A bit of magic

Many moons ago, when I was a kid of about 7 or 8, we lived in the middle of the city in a one-bedroom, tin-roofed shack on the terrace of an old house. Summer nights under a tin roof in seaside Chennai can be unimaginably hot. So we usually poured buckets of water on the red-tiled terrace (which tended to disappear quickly), spread grass mats and slept in the open. My dad in the middle with me and my 4-year old sister on each side. All of us looking up at the blue sky with its interminable array of puffy clouds moving slowly. We were busy picking out shapes of course. “Look, there’s an elephant!” “That’s a dragon!” “Here’s a little girl!” “That’s a king!” Shapeless stories were cooking in our heads as we watched those shapes form and re-form in those vast expanses. One day I asked, “Where are the clouds going?”  My wise dad replied, “These clouds have had a big drink from the sea. They’re really full-up and can’t move too fast. They drift slowly on to land and pour out all the water as rain.” Pretty standard, maybe. But for a 7-year old? Magical! (also, my dad shares his poetics with Kālidāsa! The great poet uses the same allegory in his Ṛtusaṁhāra or Meghadūta?) I think my love-affair with the sky started one of those hot summer nights. More on my sky-obsession one of these days.

The story now is that, one of the first things I wanted to show N. was the sky. For a baby, the bright day sky is a bit much but still, she quickly caught my “Hello Sūrya Bhagvān!” and learned to look for the sun. The night sky was trickier. Try as I might I couldn’t get her to look at the moon because every time she looked up, she was distracted by street lights and other light pollution. I would say, “Look, baby, look, there’s the moon!” And she’d blink at the neon lights and not follow my finger! Till one night. She looked past the lights and saw the yellow disc against the dark sky. And oh what a wonderful expression on her face! She was transfixed for a few seconds. And then her eyes lit up. She beamed as if in recognition. And laughed. And stretched out her hands as if to call out... She was so enthralled. No amount of electricity and shining lights can match that spontaneous wonder! I was thrilled to see her thrilled. And I felt somehow that I had served my purpose as mother that day. To have shown your child the moon, what more can a mom ask for? :)