“Mama, we’ve been cooped up all day, let’s go to the terrace,” my daughter G said one evening, bursting into my home office. I hesitated. It was late, I still had a lot of work to finish that day. Sensing my reluctance, she immediately said, “ Think of it as your exercise for the day, climbing up all those stairs. Sitting there, you’ll just get fat!” That hit home. She knows exactly which buttons to press, this one. I hid a smile and got up immediately.
As the three of us – my son, daughter and I – reached the terrace, the last scarlet glow of the setting sun had given way to the violet fading into black, and one by one, the stars made their appearance. G grabbed my arm and gasped. “What is THAT!” she exclaimed, pointing at one glowing light. It was either a satellite or a planet. So blindingly bright, it hung up there like a lantern in the sky. Out came my phone app. “It’s the planet Venus, “ I told them.
We stared at the sky in awe, millions of glittering stars showing off their resplendence. As a child in Shillong, I have vivid memories of looking up at the night sky in wonder – the stars, billions, trillions of them, pushing, competing to find a place, seemed so close I always felt the temptation to just reach out and pluck them out, the way we plucked the plums from the overhanging branches of our neighbour’s tree. One of the reasons I could never be completely at ease in Delhi is that you could never see the stars, shrouded as they always remained behind the thick polluting veil, with only a few valiant ones daring to reveal themselves. To me, a place without stars was always suspect. No wonder my children – Delhi born and bred – were surprised. They’d never seen a sky like this in their city! They had no idea what it felt like to be wrapped in this richly bejewelled celestial cloak.
Then my daughter grabbed my phone and started trying to identify all the stars. I pointed out to them how to spot Orion’s belt without an app (we learnt about them without an app, I said). She swung my phone around and pointed out to another star. ‘That’s Sirius, “ she said, reading it out from my phone. “It’s the brightest star in the sky, “ my son informed, not to be undone. Somehow, that reminded me of Harry Potter.
The children were excited as, one by one, they identified the familiar and the not-so-familiar. We saw the Ursa Major (the Big Bear) and Ursa Minor – but where was the North Star? To my alarm, my daughter climbed up a precarious-looking ladder to try and spot it. “I’ve never seen the North Star,” she said. Unfortunately, too low down on the horizon – it was swallowed up by the glow of city lights.
A gentle breeze was blowing. We sat down, side by side, hand in hand, swaying with the wind. Silent, spellbound, each of us absorbing it all. Contemplating the irrelevance of us against this vast magical canvas. Did I imagine it, or was that a hint of mockery in the twinkling lights? Did I imagine the waft of the breeze whisper, “Where’s the Mighty Man, no match for a virus?” We sat, stretching out our arms to embrace it all, immensely grateful to be a humble part of this magical universe.
Tapas 