Delhiwale: City surface full of clouds

Delhi's sky transforms during monsoon, showcasing fluffy white clouds. Ideal spots for cloud-watching include Nizamuddin Bridge and Gurugram's DLF Cyber Hub.

Dull, smoggy, grey. Almost a rotting corpse. That’s our Dilli sky most of the year. The same asmaan resurrects into life during the monsoon. It is the year’s A-1 time for Delhi nephophiles, the cloud lovers. (This is also the time to re-read Kalidas’s Meghaduta, The Cloud Messenger).

The perspective distortion made the 21-storey Gopaldas Bhawan loom high above the sky-bound clouds. (HT)

One afternoon last week, a massive cavalcade of very many small clouds were seen right above the business towers of Nehru Place. The clouds were not rainy black, but cottony white. They were moving very slowly. The pitch blue sky, visible in patches from behind the cloud cover, was giving the illusion of motion.

The same day, some distance ahead from Nehru Place, a massive bunch of cottony white clouds was hanging over the Jamia Nagar graveyard. Were these the same aforementioned clouds, and had they drifted over?

Anyhow, the most idyllic place in the capital region to gaze at the cloud-filled sky has to be the stretch between the Nizamuddin Bridge—the so-called Japani pul on the Yamuna—and the Akshardham Mandir. The busy road, flanked on both sides by open fields, is a viewing enclosure for cumulous white cover that tends to broodily hover these days. Try climbing the stairs to the pedestrian overpass that stands on the easternmost end of the stretch—the optical deception makes one feel as if they were at the same altitude as the clouds.

Gurugram, too, is a good place for cloud-watching. A segment of the Delhi-Jaipur highway that overlooks DLF Cyber Hub happens to be lined by a row of high-rises. Their huge glass windows often show clear reflections of the passing clouds. It is, however, the random routine places in the city that offer the most thrill, for you don’t expect them to stage anything theatrical.

One afternoon, last week, in Connaught Place, the clouds were hanging low in the near horizon. The perspective distortion made the 21-storey Gopaldas Bhawan loom high above the sky-bound clouds. See left photo.

That afternoon, those same clouds were seen crowning the Dili Gate monument on Netaji Road. See other photo.

On Saturday night, the sky above Vasundhara’s Sector 6, in Ghaziabad outskirts, seemed black, blank and boring. A few hours later, it was covered with fluffy white translucent clouds. As if the suburban moon had disintegrated into something vaporous.