People have imperceptibly taken the refuge into the slumber and the city has succumbed now to lassitude and moved into a hiatus like the sun. The darkness and the solitude which are the unwanted companions of the night, as the insatiable appetite to the humans, have the empyrean submerged into them. Dreams are supplanting the happenings of the day passed interminably and transcending the very confinement of the earthly life.
The sky is resplendent in a black dress with twinkling stars embedded into it which becomes lively with each passing ferry. The moon, which has been inspiration for the poets for years, has come out of its veil only to find its new admirer. The cool breeze is blowing leisurely, like a mother fanning her children with a handmade fan, and taking along with it the feeling of sorrows which have encumbered people. The trees are standing still as they have made covenant with the wind as the monks with the austerity. The road which was inundated with the people during the day now looks as deserted as the road to the villages with occasionally few people making their way through it. The sea is silent as it doesn’t wish to disturb the sun, which has gone into it, in its repose.
People who are wary of the coming day are holding on to this night like a child to his mother on his first day to school. People who are rendered lonely by the night are confining their solitude into words whilst their minds rove through the thick blanket of darkness which the night has cast on our hemisphere.
I have always wondered why the people are scared of the night, or for that matter darkness. As the light is necessary for one to know the path so is the darkness to convey the ignorance of path. Ignorance is an abyss which always keeps the people away from the reality and circumscribes one’s potential as disease does to one’s health. To come out of this ignorance is as necessary as for the birds to know it’s time to leave their nests.
The clock seems now ticking faster towards the dawn and the time which stood like the stone in the path of the river seems now yield to it and is flowing along with it. The night is folding up its blanket and its companions will soon find their ways to the writings of the poets. The rising of the sun can be felt in the cuckoo’s call, in the chirping of the birds and the crowing of the cock. The moon is moving in its confinement after having spent a lonely night. The sky is changing its night dress whilst the birds are back with the rejuvenated spirit to impress upon it. Soon the people will wake up from their dreams only to realize that they have come out of a world which is standing at diametrically opposite end of the real one. Soon the city will be on its way, reluctantly to be a part of the race in which its only opponent is the city itself.
