On Fascination

“They say they can’t see in the dark. I see a little more at night.”
– written sometime around 2013.

The fascination with the night sky, for me, has always been beyond ordinary. Whether it was crying as a toddler to sleep under the stars instead of in the comfort of my cosy room, asking questions about constellations and the wonders of space from my mother on most dark nights, or feeling the thrill of watching the moon in its various phases each evening, I have always been drawn towards the skies.

The most extraordinary night of my life, however, happened on a school trip when I was in sixth standard. We began the trip from our city that is nestled at the foothills of the Shivalik ranges of the mighty Himalayas, Chandigarh. At an altitude of nearly 8,600 feet stands the beautiful town of Narkanda, where we reached after roughly six hours on the road. It is spread across the heights of the same Shivalik ranges and sits right at the beginning of the higher Himalayan alpine regions. The first two days were not particularly amazing. All the friends were split up. We were made to stand in alphabetical order before camps were allotted to us. Instead of being grouped with our classmates and friends for accommodation, we were forced to make pleasantries with people who happened to share the same initial. Since we were the junior-most class, most of the students in our camp were seniors. We had to walk a lot and follow instructions from not just our guides and leaders, but also our seniors. It was exhausting.

The mountains were beautiful, sure. The scenic beauty was the only thing making the ascent a little bearable; the company, for the most part, was not. I noticed the oak trees, saw hazelnut, maple and poplar trees, and gathered dried pine cones that I would later paint and use as décor. Every step demanded an effort my twelve-year-old body wasn’t eager to give. The trails were steep, the days were long, and by the end of them I was mostly just tired.

I had gone through the itinerary in detail. There was no mention of it, or else I would have been so excited that I probably wouldn’t have slept at all.

And so began the greatest night of my childhood, without any warning whatsoever- ‘A Midnight Trek Under the Stars.’

We were woken up in the middle of the night and, honestly, we were annoyed. We had spent the entire day walking and wanted nothing more than sleep. To make matters worse, we weren’t even allowed to carry flashlights. Our trek guide lined us all up and started telling us a story about pirates. Pirates who navigated the darkness of the ocean under starlight using a single eye patch. One eye always covered. Always adjusting. Always ready for the dark.

“You have to trust the process,” he said. “With every passing minute in the dark, your eyes are going to adjust to the light of the cosmos. You have to have faith. You will see everything more clearly, I promise.”

The moment he used the phrase ‘light of the cosmos’, I was more than thrilled. My heart skipped a beat. It was almost as if I was going to see the love of my life. I was barely twelve years old when I saw the night sky without any light pollution. It was before commercialisation lit up the streets and blinded us from witnessing the skies. We began walking. At first, barely anything was visible. We were told to stay in a queue, follow the footsteps ahead of us, and not break formation. For what must have been ten minutes, maybe less, we walked almost blindly through the darkness. Our hands were resting on the shoulders of the person in front and we were told not to break formation at any cost. And then something began to happen. Slowly, minute by minute, the forest started to reveal itself.

The fabric of the sky carried countless points of glimmer on that night of wonder, embroidered all over, just like the glittering dupatta my mother sometimes wore over her head. The stars illuminated everything. The outlines of trees emerged from the darkness. The depth of the forest became visible. The starlight uncovered the trail beneath our feet.

I can’t say I fell in love that night because I had always been in love. It was rather one of those moments when you stand in total and utter awe of your lover. “Wow, the universe is beyond beautiful.” It was a realisation. The stars were so bright and felt so close, hanging right overhead because of the altitude. We were walking through a forest filled with towering conifers like Deodar, Silver Fir and others I was told were used for timber. I still remember seeing the twinkling stars through the tiny gaps between those needle-like leaves.

I don’t remember how long that ascent lasted. Time seemed to disappear somewhere between the trees and the stars. We kept walking behind one another, following the trail, without realising when we had gained so much altitude that we were almost at the peak of the mountain. The entire trail was an absolute work of art, revealing itself layer by layer. At some point, the entire landscape became as visible as it would have been during daylight. We reached the peak and I just laid down in the soil, not out of exhaustion this time, but because of being wonderstruck. With my body laid on the peak of the mountain and my eyes laid at the skies I revere, witnessing the cosmos from up close. It was absolutely surreal. I was dead in that moment while being the most alive I had ever been.

I saw people around me who experienced utter exhaustion that night. I was shocked by their words. They probably did not share my fascination with the skies. I took home not just a memorable night, but also a lesson. A lesson on how effort becomes like slicing a cheesecake when your interests are aligned with the direction of your work, but feels like hammering stones endlessly on a hot summer day when you’re doing something merely as a task. Things that pull us naturally make the flow easier. After all, fascination fuels the effort.

This essay sits at the intersection of Nature & Cosmos, Curiosity, and Time.