Was lying down on a vacant Saturday, In the balcony of my house. 

With nothing to block the view of the sky and watching the blue expanse and the clouds floating by, my mind started wandering around. Floated gently to the times, when I was a kid. I used to lie down on my back for hours together and gaze at the sky. Blankly sometimes, sometimes inquisitively. Sometimes i used to be busy thinking and used to miss the vista in front of me. And then sometimes my train of thoughts used to stop suddenly and notice the gigantic clouds, obscuring my entire field of view.

The clouds huge, white and fluffy, used to float very slowly across the sky. Forming myriad shapes as they moved and their shapes also changed very slowly and sometimes rapidly as they moved across the sky. Looking at them I could identify mountains and some times animals. Some looked like castles, some like known structures and some absolutely bizarre. As the shapes formed an image in my mind, I used to follow that cloud across the sky from one horizon to another. And to my dismay sometimes the shapes used to get blurred at the edges or the corners used to round off or get totally broken sometimes. Sometimes they used to get swallowed by a bigger cloud.

In my fantasy land I used to dream of castles on the clouds surface. A castle with tall rising walls reaching the sky and huge doors to walk into.  And lush green lawns and playgrounds around. The ground beneath my feet would feel soft and fluffy and I could jump on it endlessly like on a trampoline.  With flowers and butterflies and birds and squirrels I used to fill the imaginary garden. And sometimes used to get stuck in deciding about the type of flowers or their colours. Or sometimes on which friend , I would invite to play on my cloud. And as I would think on these matters I would get so busy in my mind, that my open eyes couldn’t realise, that my cloud was floating away. On realising late I used to shift my gaze and look for another suitable cloud. And my play used to start again. 

Now as I was watching the clouds moving just perceptibly along an invisible path I cannot but avoid going back to those thoughts again. Innocent but pleasurable thoughts. A fantasy world away from the real world. 

But today I can imagine some more. I now think of a satellite orbiting the earth and what the clouds must be looking from that vantage point. From whatever I have seen about the satellite pictures of earth the clouds look like a huge sheet of white. Formless, flat and uninteresting. And the more I think of that  image the more I can imagine the huge and vulgar towns and cities and the junk and garbage lying miles below the clouds around. I can imagine the warplanes and the missiles. And the armies and warships. And people fighting each other for transient victories. Though in our small bubbles we are safe and surrounded by good and caring people, this is a microscopic view. On a large scale one can sadly see, anger and rage, jealousy and ill feelings and the desire to subjugate and abuse. The people divided by vast seas, mountains and valleys but more importantly by their own deceit and by their desire to possess and rule.

 Hurt by this vision I close my mind and revert back to my childhood. And start building my castles on my favourite clouds. The birds and squirrels are much better to look at. Soothing to the eye and tranquil to the mind.