January 29, 2026 01:52 am (IST)
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Holi in the clouds
Bhopal, Mar 5 (IBNS) This year, Holi falls in the first week of March. For cloud lovers like me, tones of sunsets, and colours in the skies of first few days of March were like holi.
It’s not just this year, but whenever unexpected showers happen in March, the same time around which India plays holi, rains bring clouds to life and the clouds give ‘life’ to our cameras!
I remember last year in March while I was driving back from my office I saw him. He was sitting in his stable, waiting, recouping energy for a desert caravan. Under the white sky, he was probably contemplating that this caravan may not be an easy one and he might have to navigate tough dunes, might even have to cross areas where which are tough, for which he needs energy.
He is recouping and trying to save that energy. What looked like a camel was no ordinary camel but a camel shaped cloud floating over the Bhopal sky. When it rains in my city (something obvious), clouds accompany the rains and with them come the various shapes, and expressions of cloudscapes.
For me, it was a camel in cumulus clouds; others saw it as a heap or volcano. What we see in the random shapes varies on one’s perception. Clouds change shapes, so this camel may rise up or disappear after some time; hence I had to click it fast.
Though people who saw me clicking pictures of this cloud, they could not quite gauge why I was doing so. They did question me, and to an extent one bystander clicked me on his mobile thinking maybe I was from a government department doing some ‘official’ inspection. He also felt that I had clicked him and he needs to click me back! Not a surprise, because many of us ignore natural beauty in the skies above us while we go painting the town red!
This was last year when it rained ‘unexpectedly’ (though this unexpected happens every year), on first three days of March. The sky above got filled with hues of blue, red, black, sepia and colours smudged beyond recognition. On the first day of March, it looked like it was cloud of fire with tones of red dominating with blue and black, over it. On the second day of March, it was a ‘blue’ dragon and on the fourth day, it was as the sun set over Bhopal, it took the form of fiery red.
The sepia and red reflections on the waters of Kaliasoot, at the time of sunset looked like Holi’s drums of waters colours.
While there were pureness of heaps & mounds of ‘white’ on the sheet of blue skies, or shapes of clouds like someone riding a horse, during the day time near Shymla Hills on March 4, one could also see the tinge of red in it as one reached Kaliasoot dam by the time it was sunset !
For people like me, who love clouds, clear blue skies are boring. The vapour in the water adds the needed colour and marks holi, the festival of colours…
(Anil Gulati is based in Bhopal, is a cloud lover, uses hashtag of #bhopalclouds to share pictures of clouds from Madhya Pradesh in India. He tweets by as @Anil5 and on instagram he is @AnilGulati5.)
Pic @ Anil Gulati, Bhopal skies
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