‘Monsoon Wedding’ of Lightning and Clouds

When the dreams of noon were not even ripe, the clouds came bursting whipping the flail of a lightning. That was the urban cape of Kolkata, interspersed with high-rises and bungalows, with slums and water-bodies, with urban jungles and romantic Maidan. Monsoon in Kolkata is synonymous to the wedding of clouds, thunder and lightning, as thunderstorms brew over the horizon quite often. The sublime towers of the city’s well-known icons seem to groan aghast as dark rainclouds bring an ominous silence to the skyline, only to be broken by deafening thunder claps, shattering the dreams of a mellow afternoon.

Be the Lightning

Yet, monsoon clouds have a poetry of their own, the lightning scripts an artist’s canvas criss-crossing the sky, while the music of the thunder plays a symphony with the lashing raindrops. And in the end, the rainbow rises, with the hope of beauty, as monsoon clouds clear out giving way to an orbed maiden gliding and glimmering like a swarm of golden bees. Several emotions play behind the lens of ace photographer Debarshi Duttagupta in this photo-essay. He has made use of the lockdown and never missed capturing them from his terrace. And like poet P.B. Shelley had once said, the clouds again rise from nowhere, ‘Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.’ Duttagupta’s lens helps those clouds on their journey for sure!

Then turn into a Rainbow