Moony Evening

The moon shines down on my front yard

The moon was not very pleased this evening.  I was keeping a watch out for the phenomenal blue blood super moon, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  The clouds suffused the eastern sky conspiring against my new heartthrob. Clouds are also my friends, however.  “Deprive me of my once-in-a-lifetime experience, but give me a shower,” I chanted to the clouds with all the devotion I could muster.

Prayers usually have the opposite effect.  You pray for sunshine and you get a blizzard of rain.  The clouds listened to my chanting and began to clear slowly like a lazy, arrogant deity who farted at my prayer.  A hazy red disc peeped through the miasma of shifting clouds.  Gradually the redness sharpened but not clear enough for my camera to capture.  Once-in-a-lifetime experiences cannot be facile, I reminded myself. 

The clouds vanished eventually.  The earth cast its shadow on the moon whose red colour changed into the usual silvery yellow.  I watched the shadow move slowly, lazily.  I remembered that the earth moves round the sun at a speed of 30km/sec.  I realised that I was there on that shadow moving over my moon at a speed of 30km/sec. 

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” the Bard reminded me.  “Thank you, boss,” I responded courteously.  “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” the Bard concluded.

The earth released the moon from its shadow.  I am a walking shadow on you, I told the earth.  A tale whose sound and fury have had their day.  Signifying nothing.  The moon smiled at me. 

The real people were busy taking their ritual dip in the Ganga at Haridwar and Varanasi and…