Ask me about how to catch the moonlight on snowy mountains on dark nights.
I can’t believe I wrote the last post.
Goddamn, I can’t believe it was me who wrote the last post, Firefly on a starry night.
The original thought that came to me two days ago, the thought that was going to be the entire post, is no longer the heart or essence of the post. It was this line—
“If I keep looking at all this glitter while my ears are fixed to the river, I feel as if the sound is coming not from the river but the heavens above.”
—that occurred to me while stargazing with my dear friend Yash, and he was the first to hear it. And look what I made out of that one line, in less than two hours.
When I produce something like this and so swiftly, which I have done occasionally throughout this blog and throughout my life, I think to myself that this big head that I have been given, big in proportion to the body, the headache of carrying it all my life on my tired neck has been so worth it.
Therefore, I prove myself to be as smart as I think I am, and I prove it for myself alone, not caring for whether anyone else cares.
Firefly on a starry night.
It is past midnight on a clear night after the recent snow. I’m in Vashisht and the Beas flows as ever in the dark of the valley below. The cheerful sound of the river, a persistent reminder of her presence, it whispers to me: feel the waves and live boldly.
I raise my gaze from the river that I can’t see to the mountains that are faint but full of snow.
I look up further, now at the black expanse, the profound outside, enthralled by the glittering and flickering dots. Without the moon, the black of the night rules and over it rules the stars, swarming in luminous clusters. Each star so clear to my eyes and so hypnotising.
If I keep looking at all this glitter while my ears are fixed to the river, I feel as if the sound is coming not from the river but the heavens above.
I keep looking and listening and realise that the stars are not stars but flakes of snow.
I keep looking still and it starts to snow.
I throw my hands out to catch some, little stars on my black gloves, stars that landed from distant corners of the eternal night.
I eat a few off the gloves and begin to glow like a firefly.
Starry night after snow. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. February 2022.
Two seconds five years ago.
Visitors at the Sheesh Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors, in the Amer fort of Jaipur, Rajasthan, on December 30 2016.
At 12:19:42.
At 12:19:47.
Two frames separated by five seconds, two memories separated from today by over five years. Two moments in time recorded by the camera through me, two seconds saved out of the six that came our way. Two out of six out of infinite.
Two seconds that multiply in the mirrors of the Sheesh Mahal and become too many. Two priceless specks of dust among my digital photographs: can’t be touched, can’t be wiped, but here still.
Birds of prey.
Who ever thought of these unbelievable birds of prey, who came up with the idea first? Who gave a body and a breath to eagles and kites and peregrines? Who dreamed up flight for the Himalayan griffon vulture? Who ever knew to give to them all such extraordinary eyes, eyes that can spot a rat struggling to go into its burrow from heights seemingly higher than the Himalaya?
I want those eyes, I want those wings, I want those lungs.
Once I have all three, I want to fly.
I want to fly and see the world anew with eyes that have never seen a computer. I want to soar close to the sun with lungs that have never had to suffocate any viruses.
Until then, I’ll continue to daydream, continue to practice flying by flinging my clothes into the air.
T-shirt flying at the beach. Goa, India. February 2019. Taken w iPhone 7.
What would you do if you were given five rupees?
It’s Frank Herbert again.
It’s the great Frank Herbert at your door and he wants you to be sardonic.
What an extraordinary thought and so brilliantly expressed. Every word sings.
The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Learning to talk.
The previous post reminds me of something:
That I’ve been learning to talk to mynas, the fun and noisy residents of the upper-Manali valley. So far, I’ve made enough progress that in my presence they are themselves without fear and happily loiter around. Once, two of them even entered my room and pooped on the bed. I guess that means we are cool.
Some kind of acquaintance or friendship with birds is enlightenment. You discover another world and its language — a world of tenderness and flight, a language of beautiful small songs. Another world not on a planet faraway, but in the air surrounding you.
I’ve been feeding them ganthiya that recently came for me along with other snacks and sweets from home, from Surat by post. Two packets came and I’ve been feeding them from the one that was broken into at a corner by the powerful, nihilist rats of India Post. Mynas love ganthiya, just as I do, just as seagulls and crows and sparrows do. So they are munching on this delightful snack thanks to those rats, who I suspect are probably friends with the mynas and knowingly contaminated one packet when they saw my address on the package: they knew it would reach their friends too.
A home in the Himalaya.
How wonderful to live in a home so high above sea level, to live at the middle of a mountain here in the Himalaya, to have your head at a height where most birds fly, so that you see crows and mynas and sparrows flying either at your eye-level or just over your head, like an Airbus jumbo jet taking off over you, with the underside clearly visible, the curled up legs of the birds, like the wheels of the jet starting to curl up, like when your gaze is parallel to the snowy peaks of distant mountain ranges as you stand on the top of a mountain facing it, and you see mountains behind the mountains that you couldn’t see otherwise, and you see that the clouds over the mountains are just as away from you as those birds.
Everything feels close, everything within arm’s reach, as if made only for you.
Mountains on the other side of Leh when viewing from near the Khardung La pass, Ladakh, India. September 2021.