Scent of the Monsoon

A cool breeze, grown pleasant through contact with the scent of the earth refreshed by your showers,

which is inhaled by elephants with a pleasing sound at their nostrils, and which is the ripener of wild

figs in the forest, gently fans you who desire to proceed to Devagiri.

There, you, taking the form of a cloud of flowers, should bathe Skanda, who always resides there, with

a shower of flowers, wet with the water of the heavenly Ganges.

~ Excerpt from Kālidāsa’s  Meghadūta , Verse 45. Translated by McComas Taylor.

I find the rain washed colours of nature so enthralling that photographing them is something that I crave for.

It’s the whole sensory experience – the monsoon air, the smells of the earth,  the textures of glistening rocks, the brightest of greens that

surface, forgotten things that come to life and the clean washed feeling that prevails.

A  quick note about the excerpt above : I was recently reading a translation of Meghaduta by Kālidāsa, who is considered to be one of the

greatest Sanskrit poets, and felt that it captured the soul of the Indian Monsoon in such a mythic, beautiful way. It narrates how Yaksa, one

of King Kubera’s (god of wealth) subjects in exile, pleads a passing cloud to carry a message to his wife residing in the Himalayas.

I loved the work and couldn’t resist sharing a piece of it here.

Tagged as: Color, hassan, india, monsoon, ruins, travel