When I gaze into the night sky…
…there are glittering lights of a city-state as far as I can see merging into the black sheet above. Fascinating, how the edge of this nothingness touches our world and is sullied. To me it always seems like we are not propagating the light, we are dirtying the dark. This vast hemline seems stained by the light pollution, the halo that rises a little above the civilized skyline and keeps rising higher till the inkiness curbs it.
It is this blackness dotted with stray iridescent clouds that I look for. Something about this beautiful darkness is comforting. As thick as a blanket and somewhat impermeable because of its depth, it offers solace to wandering souls like me. It also encourages the quirkier kind of fetishes, not of the sexual but of pareidolic nature. I am drawn to the night cloud shapes and the constellations, irrevocably and hopelessly. I see how alive they are and how these forms change and evolve just like we do in life. They are obscured in their enormity and yet wait to be seen, to entertain and to be our escape from the man-made symmetry of light and life below.
Recently, husband gifted me a telescope. Now, this contraption brings the objects of my fancy closer to my viewing but it’s not entirely an easy operation to undertake. Setting and resetting the lenses and the angles of viewing can be the most exasperating exercise ever. It also has the tremendous ability to take away the poetic charms that I fall for, from the distance that I am at. Often, the man takes it upon himself to set up the telescope and by then I am mostly done fetishizing or ruminating the distant celestial beauties. So, the telescope sits in the living room like a forgotten visitor waiting to be spoken to.
For me, the freedom to gaze at the sky from anywhere and at any time of the night is a huge part of the love. For a sleep-challenged person like me, it is an absolute delight to wake up at random hours and look out the window, the silence echoing in the brooding opacity of the sky. It does not need me to talk, but its company is refreshing and lulling at the same time.
Staying at a higher floor, much above the throngs of humanity milling on the roads in their tail-lit cars, finding instant and proximal illumination, I can find (or even imagine) the light of a home far far away into the space. In the movement of the universe, I might be hurtling at an unimaginable speed towards that home but hey…I am looking into the sky! I am watching where I am going and hoping I don’t crash into it. And so go on my fantastical musings laced with generous doses of science fiction, fact, imagination, and a side helping of eccentricity.
But, what does gazing at the night sky do for me apart from being an excellent means of whiling the time I cannot sleep? It gives me perspective. It explains to me (without speaking at all!) why the things I worry about now don’t matter because I am headed towards the unknown, unstoppably. I am looking at the vast, black nothingness because I am not supposed to have that sense of control that most of humankind craves. Perhaps, I am not entitled to any entitlements at all. I am just supposed to go on and be a flicker on this blue globe.
A blink in time, a wink in space, and a tiny speck in the existence of everything, is what I am. And, so the night sky roots me and grounds me and reminds me that all that I fear, hate, or love is just temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow!
