Meghadūta is an epic poem written by Kālidāsa,the Shakespeare of India, considered to be one of the greatest Sanskrit poets.The basic theme of his this creation was the solitude of the protagonist Yaksha who used Clouds as his messenger to show his love and affection to his wife while being in exile.As the monsoon cloud makes it way, to satiate the scorched earth, many lovelorn heart long to be with their beloved! Yaksha, who was a servant of the God of Wealth, Kuber, had allowed God Indra’s elephant to invade Kuber’s garden. Thus he was exiled away in the solitude of Mount Ramgiri as a punishment. Eight months had already passed when the south-west monsoon had begun its northward journey. Yaksha could hardly bear this separation from his beloved wife any longer. He thus invokes the cloud to be his messenger to her and thus begins the lyric which when translated goes as:
Comes the rain-bearing cloud,
A lovelorn lover calls out loud,
From Ramgiri to Alaka, to go
To his lovelorn beloved, lo!
To carry his love message
In exile, his only assuage!
Which way do the clouds go?
That too the poet shows!
Crossing vales and over mountains
With peacocks and flowing fountains.
A description, vivid and imaginative
Fabulous, fantastic and fascinating!!
So it talks of sending messages via cloud and further in his romantic poem he mentioned about sending pictures and compositions via clouds. Now to some it may seem like total literary and metaphor piece of work where its just an imagination of poet. I mean yeah... who can sent pictures and voice using cloud as a messenger that too at that time when there were few technological advancement. But I view it from the different scientific angle and believe that it was not an imagination but merely a truth.We were so advance at one time that what scientists are inventing and doing research was part of Indian culture. Let it be flying plane, weapons and others. I can relate this much talked about Cloud Technology of these days to Meghduta. What is Cloud technology or computing.... nothing but data and operations to be performed at a server which is not local but at some common place which is always accessible via internet. Our mails, stored pics at some site etc. are result of cloud technology only. So cant we believe the same internet kind of technology at that time. Yeah....It might can be the surrender of our mind to an omniscient, omnipotent Viswa Chaitanya, a Universal Consciousness that the great scientists or rishis dreamed of as an analogy to internet. And might be the cloud has been given a metaphor as a messenger so as to fit exactly for a romantic poem , or who knows there was some technology where they might had really extracted some connection via real physical clouds only.Why a cloud?Because it is in the air, is pure and ethereal, and let us admit, somewhat virtual. Whatever the scene be it might was as simple for them as for us sending mms and sms.So none literary inspiration is baseless, at least I don't think in this case.
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