Ghata

A dense rain-bearing cloud; a gathering dark cloud.

Literally: dark cloud, gathering of rain-clouds

The ghata is the dark, dense rain-cloud — the brooding mass of monsoon clouds that gathers and looms before the downpour, carrying in the Indian register all the heavy longing and release of the rains. It is the cloud at its most laden and dramatic. Iqbal's rain-and-cloud imagery uses such gathering darkness as the charged prelude to grace, the heavy sky whose breaking brings the bounty that revives the earth and the self.