The lost light

I did it day after day, almost out of habit – finding a ‘friendless’ spot in campus and watching the dusk lazily turning off its own self. Crimson, engulfing the sky, perhaps the sun reaching out its hand in the lone blue eternity sanguine that someone will rescue him from the darkness that was (and is) his fate.

Imagine the end of life, inching unhurriedly on its prey certain that none can escape its claws. And then the darkness, the end starts from right above you head, finding its path towards the golden sun that is giving out last of itself for the day. A dying man, pondering over his life in his last few days tries to carve out a niche for himself believing that the odyssey in after life shall then be much more tranquil and gratifying. Perhaps, ‘Ra’ harbors a similar unction gushing out all its energy in its dying mouthful of air.

And with its golden gloominess it takes away the jovial nature of life, every shade darkening until a perfect, blank black is achieved. Even the green that was till now swaying with every breath of wind, gets silent slowly but surely mourning its loss.

It was not always the perfect seen of loss, sometimes the clouds clouded my line of sight protecting me from the angst. Inconceivable silhouettes they fashion, heartrending over and above amusing, overriding the obscurity and the radiance that is beyond them. But none were as ingenious as human mind that unearths shapes even where there are none.

It was at one such time that I decided not to let the clouds parent me forever. For it was a low lying cloud, I felt that I could rise above it and as such embarked upwards on the hill behind the road that led to Gauchar. Silly mortal as I have always been, chased even the profound contemplation of melancholy. The top was an entirely new world rising above the pallid sea of clouds as if a bliss on itself. Numerous triangular, conical peaks rose all around extending themselves towards the heaven caging the sun beyond them slowly. The golden rays were still warm slowly losing their fleshy grip on the pinnacles of mountains. To look at the sun set from the top was a grief unfelt on the realm below. Perhaps, I had rose to stop it from getting anguished and the disappointment of perdition was so intense that I climbed down even before the sun decided to sink completely in the everlasting ashen sea of clouds.

The ascent of the mountain was my pursuit against time to capture the essence of the alchemy of the golden light. Known was the result, the failure and yet karma remains my solitary providence. For the destiny hung about unfulfilled, my desire to have the shadowy splendor smoldering, I chased the sun into the west.

Beyond the spiky bushes and barbed wires rose yet another mountain that veiled the final rays of setting sun. It was a mysterious path that I chose for my journey afar. I rose higher and higher as the sun galloped from over my head in the wake of the hill. The wind blew swiftly at the top, yet the time stood still as an endless succession of mounts lay beyond the one below my feet. The last of blood-red faded away slowly, folding unto itself, bloodier than ever. I sat down exhausted, agonized, to savor the flavor of distressed defeat, as the sun set yonder the seemingly endless sea of the peaks far away from my reach. The death of the sun that day left a lasting inkling on my vision, a gleaming reflection never to leave me even with my eyes closed. I had lost the light, but it was only in that darkness that I found the gospel of the destiny, of the sun’s and of my own.