The
electricity went off in my area. In Delhi. For an hour.
And
finally after years, the darkness settled back in. Even if it was for the
briefest while. Like one nano second of a heartbeat. A tiny pulse of a long
forgotten time and experience that unexpectedly gifted me with a deep sense of
calm, aliveness and an awareness of my presence as a human on Earth.
With
the electricity gone, the area fell silent. How much we live with white noise around
us can be gauged only during such moments. The shops which used to shut at
10pm, closed shutters earlier that day. People who walked the streets at night
stopping for ice-cream, also made their way back home. For a precious half an
hour, all was dark and quiet around me. There was a soft summer breeze and I
could finally hear some insects of the night.
That night I remembered how much my
body misses the rhythm of the darkness. How much my eyes need the rest of the
darkness, I saw that night. And for the briefest while, I felt complete in my
body, like those of my ancestors who once roamed the land in sync with the rhythm
of the Earth.
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Long hours of ‘load-shedding’ was a common things in erstwhile Bihar while growing up. Many times, power cuts happened because of sudden thunderstorms or cyclonic weather. Our bodies were so tuned to nature then that we never felt the discomfort. Darkness was a much needed ebb and flow of life – a time when families gathered together on the verandahs, laughing, telling stories, watching the stars in the sky, chasing fireflies in dark corners, listening to the sounds of the night. Sometimes, a black cat would sneak past us into the house looking for food taking advantage of the darkness. In smaller towns, we could hear the yelp of the foxes close by. Those were times when we respected the darkness. Even though we spent many hours outside waiting for the electricity to come back, we never ventured beyond our verandahs. There was an unsaid rule that we all followed – not to go into the garden or nature areas; for it was the time of the spirits of the night to own their spaces.
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We had camped somewhere in the
Changthang region of Ladakh, 15000ft or more above sea level. It was bitterly
cold and a strong wind blew at night. This was way back in the early 2000s when
adventure sports gears were not available in India. I had a worn a warm fleeced
jacket brought from Benetton and felt chilled to the bone. The rest of the
small group of trekkers had retired into the tents, but I stayed outside drawn
to the night despite the icy breath of the wind. In that utter darkness of the
mountains, the Milky Way shone bright along with a dazzling display of
trillions of stars. Countless stars fell and shot across the sky. Somewhere a
lone wolf howled. In those moments while I stood transfixed as the wind
buffeted me, I felt incredibly tiny. Not insignificant, but tiny. That moment
in the darkness was a turning point in my life, a time that eventually changed
the course of my life.
The landscape was raw and felt ancient. It was a stark reminder of what we have lost here in India. The village in east Nepal could be accessed after a 45-minute walk from the main road. Most of the houses in the village had electricity used by yellow 60-watt bulbs. In the night, the light was not so harsh.
One
night, the electricity kept switching off and on. In those moments of inky
darkness, I would run outside to experience the night. Our host’s lovely family
found my behavior peculiar and asked why I was so interested in the darkness. I
fumbled for words then. How could I explain what it meant to live in the
constant glare of light in the cities, how we cannot see stars in the night sky
anymore, not even from mountain villages, how we are disconnected from nature moving
towards a darkness of the soul with all the light dazzling around us.
But the question made me realize how
much I missed the essence of the night. In cities and elsewhere these days, I
feel safer in well-lit places. But my body longs for a space and time when I
can be alone with the silence and darkness of the night.
