The Dark Skies of Chennai

The skies of Chennai depress me, they are void of all art and all divinity of God's creation. They are uninspiring and unimpressively bland. I remember the time I used to look up at the sky from my home in Trivandrum, they were full of innumerable stars, my skies were always like that, until now. They always inspired me, they always made me close to God. Every time I look at the sky, every time I witness the masterpiece God has drawn I feel like I am having a conversation with God, an thoroughly personal and exclusive conversation. It is impossible for anyone who has witnessed the beauty of the night sky, any one who has come to terms with the overwhelming presence of the universe to doubt God. It can't be pure chance that out is so beautiful.

This is what I miss here, the intimate moments with God, the humbling vastness of the universe. The stars, the constellations, the comets, the wishing stars... It is impossible for the jaded skies if Chennai and it's countable stars to project that kind of power. The lost skies of Chennai can no longer make one wonder nor ponder. They have grown impotent, they kindle no dreams nor any aspirations. They are like the barren desserts of the north west. They have forever lost the magic. It saddens me to think that when I have the skies of my home, when I have the memories of those magical moments the children of Chennai has none, they have missed out on a miracle. Unfortunate and pitiful they roam unaware of the brilliance of the skies.

I wonder what astronaut shall come from under these skies. I wonder what any child can dream from under these skies. And what troubles me is that may be on a day in the foreseeable future these skies shall forever turn dark and only the radiant light of conquered moon shall pierce the doomed hearts of this city. Sad and desolate, it fills me with an agonizing melancholy. 

Children seize the skies, seize it today because they are your inheritance, your heritage. They are the gods gift to you. They are yours to look at. They are yours to dream of and yours to be inspired by. Seize your skies, they are yours.

The Things we take for Granted

A sun and the moon, the rain and the clouds that bring it, the flowers that bloom in the spring and the leaves that falls in autumn. The life as we know it, the people we love and even love itself, the buildings that surround us and the people that inhabit them. The food we eat and the water we drink, the air we breathe and even the planet we inhabit. It’s just mind boggling the amount of things we take for granted, the things we never doubt or the things that we for not one moment think that there may come a time when the will cease to exist. At times I wonder how men can be so oblivious at others I feel that it’s the whole point of living.

When I was seeing a little ad recently it dawned on me, the amount of things that we take for granted as in fact very big dreams for many people. There are people who miss an lack the basic pleasures and even necessities of lives. When we live our life in opulence we forget the plight of the less fortunate ones. There was a time when I was obtuse enough to believe that what I had was what I deserved and the ones who did not have it simply did not deserve it. How wrong I was! But life tends to catch up with you, in this case all I had to do was open my eyes and I could see how stupid I was to have lived all my years in a rather small oyster.

But when I came out, when I saw the world and what was happening there, when I met people who were not like me, when I talked to them, shared a laugh with them and cried with them in their sorrows. I realized that I was wrong, so very wrong to have thought that they deserved less. In fact the truth is that most of them deserve a whole lot that what I do. There are children who have never known what a birthday is when I have celebrated my each birthday twice and trice. There are people who have not had a decent meal in their lives even when I have wasted food and never bothered to give it another thought.

There are moments in life, moments of greater clarity and purpose. Moments of recognition and realization, moments when you realize your wrong and see the path forward, these are moments that happens in every man’s life whether he decides to act on it or let it pass is a call that he alone has to make and the consequences however big or small he alone has to accept. This was for one of such moments when I realized my place and act in the world and when I realized the little good things in life. I wanted to say I learned something but I guess it’s too early and going a bit too say to say that. I guess only time will tell what it has done to more or if it has done anything at all to me.