Sunset from our apartment in SJ
As I was growing up, and it wasn’t THAT long ago.. As I was growing up in the 90s in India, I always saw the sky studded with stars. I took them for granted. I never thought, then, of an eventuality where the stars would not sparkle any more.
In Guwahati, Patna, Ahmednagar, Dehradoon, Pune and Ferozepur.. the stars always shone.
And I missed them only when they were gone. I first noticed the starless skies in California, in San Jose, where the only thing in the sky is the moon. A bigass moon it used to be too. But strangely enough, no stars.
Of course it was the pollution in the SUV-ridden valley. The pollution made for glorious sunsets – pink, green, purple hues in the skies. And from our beautiful 9th floor apartment, we watched those sunsets every evening, marveling at myriad hues of light.
Until the sun dipped, and a lone star remained – all others too obscured by the same pollutants that catalysted the sunsets. We used to sleep watching the moon from our bedroom window. Through the clear glass, the moon sometimes looked so big it would fill up the entire window. But always, the absence of shimmering stars struck discordant, like the absence of seeds in watermelons (I never could get used to the seedless varieties).
And now, sitting on the roof in Saigon, gazing up at the skies, I see again the midnight gray skies, despairingly empty of any shimmer. Sometimes, on a really, really clear night, I can spot the tail of the Ursa Major. But it’s not enough.
The human race, as a whole, is culpable for the absence of stars in our lives. It’s as if the most beautiful citizens of the night have gone into self-exile, damning the human race with an impenetrable, opaque grayness.
I think, and I don’t know whether I’m right, but at this point of time in my life, I think, that it is really ‘every man for himself’. People must fend for themselves, and equally, we all must take the responsibility to do what’s best for us – for each one of us. Because what’s best for each one of us has to be best for the planet too. We have to fight the pollution, keep our running costs to a minimum, recycle and reuse, and move to the countryside if that’s what it takes to see the stars again.
I can’t wait to move to the countryside.
