CLOUDS

"............Remember the clouds and the winds ..... never forget them .........write to me when you are far away and burn them .May the smoke be carried by the winds and reach to me through the rain droplets of the clouds ......
these clouds......... you see up there is a bank of letters written by thousands of lovers away from home ...and when i will look up the to cloud the first droplet of rain water touching my face will remind me of you ..... remember then, that your message had been delivered .............. " said Habibah to Ebo.



PROLOGUE :

Everything that has an ending must have had a starting, in between birth and death, there is a period when we live ...those moments are called life.Similarly in between sleep and awakening there is a small period of sub consciousness,
when the dream of the past night is as fresh as morning dew ....the story of Ebo doesn't deal with birth, life and death ,instead of that period of sub consciousness during which one can recall his dream ,being aware of the fact that he is going to forget it the next morning he wakes up ......


DREAM :



Ebo has been walking ever since the last time he met her......... walking through the villages and by the seashores. From the plains of the fields, to the mountains and forests and then ultimately to the desert ......
he did not knew the desert ,but he knew his search for his destiny went through this path ..... he never realized that it was not him who was in search of his destination,
but it was the other way round....it was his destiny that made him come here .... perhaps made him come so far from her..... and this destiny is destined to take him to his destination ......... the destination that lay far ahead of him passed through the longest desert path trodden by the banjaras .It lay right in front of him, the farthest sight of it was non ending..............
during his way through the plains and the mountains , he kept his promise and wrote to her every day and then burnt it religiously ,believing the wind will take it away and the clouds will deliver it.......
and then came the reply ......
he soaked himself in rain...as it carried the presence of her .... through the rain he communicated with her......

he knew what she must have written ....as the rain didn't missed a part...... and when he danced with joy in the rain murmuring to the water droplets .....his friends thought he had gone mad......but only he knew the secret....


Then came the desert ,he wrote the letters by tearing up pages from his diary that he had procured before entering this long desert, and burning them ,the desert wind took it away,but only with a promise that it's reply will never come ....... "its the desert you have been walking through...." told the desert to Ebo ,and the rain doesn't fall here .......


REMNANT :





The desert path came to be longer than what he expected it to be ....and now its one day short of one year since he started walking in the desert and the pages of diary all burnt but one left...... the 365 th day ..the last blank page of the diary ..was awaiting to be written, burnt and carried away by the wind and to be delivered by the clouds ........
all the pages that he wrote before from his diary carried his life story ....and now he is left with a single page ......
the two thick cardboard , binding the diary resembled birth and death to him .....and this last page in between it,the last day of his life...
he never wrote on that last page during his path...and no one knew why....perhaps he believed in the fact that by tearing up this last page ..... he will come to the back cover of the diary resembling death.....and he didn't wanted to die in the desert....or perhaps there were too many a thoughts,emotions and feelings to be penned down in just one single page.....or perhaps he was waiting......... telling himself "don't write today do it tomorrow ....." perhaps that feeling
of writing to her tomorrow made him contend....... and that tomorrow never came..
he had been walking the desert ever since then, breaking her promise .....
all his experiences of the desert he bore in his mind hoping to share them with her one day ...one day when he will meet her again.
when the 3rd year arrived , he was close to his destination .....


AWAKENING :




The desert path had lead him to his destination.. and then he tore the last page of his diary and wrote " wish you were here." and burnt it ....the smoke curled up against the sky and went away ...... at this point of time he didn't saw death on the back cover cardboard,instead he saw "awakening" .... he now realized what the front cover cardboard and the pages in between them originally resembled ......
he felt the true essence of love, "how his belief in love has made him come so far.."- he thought .....
coming at conjunction with his destination would never have been possible without love ...... strange is love .......he wondered .........only a matter of interpretation......


DESTINATION :


He was sitting at his destination awaiting the rain to arrive ,but the weather had been erratic ,and then one day the rain did came, the rain droplets touched his face,but strangely it didn't carry any emotion along with it....
" did she write to me ?.." he asked to himself
"6 years you have been away from her,for three years you never wrote to her,who knows where is she?
has she written to you? no one knows,
has she forgotten you ? that can never be..
why are you forgetting the desert lies in between you and her ?
no rain bearing winds has ever passed from that side of the desert to this.......and perhaps the clouds for which you are waiting for ,has already fallen on the other part of the desert......
.to know what has she written to you or has she stopped writing to you, you need to go to the other the part of the desert.....
do you really want to go there again ? " his soul answered


EPILOGUE :


The sun was about to set and the old banjara sitting on the sand, by his camel has just finished telling the folklore of the desert to his young fellow men......
" it's about time to carry on with our journey ......
.. a long journey to the other part of the desert awaits....we must start early " ............. the banjara said ..


while the young men who were listening to the story looked puzzled by the question put forward to Ebo by himself........