Witness to unfolding moments of life

There is nothing more beautiful than an unfinished tale as life, like democracy, is a fight that ought to be played by each one of us with all the weapons that one can find.

There are multiple encounters, stories on nature of human thoughts and emotions unfolding under the clouds of uncertainty and change. Drawn from different segments of society, with drifting perceptions on life and belonging, the seven characters in Clouds weave a grand story of city and village in the dream world of Bombay. The divorced Parsi psychotherapist Farhad finds love in Zahra; and discovers accidentally before taking a flight to San Francisco that Hemlata had experienced love (and marriage) as a kind of moisturizer whose effect didn’t last long. Elsewhere in the city, the ailing Odia couple of Eeja and Ooi relive their golden past in the company of Rabi who is a proxy to their son Bhagban, whose electoral battle is aimed at securing political power to lead the democratic struggle of the Cloud people from the stranglehold of a mining company. Each of these half-a-dozen characters create stories that cast distinct reflections on life, lifestyle and survival.

Brilliantly evocative, Clouds is an encounter with mortals, their transient loneliness, entrenched traditions, and changing cultures, that cast a mesmerizing spell on what one may think about life. There is nothing more beautiful than an unfinished tale as life, like democracy, is a fight that ought to be played by each one of us with all the weapons that one can find. ‘If you don’t fight for your share, somebody else will take that they can use.’ As much as love and private life of human beings, religion and politics has been transformed into products that can be bartered.

Within the moralistic, fatalistic and somewhat monotonic frame that defines most Indians, the author draws imaginative contours of regional identity amidst growing cosmopolitanism. The characters don’t preach what they perceive but leave it for the reader to take away meanings from their respective stories. Built upon the scaffolding of Arjee the Dwarf, Chandrahas’ first work of fiction, in which a desolate young man sees the image of his own condition in the clouds that hover above, Clouds is a novelistic structure of multiple narratives which are trapped within the limitations of its perceptions. After all, man’s best and even his worst is neither bright not dark, but always in self-doubt. Life is made of a cloudy nature, of dreams and shattered realities. Within the plenitude of life, each of the half-a-dozen characters generate surprising patterns about isolation and (dis)continuity of human existence.

Taking pleasure in the variety of human encounters, Chandrahas creates a fascinating mosaic of conversations that are as much real as reflective of human nature. His style is fresh, revealing and entertaining, intense and mild, unfolding the otherness of others through stories of love, sex, faith and belief. Clouds offer the continuity to the uncertainty of lived experiences. No wonder, under clouds the look and color of the world is only a trick of light. The truth of human condition lies within the horizon of its perception, whatever be it. Truth is anything but a subjective reality, caught in the time warp. Nobody can be as happy as they think they can be!

Farhad fleeting sexual encounter with Zahra fulfills a bodily desire, the search for happiness remains a work in progress; Hemlata’s self-doubting single status deserves to be heard, engaged with, and respected; Baghban’s quest for political identity comes at the cost of his ailing parents, and their unstinted faith in Lord Jaganath; and, Rabi’s self-sacrifice in favor of the Cloud people bequeaths promise of a cosmopolitan future. Each character is a victim of his/her decisions, in a world of unattainable future. It is a work of fiction that has politics and development at its core, transformation and change viewed through the inevitability of human existence, and death. In his figment of imagination Chandrahas draws contours of reality, of lived encounters that carry the everydayness of emotions about somewhat failed expectations from life, and yet characters tread on in search of understanding the moods of the city, its people, and their politics.

‘Amazing how ruled, regulated, routine our lives become without us knowing it, even inside what we take to be our spaces of pleasure and freedom’. In Clouds, there are footprints of an emerging new talent. If there was another kind of storytelling waiting to be discovered, Chandrahas Choudhury has brought it up with his deft touch of perception and imagination. He is an author whose work will be keenly awaited.

Clouds
by Chandrahas Choudhury
Simon & Schuster, Delhi
Extent: 280, Price: Rs. 669

First published in Deccan Herald dated Feb 11, 2018.

To be on cloud nine!

....from clouds come our intelligence, our dialectic and our reason; also, our speculative genius and all our argumentative talents.

It is perhaps the only instance when science surrendered to symbolism, and for some good reasons. The expression ‘to be on cloud nine’ has been in vogue since 1890 discovery that the highest-rising cloud was the ninth and last on the list. But later scientific research proved it to the contrary, identifying cumulonimbus to be tenth, and the last cloud. Despite such finding, the World Meteorological Organization sustained euphoric status to cumulonimbus as the true cloud nine. As a result, numerical expression cloud eight for ‘drinking too much liquor’, and cloud seven for ‘seventh heaven’ stays!  

However, there is more to clouds than just these numbers. From the realm of literature and arts to the domain of astronomy and science, clouds have emerged from the muddle of uncertainty into the world of scientific certainty in the context of climate change and cloud computing. Capturing their picturesque journey from ‘an ultimate art gallery above’ in the words of Ralph W Emerson to the ‘center of digital life below’ as propounded by Steve Jobs, Richard Hamblyn provides a multi-faceted narrative on nature’s most versatile creation. Packed with colorful pictures, Clouds could easily be the most comprehensive and authoritative text on the subject. And, indeed it is!

Hamblyn, an English lecturer at the University of London, has attained undisputed mastery on the subject, having already published two books on clouds - The Cloud Book and Invention of Clouds. While the first book captures all things to do with the origin and development of clouds, the second is a cultural excavation on understanding the science of clouds. In his third book under reference, he has brought clouds down to earth and unveiled their mysteriousness. Throughout human history attempts to understand clouds and their behaviour has been a subject of delight and fascination, offering limitless source of creative contemplation, from Socrates to Seneca and from Kalidas to Ruskin. Each attempt has helped in presenting a different story.

Clouds emerges is a magnificent collection of these stories – from their wooly journey through art, literature, music and photography to their sinister manipulation for military use and anthropogenic modifications. American (failed) attempts at precipitating flash floods during the Vietnam War are part of the legend. Such secret military trials have invoked widespread concern from international community to declare clouds as ‘a resource that belongs to no one’. Legal remedies for trespassing territories for appropriating clouds through artificial seeding would need to be curtailed as competition over access to rainwater escalates.

Since science is only beginning to understand the role of clouds in shaping future conditions on earth, a warm atmosphere may reorganize the day-to-day behaviour of clouds that could either amplify or mitigate climate change. The trouble, warns Hamblyn, is that clouds have a habit of behaving in complex and surprising ways. The fact that our warming climate is producing ever more lightening strikes is one of many surprises that clouds have in store. Each 1 degree rise in temperature increases lightening activity by around 12 per cent. Will clouds turn out to be agents of global warming or will they end up saving the day by reflecting ever more sunlight back into space remain unanswered? 

It is evident that clouds are challenging human intelligence. Philosophers like Aristophanes, who always had their head in clouds, had long professed that ‘from clouds come our intelligence, our dialectic and our reason; also, our speculative genius and all our argumentative talents.’ Wondering if clouds were objects or phenomenon or processes, Leonardo da Vinci had described clouds as formless triggers of visual invention, their fleeting magnificence and endless variability provides food for thought for scientists and daydreamers alike. The current predicament with clouds is taking us back in time to re-imagine and re-understand clouds. There may be clues in arts and literature to make a fresh beginning!

Hamblyn contention is that the law of unintended consequences needs to be kept in mind while embarking on geo-engineering projects that temper with atmosphere, and clouds. Clouds are too sensitive not to be taken into account in such anthropogenic adventures, he cautions. In short, it is clear that there is no way of knowing what is really going to happen to our increasingly changing  atmosphere, and just as in centuries past, clouds were employed as ready metaphors of doubts and uncertainty, it looks as if they will continue to be so for centuries to come. 

The crucial issue is that life without clouds would not be physically possible. Far from just being a source of water, these have larger role in keeping the earth hospitable to living beings. Clouds provide insights on history and science of clouds, and acts as a guide to pursue mankind to get a sensitive handling on the wooly product/process hovering between sky and the earth. Cogent and colorfully illustrated, this is the ultimate guide to the past, present and future of clouds. 

Clouds: Nature and Culture
by Richard Hamblyn
Reaktion Books, London
Extent: 251, Price: $25

First published in AnthemEnviroExpertsReviews and Current Science (March 10, 2018).