While riding back home after a rain-battered, blacked out and dark Saturday night, my wife gestured to a patch of land and mentioned that those stretches used to be full of glowworms just a couple of years back. That is when I remembered last seeing a bunch of them together during my schooldays!
Glowworms were a mystery and fascination that would magically appear out of nowhere during our frequent power interruptions at night. It was with awe and wonder that we looked at the small creatures that would look like tiny lanterns flying in the sky. It won’t be wrong if I say that catching and holding these magical worms in the hand or in glass containers would be everyone’s nostalgic moments of childhood. The moments between opening up the closed hands to have peek at the glowworm and its escape to the skies just before the hurried closure of hands, were memorable.
Those years have passed and the world around us has changed remarkably. Then, dark nights were never perceived to be boring or eventless. Thanks to the glowworms, shining stars, shooting stars, the pleasant moon with its beautiful spread of light, silvery flowing clouds and a lot more. Moreover, there was enough time with all of us to sit outside as a family and enjoy the cool breeze and the gigantic sky that offered great visuals. Children playing on the moon-lit veranda and elders having a chat in the sit-outs that were part of the design of houses, was a regular sight in the countryside.
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Times have changed. We live a life that has no place in it for a night with darkness. We think darkness is kind of boring and eventless. Moreover, we live in so-called cities deprived of power interruptions, or we all have inverters at home that further deprive us of a moment of darkness! We are so hooked to the myriad programmes on the smart television sets, or to the social networking sites on the magical device in our hands, we rarely find time to talk to our own family members or to come out and a have look at the life that comes alive on the dark and pleasant night.
It looks like we are blinded by the tremendous light that surrounds us! Our minds have surrendered to false notions of entertainment. Nights are the soothing, resting and calming part of a buzzing day that can cleanse up the clumsy, overworked mind.
In a nutshell, our lifestyle is taking us away from the wonder-filled nature that we are really fortunate to be in. In the process, we have made irreversible changes to nature. The glowworms are no more so frequently to be seen! The seasons are no more the same and repetitive as it used to be, and so forth and so on.
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There are generations to come, and we owe them a serene earth and a healthy atmosphere as gifted to us by our forefathers, and a lifestyle interwoven with that of the wonderful nature that surrounds us.
ashokbbalakrishna@gmail.com