The Aah factor...
A moment of suspension, the calm before the storm...Sooraj gives a poetic description of the gathering and focussing of energy before its release in a movement we will all recognise.
It begins with a sharp, almost forced, contraction.
There is a falling to one side, on the offbeat, as if by accident. Like a friend stumbling into their sentence before you’ve finished yours. Plucked out of time, it appears to have the robust power of an exclamation, yet demands only attention, not a cessation.
Simultaneously, there is an inversion, creating the most delicious sway in the trunk; grandiloquent like a coconut tree, all oblique and suggestive.
This is the preamble, itself a phenomenon, with the promise of further spectacle. That point at which the lungs are voided, just before the diaphragm relents. The plié before the leap.
Next, a shift of weight, causing things to unbend. There occurs at shutter-speed a marriage of upward velocity and downward inertia, some parts intuitively ascending and others streaming below. Wings in the ambit of an unfurl before full thrust.
A flurry of activity, then. A flag flutters open, making a graceful pass loft-ward. Steps are taken, measures are made, lateral space is traversed. Ribbons of steel carve images in the clouds.
It is really the most peaceful thing, this point of flight, full of drive and still coasting on bliss. Focussed, aligned, one—that type of thing.
A new locus is found, and a gradual retraction takes place. The sails are drawn in; everything folds and clicks back to a place of rest. A parachutist held in suspension, his weight drawing him to a close. Motes transfixed in the silent glow of evening light streaming through a window.
It is impossible to hold all the rules in your head. But there you stand poised, a smile on your lips, ready for the next gat-palta.
