When The Moon Shines

Tip.

Tip.

Tip.

“I must have left the tap on by mistake. Let me just go and close it.”

You get up, unaware of the fact that you’d never be able to think that again. Ever.

The tap closes with a weird sound, something that had been bothering you for years, but you never took out the time to get it repaired. Walking back to your room, you listen to another creepy, but familiar sound.

Creek.

Creek.

Crrrrrrreeeeeeeeeek.

That’s your fan. The sound is an indication of the electricity going off. You continue the walk to the room, this time, slower than usual. Like a child being refused to play out in the Sun for five more minutes, you sit down on the bed, disappointed.

“Why did I have to take a house in this locality? The electricity is too expensive and the board never thinks to fix the fault in the mainframe either.”

Rrring

Rrring

The same old, monotonous sound of the phone chimes into your ears, you wait for the electric board to pick up the call.

No reply.

You try again, this time with the second number you had taken, especially for this task.

No reply again.

“Now it’s certain,” you think. “They have absolutely blocked my number.”

Like a great bolt, the clouds lighten up and at precisely the same second, you hear your fan speeding up. “All’s well now”, you think.

The next night, the same thing happens again. And the next. And the next.

Day after day after day. You wake up at night, listening to the sound of the water tap. You make the unnerving effort to close the tap and come back with a sigh. You call the board, they don’t answer and after a lot many trails and errors, the electricity comes back.

One night, instead of calling the board and later complaining about the ‘blocking’ you, you decide to watch the moon, the stars.

All your life you’d been living in a city lit up like a Christmas tree all day round that you had forgotten what it was to look at the moon and the stars. You had even forgotten what stars were.

Were they in a diamond shape?

Were the balls of raging fire like the sun?

Were they cool, bright and beautiful like the moon?

You had no idea.

You look into the sky, like a Greek astronomer, waiting for the planets to start revolving around you, around the Earth and you make an amazing discovery – the planets are as still as the Pantheon.

It is you, the Earth that is moving.

You realize that it is not the city lights that had lighten up the sky all those years ago. It was not the lights that didn’t enable you to see the stars. It was the moon.

The white, round, full Luna was at the peak of its beauty, just like a bud which had bloomed to show the world its purity.

Just by looking at Luna, you discover life’s greatest secrets and you think, “Why hadn’t I not seen this beauty earlier?”

You realize that the world is full of white, pure, good things as well as the grey, dark matter which will tr

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y to spoil the serenity of white.

Just as the moon’s spots makes it all the more beautiful, the ‘spots’ of the world are what make it interesting and beautiful.

Still pondering, you hear the creak of the fan for the second time that night. “The electricity has gone again, I suppose”, you think.

And just like that, you spend the whole night, looking at the stars, thinking about the moon and discovering new things about yourself, about the world and about the ultimate reality called life.

A few days later, you look at the night sky again, this time, without the moon. It appears to be like a class full of rebellious students and no teacher – scattered, unequal, fighting amongst themselves.

You perceive another thought. The moon is the binding force that brings the night sky together, similar to the bird without which, twigs are mere sticks. But with the bird, even small, insignificant twigs have a huge role in making the nest.

The night ends again and the hot, blazing Sun takes the place of the cool, peaceful moon.

Today, instead of doing your chores, you decide to watch the Sun and interpret its role in the daytime.

Sure, what schools teach regarding Sun helping in photosynthesis and all is true. It has to be, but a thing has to be true doesn’t really mean that it has to be the only reason.

You try to look at the Sun. Your eyes squeeze to a small line, barely letting any light in, and at the same time, letting all the light in.

You are mesmerized. Something that you can’t even look at, something so powerful, so wondrous, is also the same thing that doesn’t really ‘tell’ you anything.

Again, you let the initial disappointment settle in before going on ahead with further observations. You make out that the moon was something with incomparable beauty that it was easy to observe and think of all the thoughts that you had had. But the Sun being the Sun, was another story in itself.

You give your eyes a few days’ rest and look at the Sun with a fresh perspective. You stare at the yellow ball, with a few orange and red lines. You spot some Sun spots as well, but can’t think of anything else except the beauty of the moon.

That night, when the moon was behind the clouds, like a little child, behind the curtains, you gain another beautiful thought – the Sun and the moon are two different things. Each with their own beauty. Sure, the moon’s beauty is more ‘visible’ but the Sun was as beautiful as anything else. Its glory and its brightness is unique to the Sun only.

You are shocked to learn yet another secret of the universe. People will be like the Sun, bright, prideful and confident. One glance at them could burn you out. But then there would be people like the moon, beautiful from within and accepting. They are the people who you would love to be with.

You think upon this more and more, as you begin to see more and more of the moon, coming out of the shadows like Simba, waiting to be crowned the king again!