Reciprocal Nature Inspire
The Cloud Messenger
a cloud, and a bleeding heart❤.
“O’ mighty cloud, carrying immense quantities of water, please listen,
O’ dear cloud, you are as fast as the Pushkara, the flying carriage of gods,
Please stop and take a message to my beloved!”
Looking at the clouds gathering this morning, which had ruined the sunrise, that I had been trying to capture from my beach resort in Mexico, suddenly this poem, Megh Doot came to my mind.
In this poem, the protagonist is beseeching a cloud to take a message to his beloved.
For the past few days, I have been away from home, staying at a place, almost at the other end of the world, and sending and receiving messages has been on my mind. Due to the time difference of almost 17 hours, it is difficult to talk to my family, so we send text messages. I send them pictures of every beautiful place, and thing, that I see, so it feels, like we are enjoying ourselves together.
And this morning, instead of a sunrise, I just sent them a picture of the clouds, see below.
And I was thinking, how easy sending a message these days is, as it only requires the will of the sender, and the rest is easy, or at least so much easier.
There was a time, as was the case in this 4th or 5th century BC India, sending a love message must not have been that easy. There were no postal services or internet. Moreover, lovers couldn’t always communicate with each other easily, due to many societal or family restrictions, and had to depend on writing poems and requesting inanimate objects to be their messengers.
So, that’s what lovers did, they wrote love poems to talk about their lovesick condition, as they didn’t have any other means to communicate their anguish and their love for each other.
This poem, Megh Doot written by Kali Daas, who was one of the greatest Sanskrit poets from the 4th and 5th BC India, is about a Yaksha, a demigod, who has been separated from his wife due to a curse; and has not been able to contact her for a year. Sick of love and the pain of separation, he requests a cloud to take his love message to her. He appeases the cloud, calling him by beautiful names, and praising his attributes such as strength, fastness, and generosity.
He calls him Megh Doot, the cloud messenger.
In many Asian cultures, love is usually expressed through poems. These poems can be recited to natural elements by the lovestruck lovers, as a message to their beloved, who is far away.
From pigeons to pitchers, lovers have used a variety of means of sending a message to their beloved.
They used birds, flowers, stars, the moon, and in this case the cloud as their messenger.
Here, through this story of a cursed Yaksha, his separation from his beloved, and his desire to convey his love message to his wife, the poet is describing the anguish of those separated from their loved ones; and explains the importance of a medium that can be used to send and receive messages between separated lovers.
The Yaksha had been separated from his wife for more than a year, and since he couldn’t see her, and she, him, he just wanted to send her a message of his love and to bring a smile to her dry lips, to ease her pain of separation.
The cloud, which flies from one mountain to the other, through the vast area of the whole country, must have seemed to be a perfect carrier for this job.
Yes, ‘Cloud’!
I mean the ‘Cloud’!!
It is a carrier of information. The data!
We are all familiar with the current meaning of the word cloud, and its capacity to provide information, and use it while sending messages.
We all know the beauty of this carrier of information, which takes our love message to our loved ones!
And, how important this message of love is, and what wonders this message can do to someone suffering the pangs of separation and loneliness, most of us would know.
And I was thinking, how fast things changed since we moved from the pigeons, and handwritten letters, and now,
Even a letter is a thing of the past!
Or a phone call, but that is also becoming a bit old-fashioned,
So, what do we do these days?
We send an email, or usually, a text, yeh!
Yes, and we send it through ‘Cloud’.
We send a love message, with a love heart❤!
Yes, it seems we have gone a full circle!
From a cloud messenger to a cloud messenger
and a bleeding heart!
So, I should thank my Megh Doot too, saying:
O cloud thanks for accepting to deliver my message,
you are either very compassionate or are saddened
by my grief-stricken situation,
I thank you my dear friend,
May you never have to be away from your beloved!
(Megh Doot, last stanza).
Megh Doot is a very long poem; and is one of the greatest poems from Indian literature, rich in language, metaphors, and similes, full of vivid descriptions and beautiful imagery. Giving his love message to Megh Doot, the Yaksha guides the cloud on how to travel to his beloved city Alka, telling him about the beautiful sites he would see on his way, suggesting what places he can stop to enjoy the scenery, or get refreshed, and what places, he should hurry up from.
Megh Doot Poem in Hindi
This post is in response to Dr. Preeti Singh’s Nature prompt “Clouds”!
Clouds In The Sky Are Promising Rain | by Dr. Preeti Singh | Reciprocal | Nov, 2022 | Medium
While traveling in the last few days, I’ve not been able to read much, but I did manage to read a few poems, and articles, and would like to mention two articles here.
‘Monoreena Acharjee Majumdar’s poem was a wonderful account of her travel through the woods in Assam, and fantastic pictures of the things, and adventures, she had there with her college friends.
Suma Narayan’s story of being ‘lost’ in the woods, was beautifully written. Building tension in the dark, she ended it with the warm glow of safety and comfort.
…Until The Cows Come Home. Response to a Prompt | by Suma Narayan | Reciprocal | Nov, 2022 | Medium
Thanks, Dr. Preeti Singh for inspiring us to write about nature, which is all around us, and sometimes, we forget to notice!!
Thanks, Sahil Patel for a great publication.
