Here I am, lost in the light of the moon that comes through my window

“You are crazyyyy!” he says in exasperation.

“Am I ?” she says amused.

Lying in her bed watching the shadow creep over the face of the moon, she smiled. She knew he didn’t enjoy being woken up at 3.30 a.m. to be told about the shadowed moon, specially since in his part of the world there was nothing out of ordinary in the night sky.

“Wish you were here…” she says.

“Mmmn…” he mumbles sleepily.

“We would have laid down together and watched the moonlight play tricks….”

No sound this time. He must be asleep. She disconnects the phone and looks at the sky. Its 4.40 a.m. and the moon is a faint silhouette with a slightly reddish halo. She watches in silence. But her mind is far from quiet. Random thoughts of Hiawatha and her grandmother…what was her name?…yes Nokomis…but why did the moon remind her of that poem? Feeling of melancholy perhaps…She thinks of ‘Chander Pahar’…Mountain of the Moon…but that was goosebumpy adventure….so why does it sadden her? Then the recent Japanese writer she was reading. The story where they leave their aged to the ‘moon mountain’ to die…..

Snap out of it she tells herself. Can’t you think of something joyous? But the moon looks desolate and desperate. She misses her brother. He would not have dismissed her as easily. They have shared many a night in comfortable silence watching the sky from his 6th floor window. She misses her grandfather. He had led them both to watch the sky on stifling summer nights. They used to lay down on the terrace on ‘madurs’ as the night sky came alive in his voice. He told them about Orion and Artemis, about Andromeda and Centaur. In their child’s fancy they would point to a star and shine their Eveready torchlight and he would ask them to calculate how long it would take for the light to reach.

Now, she can’t reach them anymore except in her heart.

It's almost day break and the sky is a pale hue. She drifts into a dreamless sleep as her pillow remains wet.