“Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon.
We’ve already got the stars.”
-Bette Davis
When
I was younger, the moon followed my father’s bike unquestioningly on winter
nights; watching over my helmet-wearing rider in a strange, brooding silence. It
was just another pillion passenger in the queue. Nocturnal road-trip ally with
a natural white headlight—that was moonshine. Followed us and traipsed,
meandered and circled through the boisterous traffic, racing past the city’s
bright lights to the suburbs’ chilly quietness, sticking by our side right until
the end. Sometimes it was over our heads and sometimes I could see it on the
sides. Sometimes, it wasn’t even white. A patch of red, a bloodstain, lodged itself
on a crater somewhere in its expansive milkiness.
Not
crime-scene red. Mostly, water-colour red.
(This
year, in case somebody noticed, it was all red and glowing like a disc of deep-rose
coloured strawberry milkshake. Frozen solid in the night sky.)
I
decided that the moon was as much in love with blood, gore and action movies as
my father. That’s what I thought, because who knows if it secretly admired
Jackie Chan’s split lip on TV from behind the translucent living room curtains.
Perhaps, it even smiled and winked at my father. Would they ‘hi-five’ someday?
Oh,
well.
The
bike swiftly veered away from one tarmac lane to another (and god bless the
potholes that rattled our bones). I
thought, then, that we would lose the white, round smiley face following us.
Lose it forever. No ally, no white headlights. Just annoying yellow beams from
other ordinary vehicles.
But
we never did lose it.
At
the next turn, “That’s I spy, you
count to ten,” said the moon and vanished from the scene. Somebody was clearly
getting bored hanging (upside down?) from the sky all night. So, I agreed. And
so it rushed. Its size kept on decreasing, getting away from us and getting smaller
and smaller, till it was about as round as a coin. I swore that it could fit
into my palm any minute now. Nobody listened. Hiding behind the giant trees
lining up the road, peeking out from the houses’ rooftops and stopping when the
traffic light said red—it grew infinitely larger as we slowed.
Gradually,
we stopped.
And
bam! It sneaked upon us from out of nowhere.
The
enormous moon was absolutely quiet, standing absolutely still, no longer
reeling under the pressure to pick up its speed in order to match ours. There
was that cheeky smile, of course. Who knows, perhaps it even winked. Always
smiles, that one.
Nice
kid.
But
this was years ago, when moonshine was more important than counting lucky stars.
When stars and luck and prospects and the future were all chafing in a tightly
clasped bag, flung deep and far among the moon’s craters and all that mattered
was childhood.
It’s
not about I spy between two kids anymore.
The
moon still smiles though, but in a sad sort of way, when no one is looking. Sad,
because the moon is not really an ‘it’. The moon is a goddess. It’s a ‘she’, as
I realised in ninth grade. The Greeks called her Selene and the Romans called
her Luna. And she controlled everything, right from the huge oceanic tides to
the tides of madness to a woman’s menstrual cycle. It’s not ‘her’ smile but the
vestige of a smile, heavy and burdened with the weight of ceaseless myths and
legends created in her honour. (What honour?)
I,
the trivial human being and she, a strange goddess/mythical persona, can hardly
be called friends. Devastation and tragedy. It’s like calling childhood a myth.
Nobody notices the moon from their office windows while it sits there, just waiting,
as if someone will come out to play. Nobody does. Everyone visits the hills to
see the ‘stars’ line up above their foreheads. And for all things expedient,
the moon is a de-mystified planetary body now, already conquered by man.
Nothing more to see. Nothing more to say.
But
that’s how it is. It’s a ‘She’.
She
and I will deal with it.
The
next time that this moon turns red, I’ll barely look up in wonder. That’s
tragic.
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