In Which the Cloud Takes Over
January 6
Temperature 38°C. Smoke. Haze. Air Quality Index: 149
For what was the sixty-seventh time — yes, she’d been keeping count—Amni felt that coffee ice cream and khus soda did not make a good ice cream float. Thanks to that coffee-khus concoction, she had spent the night drifting in and out of sleep. ‘Really, what was Mithil thinking making that vile float last evening for Tammy’s birthday,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘He even called it MasterChef Special, HA!’
Amni slowly slipped back to sleep, imagining the horrified look on the judges’ faces if they tasted Mithil’s disgusting creation on the popular television show. She dreamt of Mithil explaining to the judges how khus has a cooling effect in this hot weather, when an angry rose-ringed parakeet flew onto the MasterChef set. The parakeet perched on Mithil’s shoulder and began squawking. AAAAACK! AAAAACK! AAAACK!
‘That’s strange. The parakeet sounds just like—’ Amni woke up with a start. It was her snooze alarm, insistently screeching for the third time. YIKES! ‘Maaaaaa! Why didn’t you wake me up?’ Amni yelled, dashing into the bathroom. She splashed water on her face. Brushed her teeth in record time. Jumped in the shower. Dried herself quicker than you can spell ‘Atacama’ (it’s the driest place in the world) and got dressed. Amni squinted at the offending alarm clock, she had beaten her previous record of getting ready for school by 11 seconds. Then she blinked. Where were her glasses?
She checked under her pillow, on top of her bedside table, even under her bed. Amni ran back into the bathroom. Her glasses were on the sink. She stuck them on. Better. At least now she could see the world clearly. A world in which she was terribly late for school.
‘Maaaaa!’ Amni yelled again, stuffing her school diary and a rogue pencil into her school bag, which was already bursting with books — textbooks, notebooks, the new Shabnam Minwalla book, Bird Sense (back-up for when she finished the Minwalla book; she had only twenty-seven pages to go), the latest edition of Sanctuary Asia, and of course her diary. Amni always worried that she’d finish one book on the carpool to school, and would be left without another to read on the way back.
Ma slowly shuffled into the room, nursing a ginormous coffee mug in her hand. ‘Stop yelling, Amni! It’s still dark outside,’ she groaned. Ma yawned and sat down on Amni’s bed, smoothening the ends of the Wall-E bedsheet.
‘It’s 8.13, Ma!’ Amni pushed her glasses back up her nose. They kept sliding down in the heat. ‘Can’t you hear the birds? They are twittering like loons. And it’s so hot. Plus, it’s Tammy’s birthday today. I can’t be late! I am taking her gift.’
Her mother scrunched up her face as though Amni was the one twittering like a loon. She reached for her phone, which was in the pocket of her housecoat (that had ‘Espresso Patronum’ embroidered on the back). ‘It is past eight! Shi…damn! Your dad’s flight should be taking off just about now.’
‘You know you can say “shit” in front of me, Ma,’ Amni giggled, crawling under her bed to retrieve her water bottle. Thankfully Ma hadn’t realized that Amni had forgotten to leave it in the kitchen after school (as usual Amni had her nose buried in a book— Nimmi’s Spectabulous Schooldays—and as a result, had dumped her bottle in her room, once again).
‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ Ma said sternly, drawing the curtains. ‘But oh shit, what the hell is that?’ Amni clambered onto the windowsill and looked out.
On most days, Amni could see the following from the twenty-first-floor window of their building in Glen Meadows society.
- Mrs Daruwalla’s apartment
- A colourful line of Mrs Daruwalla and family’s clothes hanging out to dry
- Pigeons roosting and pooping on the parapet
- A mango tree with no mangoes on it
- A piece of the sky
But today, Amni couldn’t see anything. Correction — all she could see was a thick haze. Everything was greyish brown, like on an overcast monsoon day. There was no sky, there was no sun.
A brown cloud glowered in the sky, whirling like a top. In her lifespan of twelve years, nine months and ten days, Amni had never seen a cloud quite like this one. It was also the biggest thing she had ever seen, and Amni lived in a city crammed with tall skyscrapers and long bridges. Outside her window, it was as though the world had turned upside down and now a turbulent, toxic ocean hovered above them. The cloud was a swirling mass of sooty greys, muddy browns, burnt yellows, gases that collided violently and restlessly into each other, like someone had upended bottles of oil paints and smashed them up viciously.
Below, their neighbours were standing on the cemented path and pointing up. Ghosh Uncle was bent over his phone, trying to take a selfie with the brown cloud in the background.
Amni whispered, ‘What is that?’
‘I have no clue,’ Ma said, reaching for her phone. ‘Is it an eclipse, you think?’
‘Really, an eclipse? When was the last time you saw 8 an eclipse that looked like a fat UFO cloud squatting on top of us?’ Sometimes adults made no sense.
Ma wasn’t listening though. She was busy scrolling down her Twitter timeline. ‘This brown cloud is everywhere. Bandra, Colaba, Andheri, even Vikhroli, Dahanu and Thane.’
Amni and Ma scurried to the living room and switched on the television. A special edition of Khabar Bhayankar, the most popular news show on TV, was on. Vaatodiyo Bahuche was shouting into his microphone. Amni had always thought the newscaster resembled a hyperactive crow with his slicked-back charcoal-coloured hair and shiny black suit. Today, he was like a hyperactive crow on fifteen cups of coffee.
‘This cloud! It’s the BROWN! BROWNER! BROWNEST! CLOUD we have ever seen!’ Vaatodiyo Bahuche declared. Amni rolled her eyes— that was kind of obvious. ‘Climate scientists are pouring in from ALL over the world to study this unusual cloud that’s hovering above our city! My question to you, mysterious brown cloud, is why are YOU here?!’
Vaatodiyo Bahuche dramatically pointed the mic at the sky.
There was no response. Not even a rumble of thunder.
The news camera panned to show men and women in white lab coats scurrying around Oval Maidan. The news channel had set up powerful lights to cut through the haze, which had settled thickly over the city, softening the sharp edges of the concrete landscape.
‘For months now, the air in the city has been getting dirtier and dustier! We SAW it. And we TOLD you we SAW it! Right here on Khabar Bhayankar! But now with the appearance of this Bhura Cloudus, the plot seems to have thickened! YES! You first heard it here! Khabar Bhayankar is calling this brown cloud Bhura Cloudus!’
‘Cloudus?’ Disapproval was stamped on Amni’s face. ‘Is that even a scientific term?’
Ma took a sip of her coffee and said drily, ‘Only in Vaatodiyo Bahuche’s world.’ Meanwhile, Vaatodiyo Bahuche shoved the mic in front of a scientist who was muttering complicated algorithms to herself. ‘Ma’am, my question to you is —’ She ignored him. Taken aback, he swivelled the mic to another scientist, but at the sight of this person, the journalist jumped in alarm. This second scientist looked exactly like the first — same grey-streaked hair, same raptor-beaked nose, same spectacles. Only she wasn’t muttering to herself.
‘We’re twins,’ the second scientist said with a grin. ‘I am Dr Bidisha Mehta. And this is my sister, Dr Vidisha Mehta.’ Amni noticed Bidisha was wearing red while Vidisha was wearing purple. It wasn’t the only way to tell them apart though. Vidisha didn’t seem to notice the cameras and journalists. She was walking around in circles and taking notes on a tablet. Amni whipped out her diary from her school bag and began taking notes as well. School could wait for a bit.
Onscreen Bidisha was saying, ‘What my sister and I are trying to do, along with everyone else here, is measure the cloud’s shadow to get a sense of its size.’
‘RIGHT!’ Vaatodiyo Bahuche replied. He began following Vidisha so that he too was walking in circles. ‘So Dr Mehta! WHAT is this brown cloud and WHY has it chosen our Indian city and not New York to hover around?!’
‘New York?’ Vidisha stopped in her tracks, frowning at this strange question. She glanced at her sister, who shrugged.
‘YES!’ Vaatodiyo Bahuche said, who Amni always imagined as speaking in speech bubbles filled with capital letters and exclamation marks. ‘If you see HOLLYWOOD films, you know that ALL ALIENS, BEASTS and MONSTERS pick New York as the location for disastrous events! Is it not unusual then that this particular cloud chose our Indian city?! Is it a SIGN of our economic PROGRESS?’
Vidisha looked like she was going to say something scientific and sarcastic, but Bidisha stepped in front of the mic and said smoothly, ‘We are scientists, not film-makers, so I’m afraid we can’t comment right now.’
‘No! Dr Mehta and er…Dr Mehta! My question to you is WHAT is this cloud and WHY is it here?’
‘Ah,’ Vidisha said, finally faced with a question that she could understand. ‘We are still investigating. But it is our exegesis that this cloud is not of the regular precipitous type. Our hypothesis right now is that this is either an organic or non-organic body that is blocking the crepuscular rays as well as the anti-crepuscular rays of the sun. Satellite imageries are being examined to corroborate this hypothesis.’ She stopped suddenly, turning tomato red with the effort of speaking so much.
‘Hem…Ho…I see!’ Vaatodiyo Bahuche was struggling to keep up.
‘Let me explain,’ Bidisha stepped in. ‘As you can see, it is darker than normal—’
Vaatodiyo Bahuche didn’t need any more. He snatched the mic from Bidisha, who was left mouthing words that couldn’t be heard. Vaatodiyo Bahuche yelled, ‘So INDIA, I can confirm to you at this VERY moment, yes India, it’s BREAKING now on Khabar Bhayankar! I can CONFIRM that what you are seeing today is a DARKER day! A BROWN CLOUD of darkness has finally descended upon our financial capital! Scientists are ALSO in the DARK! But I ask you India — what do YOU think it is? Tweet us your answers, we are waiting to hear from YOU! Use the hashtag #BhuraCloudusWhoRU.’
Ma switched off the television and stared at Amni. What was that all about?
Excerpted with permission from A Cloud Called Bhura by Bijal Vachharajani, published by Speaking Tiger, 2018. Pages: 256. Price: Rs 319.
About the contributor
Bijal Vachharajani
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