It had been drizzling since the morning and the air smelled of mist. At times there was another smell so rich and overpowering that I questioned my familiarity with it—the aroma of moist earth. I had been sleepy through the journey. I slept for the better part of it and whenever I happened to open my eyes, the depressing sight of serpentine water-drops rolling down the outside of the car window put me back to sleep again.

Finally, I reached there. I stood there with my eyelids still heavy with slumber, my eyesight not clear enough to look across the eternally vast valley that merged with the sky along a blurry horizon between possible and impossible. And then, right then, it caught my eye. So great and enormous it was just a few feet above my head that, at first, I thought it was a concoction of my fantasy. Perhaps, I was dreaming. Perhaps, it wasn’t real at all. And then I realized it was more real than my existence, greater and more meaningful than anything I had ever seen in my life: a gigantic mass of clouds drifting across the sky, over the ethereal valley, brushing past the slopes and hilltops. It cast a shadow, a huge grayish shadow across the bed of the valley, over the chocolate-box town with miniature houses, towers, spires, roads and more houses.

The shadow moved slowly and covered a greater area much like a thick canopy hung loosely over the somnolent town that seemingly came straight out of a children’s storybook. It hid the sun partly and allowed only a faint strip of sunlight to lie like a ribbon over the hills, which gradually narrowed and then disappeared. It wasn’t just beautiful, it wasn’t just amazing, it wasn’t just other-worldly. It was something you can’t express in words, for that may spoil the pureness, the tranquility, the magic.  

I didn’t have a camera with me—something I regret and don’t regret at the same time.
I am thankful that I didn’t engage myself in capturing the beauty in frames—I am sure no photographs could have reflected the serenity well.
Now, more than a decade later, memories from that monsoon, in a Northeast Indian
hill-station feels from a different life altogether.
I believe life gives you some moments just to cherish, to live, and absorb completely with your soul and senses. It doesn’t empower you enough with the skills and art to express the beauty through any forms of creation.
Every word I have been writing now feels inadequate to me.
I wish my imagination was stronger, my writing style more artistic and expressive, and my stock of words richer.
But I am sure it’s not me. It was that moment, that happenstance.
And that’s the allure of life; that’s the allure of some special moments and things.
Words have limited expressional ability.
Life is beautiful because there are a universe-full of marvels that lie beyond the reach
of words.