PAINTING THE SKIES

Dear Friends.. I am sorry for yet another long break. I know.. I have been doing this quite a bit recently. Anyways.. am back with something interesting again! Okay... so tell me friends… What would be your idea for a lazy Sunday afternoon? I see a lot of hands. And I guess there are a lot of refreshing recipes for a relaxing weekend afternoon act. A good heavy meal, is it? It certainly helps if a Saravana Bhavan or a Punjabi dhaba is round the corner. But it will be even more special when a loved one cooks that heavenly meal for you or you make his/her afternoon special by becoming the master chef. Okay… I hear you are on diet. A movie perhaps! Check out the latest blockbuster that is showing in the multiplex nearby. Ahh.. Mixed reviews you say!

Hmmm… How about sitting back on that recliner and checking out anything the idiot box has to offer? Coziness and entertainment all at one place; with a refreshing dash of ginger tea and bliss is yours. Chaos in the living room, huh!! What to watch: Debate on economics or a movie or an Ekta Kapoor soap opera!  Gosh, can’t decide!! Okay okay.. stop that fight for the remote. Let me think of something else. Wait wait… don’t go to sleep! How about a long drive into the woods? What woods you ask? I hear someone yelling “Traffic”! Hmm.. This is getting tougher than I thought. How about a silent and pleasant walk then?  Did someone say cricket? Oh oh…There goes the afternoon for most of you now! I will leave you alone. You guys can fight in peace now!

Well these are all very viable options for lighting up a dull Sunday afternoon which were in my mind too. But the skies had other plans (literally). How is that you ask? Glad you did! It did start out as a dull, peaceful and serene Sunday morning as it went by in slow motion. A little bit of TV, some chit chat and coffee of course made it soothing and relaxing for me, mom and dad. And then it was lunch time as I debated the different options for lunch with mom. We settled on Pav Bhaji as the weather was in perfect synchrony for that and also because mom had never tried her hand at that before. So the chef hat and the apron were on as we went about the task at hand with enthusiasm and panache. And voila… Pav Bhaji was ready. Or so we thought!

But we had one small technical problem: there was no Pav. A quick trip to the grocery store solved that minor obstacle and lunch was upon us. Each one of us gulped down enough Pavs (not to mention the generous stuffing of Bhaji) that our eyes were fading out as we were ready to go into la-la-land. And that is when I just stepped out to the balcony to take a peek at what nature had in store that day. It was a fine day with the right mix of warmth and breeze, color and shade, blue sky embellished by cream clouds, birds chirping, squirrels fooling around (oh btw.. I do have to tell you something about squirrels but that would have to wait), cars (and men) giving Mother Nature a break, trees sveltely grooving to the winds and autumn leaves adorning the sidewalks. This abounding spectacle sent the idea of a nap cart-wheeling out of my mind.

Mom has always been an ardent admirer of nature herself and she joined me in the balcony as we listened to nature’s sweet chimes. And that was when we saw the sky’s white magic. It happened all of a sudden that we were left dumbstruck and pinched each other to ensure it was not a dream. Before you decide (for the umpteenth time) to kill me for holding you hostage with my impending suspense, let me let the cat out of the sky. The reason for our blissful commotion was that letters all of a sudden started appearing in the sky. Yes, you read it right. A magical invisible pen with the help of a precision stencil was etching out letters that were literally appearing out of thin air. We could recognize the letters but the words made no clear sense. And then in a minute or two everything disappeared. Now we were really curious about this mysterious turn of events. The afternoon nap was certainly out and we waited in anticipation of more wizardry from this mysterious wand. In other news, the curiosity bug had infected my dad as he too joined us in the balcony.

About 15 minutes had gone by and we were beginning to lose hope when a déjà vu happened. In another direction, in a different part of the sky, different letters made their appearance one by one to create new words but the one thing that remained the same was the fact that we couldn’t make out what the heck it meant. And then a minute later, it was all gone. Now I started speculating about these seemingly mysterious happenings and quickly made up a few preposterous theories. Was it some evil spirit’s handiwork? Were those writings somehow connected to some holy scripture? Was it warning us of some impending doom? I even thought about trying to research those words and try to find some patterns when my mom said that I was trying too much to be Sherlock Holmes (or Ramanugem rather).

In the meantime, another message had appeared in the sky teasing us with another riddle before fading away surreptitiously. Now we were proposing the theory of an alien attack (come on, we wanted to have some fun) and that over-abused prophecy of the world coming to an end in 2012. Seriously, an alien visit rather an alien attack would surely have been fun. But then, all good things have to come to an end. With some googling and research, I finally traced this to a Ryder cup gimmick. Now what is Ryder cup, you ask. It is a golf tournament between USA and Europe that happens every 2 years.

I know.. Golf is boring. Tell me about that! But this time it provided more fun even if it was unintentional. Apparently Europe made a historic comeback to retain the Ryder Cup. And I guess they had a little help from above. Well, not from that high up as you are thinking, but from at least above 50,000 feet. A European bookie hired a team of sky writers to create pro European tweets high above the country club where the tournament was going on, which by the way is in Chicago close to where I live. But to make them visible so far on the ground though, the planes have to make the writing really big. Each tweet was 400 meters high and 5 miles long and went on to break all skywriting records. That meant even people as far as 20 miles away could clearly see the writings on the sky and we were among the lucky ones.

Well… so ends the story of an intriguing Sunday afternoon. It was no Apocalypse but still a memorable and enthralling experience. For the first time I came to know about this concept called Sky Writing. It is the art of using an aircraft that is capable of expelling smoke, to fly in certain patterns to create writing readable by someone on the ground. Fascinating, isn’t it? Now this message could be anything, meaningful or less, advertisement, celebration or even a birthday wish or a marriage proposal. Now how many of you would want the heavens to broadcast your proposal to that special love of yours! I sure see a lot of hands again.