Dusk

I was in a rickshaw, on my way home yesterday, when the lights went out.

But as I sat there, the nervous rickshaw-puller carefully weaving his way though the narrow by-lanes… I discovered a whole new array of sights and sounds that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed!
The darkness had somehow transformed the familiar lanes and neighborhoods, suddenly, everything was quiet and still. Noisy people stopped talking abruptly, and even the stray dogs fell silent!
The sudden darkness had caught everyone off guard.

Fireflies! Who knew we had fireflies in the city!? And so many of them! But they’re there…these tiny, eerie glowing green lights in trees and bushes. I guess they’ve always been there…I just never noticed!

And I realized that you could pull weird faces in the dark, and nobody would notice!
So I did!
I smiled as widely as I could…at random people! And I pulled some rather bizarre faces…stuck out my tongue at absolute strangers! Then the headlights of a car flared up, and I stopped! But as soon as the headlights faded, I resumed grinning weirdly!

Once I got home, I ran up the stairs, rather noisily (the people I annoyed, would probably imagine I was some bratty ten-year-old!), and walked straight into our apartment, without stopping to acknowledge our rather unpleasant neighbor…I could just pretend I didn’t see him in the dark!


Darkness is liberating!