Romanticism is one of those luxuries that evolution seems to have bestowed upon us once the issues of subsistence and food chain were dealt with… ask it to pump up the adrenalin for a daredevilry, or cough up some dopamine for a ruminating poem, and seldom shall it fail to oblige… the philosophy of spiritual enlightenment based on the premise of biological primacy seems rather presumptuous at times, but then the thought of existence akin to any other animal — what we’d perceive as a drudgery of survival for the sake of it — does not seem too inviting either…
The interplay of clouds and mist tends to stir up this concoction of reactions… high in their domain, the elements shed off the stasis… and they play in scenarios, going about creating weather as the weary wanderer wakes up from a walking slumber to compute the permutations to safety…
Consider the emotive nature of clouds… one can converse boastfully with fragmented white fluffs as they amble purposelessly across the blue tapestry of the sky, breathing not air but life itself as the environs go about their business… but as the sunny vista turns overcast, the dopamine gives way to adrenalin, and the hiker relents to drenching in sweat in order to avoid being inundated by the impending downpour…
It is no different with mist either… watching it drift past as one plays absent-minded with grass blades can evoke the sanguine in the best of sceptics… but zoom in on the confused wayfarer trying to climb his way through the iron curtain of a fog, and you’d find that the sage is slowly giving way to the psychopath…
For ’tis ludicrous yet frightening at the same time, this concoction of vapours… in safe confines, one can inscribe it as that ‘beauty in motion’… in the absence of a shelter, it becomes a living hell, not that the elements transform, (maybe) only the consequences do… the turquoise of the horizon is preferable when the winds are cold, but what would a natural or linguistic discourse be if not for punctuations…
All said and done though, nothing beats the caress of a mist confused twixt lulling and rolling, with one’s cheek being the epicentre of that experiment…
Musings on the clouds and mists, sauntering in the Himalaya…
