GIVE
IN TO THE NIGHT
I’ve been staying
up late for sometime now and funnily enough I kinda like it. Not that my
bedtime was ever adhered to before. It’s just that it’s really cool at night
and it’s dark. I like the dark. The darkness. The silence. And I hear better.
Mom snoring, the dog scratching itself and the omnipresent nocturnal marauders
which no Pest Exterminator really manages to exterminate. I feel strangely relaxed
when it’s dark. The serenity strikes a chord. I mean look at it this way:
there’s no one around, and it’s just me awake with a tube light on and an open
book on my desk, ballpoint in hand. No interruptions or unwanted noise. Things
sort of sync together seamlessly and I really have fun. Yesterday, I was doing
a chapter dealing with Phenols and Ethers. Organic Chem and me DO NOT see eye
to eye. Yet somehow, I think something got into my head yesterday coz this morning
I was able to answer to some degree the questions at the back of the chapter.
Yet there is a
flipside, which is showcased brilliantly in horror movies. Come on already you
know what I mean. Fear of the dark!! It is
scary at night, I cant deny it! I speak from experience. I had taken my dog out
during a blackout and there was this sand heap with some leaves on it, lying on
the road and call me melodramatic but I thought it was a disembodied hand
sticking out instead of a leaf. I laughed loudest at myself but there it is.
Things look different without the sun. Everyday objects like trees and lamp
posts take on a fearsome aspect like things have gone all topsy turvy. Even the
wind seems to have a voice of it’s own and maybe it’s fulfilling the request
that Shelley made to it in his poem “Ode to The West Wind” I think the lines
are
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit
fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
(quoted
from “Ode to the West Wind” by P.B. Shelley)
So, it’s got a
mesmerising charm to it and it is a time when things sort of settle down. Night
seduces you, soothes you and yet on the other hands it’s time for the shadows
to come out and play. It‘s this duality that makes me wait each day for the
onset of dusk. Speaking of dusk, have you read that story by Hector Hugh Munroe
called “Dusk”? It sort of reflects what I want to say. Things are a little
different when seen in obscurity or if you prefer it almost total absence of
light.
