My Darkness

The last time I spent a night under wide open sky, last November, I was in Sunamgunj, near Tanguar Haor, lying on my sleeping bag, not in it, dreamily watching the sky so amazingly full of stars, and rocking with the gentle waves of Haor. I think one should spend at least one night under the sky every month, if not more frequency be possible. You can actually relate your humble being with the rest of the world if you stare at the sky. I often forget how little a being I am; whenever I look down to earth I see my big, long shadow and I start loosing respect to the rest of my ambience. One long look at that enormous nothingness, you get back to earth, to be precise.

This evening I climbed up again to my rooftop reservoir, just to have some good pictures of the darkness, since almost everything was blacked out. Power failure has lost its mysterious spells over us, ever since Diesel generators became popular in the city. When I was a kid, back in Sylhet, load shedding was an event of its own class. If there was no moon, all you could see were some feeble flames of candles or oil lamps around, or the flickers from burning cigarettes. We used to get together in the Verandah and sang whatever songs we felt like singing at that moment ... me, my siblings ... with the gigantic trees leaning to us to our right, wide open sky barricaded by a sudden bamboo bush, a big moon trying to grin out its palor ... it was really something to ruminate on ... I had a marvelous childhood in sylhet.

Anyway, let's not get derouted, where was I? ... Oh, on my rooftop reservoir, with my tripod and camera. These are the moments that make me resent, for not having bought a digital camera. I use a CANON EOS 1000 FN, totally professional stuff, but with a casual 28-70 sigma lens. The tripod I got purchased recently from Singapore, and it hasn't been field tested yet [Field test denotes here an excursion up in the mountains, where we usually trek around. I have a good plan to run the first test in Chandranath next friday], but I'm satisfied with it. I had some photoes shot ... pictures of Darkness, with weak lights at great distance ... "Poxed darkness" is a title that buzzed in my head for a while.

I lied down on the tank for some minutes. Actually the reservoir is huge, I and my nephew Linca in fact spent a night there when my brother got married ... there was so many guests to stay overnight, we had no other choice to pack up with my guitar and blankets, and spent the whole night under the sky, firing up new satanic ideas and discussing the physiques of all those women we met anew. We nearly pissed all the neighbours [well, the arabesque way of defining neighbours states that anyone within the fortieth house is your neighbour] off.

Just can't get to the point tonight ... I saw something I haven't seen for a long time. White chunks of clouds drifting gently like viennese geese in pitch black background, with glistening of a star here, and a star there ... it was really awesome. Who needs a moon when stars are there? The sky is in fact more charming with new moon ... just get 150 kilometers out of Dhaka [because the air is not clear here at all] and you can see the unabridged sky with all her jewelery, scattered for you.

Darkness isn't always scary, isn't always obscure, it's just something waiting for your light.