Starry starry Night
He shivered a bit but continued to gaze at the sky. Hands folded behind his head and feet one over the other, he lay flat to be inspected by the stars which he was inspecting. Maybe some unknown life-form from a mauve or yellow planet was studying him.
However, he was oblivious to everything except the black studded concavity; even oblivious to his consciousness or thoughts so that they flowed easily and swiftly. Although he had not forgotten it and it had just retired to a dark niche in his brain, “Badmaash, get out of the house” had lost is jarring note.
He took a deep breath. Icy fingers of the night air traced fine lines along his wind-pipe –cold but nice, just like the moon, offering no warmth or solace but with tranquil and cold beauty, even friendliness. Maybe his small sister would understand it as the pleasure an icy sherbet gave her when she returned from the mosque on a hot and sweaty day. “Mosque….so long ago…” A message that he had read, on a girl’s T-shirt at the market the other day, flashed through his head –“I thought I was an atheist until I realized I was God.” His lips curled in a smile to the indifferent stars.
He saw an equestrian figure in the sky. “Was the structure of constellations pre-determined?” he wondered and satisfactorily answered his question himself “No. Just order out of disorder.” A question mark there, an arrow there. As he stared, the sky disclosed fainter stars to him –those he hadn’t noticed at first. “Faint….but stars all the same. Dying energy? Latent energy?” His eyes fell upon a rapidly moving star going on and off.” His head was shot with momentary confusion before he realised that it was just an international flight. “Long distance” he thought but as he lost himself again in the mesmerising stars, their snow-flake patterns and constellations unmatched by any jewellery designer’s creation he thought “Weird…..objects light years away seem to be closest to me right now…..people and events infinitely distant in space and time.”
He recognised the Orion and searched for The Great Bear –a constellation he had never been able to trace himself. Two bright dots with a bluish tinge reminded him of a jackal’s eyes reflecting the headlights of a vehicle. A silver star twinkled red like an unblinking puppet, at a fair, which had suddenly winked secretly and mischievously. “Mars?” he wondered. “Copernicus, Galileo, Newton must have all gazed at these very stars. Unprotected by museums, unhidden by dusty libraries, unattained by governments, they are all up here for me.” Schizophrenically, his sense of “I” and of the sparkling inky dome grew big. A mosquito humming in his ear pierced his unfettered thoughts. Not wishing to avert his eyes from the stars to smash it, he mentally ordered it, with a smirk, “Badmaash, get out of my ear.”
He could no longer see any star. It was all black…no, it was a silhouette of a head, over his head. A gruff voice said, “Chalo, come home.” He got up obediently.