Written By Medha Karthikeyan (Grade 11)
The blue moon is the second full moon in a month. They occur only about once every two to three years. Naturally, my family left home as a pack to admire it. Summer was nearly over. The air was cool, dry, and light. It felt silver on my skin. The moon was almost always slightly hidden behind the infant monsoon clouds. It shone through, staining the clouds with a blurred, rainbow, nebulaic light. I swung my neck as far back as it would go and navigated the road as if under a spell. The whole family gazed up, desperately trying to catch the moon’s cool pearlescent eye, but she kept at her curious peek behind curtains of clouds, retreating every so often as if bored by what she saw.
The stars too, formed shapes and clusters illuminating the sky like little cities. They looked almost animated, like in a comforting children’s cartoon conclusion. Some glowed crystal white, others warm yellows and oranges. The city lights drained their lives a little, but they managed to persevere.
It is also curious how somewhere else, in North America, perhaps, the Sun shines bright and clear, reflects off the concrete, and the barren fields, and makes its way into a small, small iris somewhere. Here, the same light collides with the clouds and the moon, which is just a big rock too, and somehow fires these neurons which can only make my eyes stare stupefied into this great portrait for my retina to capture, nerves to take in and brain to perceive it as the cross-continent, cross-generational event that it is.
Going back home, I felt a sense of fullness, a warmth, and realised that like the cows, the deer, and the monkeys, we too are animals, concerned with hunger and thirst and feeling a simple safety in trees, flowers, clouds, and stars. It reminded me how much of a home the world is. We’ve forgotten our origins, building cement over cement, working and thinking about our human squabbles, failing to stop, and feel the Sun and the wind smelling of summer flowers on our faces. How many lineages must have survived by finding a set of wild tubers, feeding tribes, and to how many sailors must have the stars announced home? How many a caveman must have rubbed their palms with mud, making their humble markings on walls? How many an ancient farmer must have stood stunned seeing a sprawling rainbow cross their freshly rained fields? Humans have always been inspired and sustained by nature.
Yet now, with our bright lights dimming the stars, our noxious fumes melting the ice, our every step at improvement destroying parts of the world that raised and nourished us, have we strayed too far? When did we lose our humbleness, and gain this entitlement? Perhaps this is why every few years, the earth rocks, the waters swell and our buildings crumble, forcing us to see ourselves as the tenants we are, not the masters we wish to be.
Featured Image Courtesy – Healthline
