Yellow and red glows of loneliness.
It is past midnight and tonight is the ninth hot and humid night since I came to Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand. I’m loitering outside my room on the long balcony, waiting for rains and something else.
A firefly. I see a firefly on the flower plants outside the balcony, glowing a touchable, soft glow — the kind of soft spark that you would make if you were to strike a corner of the moon with a bamboo stick.
While the firefly is glowing like a little yellow star, I see the red glow of a cigarette someone is smoking on this very balcony — maybe it is me but I’m not sure. The firefly and the smoker are both glowing out their loneliness, in the hope of catching the eye of a female in the area. Each with his own luminescent love song: one yellow, another red. The lyrics are different, but they are singing in sync — it’s a love song after all and love rhymes (only) with love.
No one has come for them yet, for no one has ever come. They are waiting and waiting, waiting like the idiots who are waiting for Godot in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.