Sunday, May 11, 2008

Wonderstruck at Chirrapunji, (Shillong) the place with the highest rainfall (now second place)


Silence......... Solitude.......... Serenity..........
The grandeur of the mountains, the deep ravines,
the eerie silence, awesome, breathtaking....
Green, green, green, in so many shades and hues.......every where I turn, every where I look.....is a fiesta of green....
Silvery waterfalls that glimmer and glisten, sparkling, gushing forth, hurtling towards an unknown end,
Faraway, in the misty distance, rivers, lakes, streams, dot the plains,
I see the winding roads of the mountain trail, and wonder , "Man, whither goest thou?... Quo Vadis?"

Nearer humanity, we stay with friends on top of a hill,
The wind howled and whined through the Bamboo trees standing sentinel, lining the horizon ....
The leaves rustled and the boughs bent, struggling to break free....
Flashes of lightening seared the sky, white hot, sharp and linear.....
on the edge of nowhere......I stood transfixed, my heart beating fast...
I would have been swept away from the terrace....
A clap of thunder....... the laughter of the heavens..... and the rains came lashing down...as if on cue..

Morning dawned, silent
and serene,...
the air was fresh, tangy, cool, rarefied, paradise...
the winds rustled softly in the Bamboo trees.....cozy and coy,
the birds burst out in rhapsody..... the sky suffused in sunlight, luminescent, almost break of day....
I look around me, from my vantage point on the terrace,
I see the mountain ranges silhouetted against the morning sky.....unending, uninterrupted....
the wide expanse, the great outdoors, the freedom, the space......
I spread my arms to embrace all of it....
Truly, my God is an awesome God......
The greatest Architect.... the Master Mind... The Creator..... The Alpha and the Omega....


Susan Jacob



Note: The National Council of Churches had the 26th Quadrennial Assembly at Shillong in April 2008.
I was awestruck at the beauty of the place and also the simplicity and hospitality of the people there.
The poem is a tribute to the raw beauty of the place...... maybe later on I will add something about the people there.