clouds and that growing, unreal silver-gold-reddish moon while driving back from the department or while walking over the overhead
bridge on some late nights and it seemed to me that the sky did have a hold on
the moon and the moon rather did want to stay with the sky. And I remember the
sky from other nights from even longer back. The sky, which I didn’t notice too
well or just noticed in the passing but I remember the feeling of the open, expansive sky overhead and while up on a
terrace and looking at trees and imaginary scenes and the freckles of stars and
the lone star which shone just that little bit brighter and sharper. And I
remember reading my first P.G. Wodehouse a very long time ago and laughing
aloud and being in uncontrollable fits of laughter and feeling that the sky had
joined me in my moment of absolute laughter. And I remember of other times –
running away to the terrace and finding a secluded spot to look at the
occasional aeroplanes with their flashing lights which seemed to speak of such
freedom in flight and glorious shared adventures up above in that dark,
mysterious sky, and of being up on the terrace one summer, so very long ago, and
feeling this ineffable rush of a feeling of split-dreams and a delicious dreaminess
and of the fleeting feeling of an unbelievable bliss and perfect clarity and under
that great, dark, inscrutable sky stealing even a naughty, beautiful kiss.
And now there is the sky from the past few weeks and these
abominable weekends. Had I never noticed, across two score summers that the sky
changes in its moods and dispositions most awfully and capriciously during the
monsoons? One day it is a refulgent glorious shade of blue – azure – and it is
almost as though the sky is so joyously and absolutely in love that it is
unashamedly and vociferously proclaiming its love and even beckoning at me to
sing with it as it insists on shining through my window at the bleakest of
moments. If I won’t sing out aloud it insists that I sing inside my head or
heart or with my Holy Spirit. If I obmutaciously shake my head and say that I
can’t possibly sing – it insists that I acknowledge that I feel the desire to sing
and dance and connect to some parallel world or universe where maybe I am
singing and dancing! And then if I do finally, pushed to a corner, agree and
some bars of a song appear in my mind on demand, it wickedly tells me that it’s
not about the singing, is it?! – By then of course I have to admit that no, it’s
probably not just about the singing but about the feelings that rise and spill
over from ever since I can remember – dreams and images and desires and
expectations and ambitions and adventures and all those worldly and unworldly
pursuits. And the sky shining and glowing with that unearthly blue, laughs and
winks wickedly and says, ‘oh, you fool. You know it is all about Love.’ And on
other days the sky has merely been a glass. A sheet of glass. And there is
nothing that is given or received or taken. It stays there like a sheet of
clear, invincible glass. I look at it almost expecting it to say something –
but there is nothing. And on yet other days it is as if it is brooding and grey
and dark and beyond gloom and yet holding back the tears that it simply will
not shed. On those days I have felt that if I shed my tears, the sky might feel
a bit better. But the sky is withdrawn and away from the world and far away
from me. It does not care and doesn’t even care that it doesn’t care. It stays
there with its beyond-gloom and even the fluffy clouds stay away. It is simply
a flat, uncompromising grey – unreachable and certainly not inviting me. It
refuses to correspond in any manner. “And so why were you shining so blue-ly
the other day and now you won’t say a thing?!” I almost yell at it aloud when
Fimh almost laughingly points out that “blue-ly” is not a word. And then now, for
a whole week, there have been the rains and the rains and the rains and the intermittent
and continuing rains. But the rains of the monsoons, the stormy sky, the thunder, the lightning are a different story.
