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| 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…
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