Rank – 1ST

Name- Arkopravo Samadder Age- 22

Address- 23, BalaidasChatterjee Road, Hakimpara, Siliguri, West Bengal ;

Qualification- B.SC Economics.

Is it a cat? Is it a fish? Is it Nehru wearing Modi’s jacket? Oh! they are one and the same thing!

 At the end of the season of examinations, I decided to relax and what could be more relaxing than lying on your back and looking up at the skies filled with clouds which are similar-looking and yet morphing into all kinds of different shapes!

I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon this wonderful hobby. The clouds don’t ask for money directly to attend their show although it has a cost. They ask for your time and to quote Benjamin Franklin’s “time is money”, the innocent clouds morph into deceitful characters through my imagination. I saw Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the clouds whose name was hurled by the media since his firm had allegedly siphoned off vast sums of money from the Amrapali Group which is accused of defrauding tens of thousands of homebuyers. A distant cloud covered the sun and cast a shadow over the earth and I wondered about the impeccable timing of Dhoni to join the army, the news of which covered the front pages of every daily hailing him as a youth icon!

I realized I was lying on top of a giant ball spinning in space at 110000 kilometers an hour around a giant fireball above us which is a million times bigger than our earth and we need it for vitamin D! If we stare at it for too long we go blind and it is trying to give us cancer yet if it is not there we feel sad.

Maybe the clouds are the Zomatoes and Swiggies of nature!

I wondered if nature cleverly designed the clouds to deliver us the rains unevenly across the lands. The clouds do discriminate between us, flooding Mumbai and drying Chennai. But then I thought of a certain Mr. AmitShukla who observed the religion of the delivery boy and he tried to cancel his order based on his observations. I was relieved that at least nature does not discriminate against us based on religion.

I saw a Royal Enfield motorcycle revving in the skies, it is my dream bike and I dream to go on a road trip to Ladakh. I wondered about my destiny and the destiny of the neonate union territory of Ladakh. The bifurcation of J&K into two union territories has radically altered the dynamics in the northern region of our country. The political move is being hailed as a very brave and courageous one but the demeanor in which it was carried compels me to ask what is brave and courageous in it if all the voices of dissent were stifled, internet blocked and the leaders put under house arrest and thus undermining the very principles of democracy upheld by our constitution.

You can always find a white cloud resembling the white beard of Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore! If he were really flying there and watching us from above I wonder what poems he would write? He talked of internationalism, he spoke highly of the then Japan which was rooted in its culture and adopted the technological tools from the west. I wonder how he would have reacted to the rising tide of hyper-nationalism looming over India.