My Moonbeam:
My grandfather loved telling stories. My four-year-old nights are still vividly etched in my mind. He and I snuggling under a quilt, the moonbeam creating a halo around his face, his cigar tainted breath along with the warmth he exuded was perhaps my first conscious security blanket. Then, as the rest of the house was sleeping, he would tell me stories. Stories of his boyhood, with which he painted, sepia tinted pictures of a childhood idyllically spent, amidst acute joy! The moonlight lent a magical feel to these moments and I fell in love for the first time in my life, with the moon.
My grandfather ensured my first love did not go unrequited. He taught me the trick of holding the moonbeam still in one place for 15 minutes.
“Meet me tonight in the moonlight
Meet me tonight all alone”
He said, if I could say this wholeheartedly, like a virgin prayer, to the moon, then I could actually hold the moonbeam in my hand. This was perhaps the purest form of innocence but I believe I could actually hold the moon still with my grandfather’s help.
“Meet me tonight in the moonlight
Meet me tonight all alone”
He said, if I could say this wholeheartedly, like a virgin prayer, to the moon, then I could actually hold the moonbeam in my hand. This was perhaps the purest form of innocence but I believe I could actually hold the moon still with my grandfather’s help.
It has been thirty years; I have matured in years as well as cynicism. We have grown, while the world, our minds, have shrunk in tandem.
But I still go to sleep each night, looking at the moon, searching in it, for those moments spent long ago with my grandfather. When life was simpler and days were happier. These few moments soothed me and filled me with love and longing.
Few months back I came to know that the vacant plot next to my house was going to accommodate another vertical monstrosity.
Today is the last day when I go sleep with the moonlight reminding me of the happiest days of my life, of days, that will finally be 'no more'. For, from tomorrow, I would see a concrete dark wall, blocking away the last shreds of innocence, permanently.
I go back thirty years and try to gather the innocence and wholeheartedness of a child and say to the moon:
“Meet me tonight in the moonlight
Meet me tonight all alone”
As I held the moonbeam in my hand for the last time in my life, I realized that finally, my childhood would leave me, for good, with this night.
“Meet me tonight in the moonlight
Meet me tonight all alone”
As I held the moonbeam in my hand for the last time in my life, I realized that finally, my childhood would leave me, for good, with this night.
posted by Debopriya at 12:49 pm
3 Comments:
DB
I have blog rolled you and hope to come back to your page mor eoften now.
Keep entralling us :-)
Dear DB,
It had been an excellent experience reading through your blogs. It had been wonderful representation of emotions.
Do keep posting and if you could do me a favour, remind me of it.
Regards,
DJ.
Thats such a wonderful portrayal of the innocence that childhood is. Isn't it surprising that all children fall in love with the moon. My grandma used to tell me that the outline u see on the moon is an old woman spinning cotton on the spinning wheel! lol!. But while we get sucked in the grind of life we shouldn't forget to pass all that innocence to the coming generations.
Post a Comment
<< Home