Do look up.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The high-rises are moving. Actually, the clouds drifting about these office towers are causing the optical illusion, here in Greater Noida.

No matter where in Delhi you might be, do look up. Blue sky speckled with cottony clouds is a rare sight for our smoggy megapolis. This is the gift of saawan, the fifth month in the Hindu calendar. It is a time of showering barsat, when the city sky loses its customary dullness, turning even a jaded citizen into an excitable nephophile, a cloud connoisseur. Yesterday, Lakshmi Nagar’s Yumna Alvi shared a Facebook reel of her cloud-filled bike ride along the Akshardham Temple flyover with the film song, “Ye Dilli hai mere yaar, bas ishq mohabbat aur pyar.”

Even the business-like Gurugram has been affected by the season’s poetry. One afternoon last week on Golf Course Road, the trinity of the sky, the sky-touching towers, and the clouds floating past the towers were faintly evoking the dreamy haze of Monet’s impressionistic paintings.

The season’s classic cumulus scenes are to be encountered while driving along the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, on the stretch between the Ring Road and Akshardham Temple. A segment of the route passes over the glassy sheet of Yamuna. The sprawling riverbanks on both sides of the highway lie festooned with peacefully moving clouds, the dhoop frequently playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. Each time the sun disappears, or reappears, the shift of its light floods the environ with a new temperament.

Almost as hypnotic is the highway commute between Gurugram’s Shankar Chowk and Mahipalpur, especially during the rush-hour evening when the twilight clouds stain the sky with shades of red, blue and pink.

Four saawans ago, a most ethereal twilight shone upon Ghaziabad’s Vasundhara. The afternoon showers created a large puddle in a vacant plot of prized real estate. As the sun was dipping into the west, a pink cloud rained its reflection into the puddle, kindling the rain water into a pit of volcano lava. A high-rise stands today where the puddle was, but poetry-inducing sights continue to exist in the vicinity. Last Sunday, during his evening walk in Adarsh Park, retired PWD engineer Kshetrapal Singh was so moved by the cloud-clotted sky that he instinctively uttered aloud a Tulsidas chaupai from his beloved Ramcharitmanas.
Varsha kal megh nabh chhaye,
Garjat laagat param suhai.

(During rainy season when clouds cover the sky,
Their thunder spreads utmost happiness).

Sky sights

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.