I have a very special relationship with the night. Now that’s not a statement that should raise any eye brows – since I am not an Amitabh Bachchan or some celebrity who is proclaiming his love for the nocturnal hours! Having said that, it is a special time of the day for me.
All along, from my childhood to the present day, this night has allowed me a lot of luxuries that the day hasn’t afforded me – silence, calmness, clarity of thought, free will to let my mind wander anywhere I want and I am only starting the list here!
The night awarded me creativity. I became an ice cream vendor and thought out the entire business in my head at age thirteen. Then, at age fifteen and having completed my matriculation, I started dreaming about an IT business – it was the time of the IT boom then.
I thought about the beautiful girls (my various crushes) and then to distract myself (having felt guilty at those thoughts), I thought of being a great batsman and playing the toughest bowling attack on earth with confidence and poise; earning praise from Sachin Tendulkar himself! A die-hard cricketer, I practiced a lot of my shots in my mind then – the straight drive, the cover drive, the on drive. Having thought of all those drives, my mind often wandered to driving the best machine on this earth – the Ferrari! I thought of getting to drive the F3000 that Michael Schumacher drove and dreamt of becoming the first Indian to win a Formula One Grand Prix!
My thoughts, as you can see, could run as wild as only thoughts could – only light could match them for speed. On second thoughts, I don’t think that even light is capable of matching the speed of my thoughts – and now I m sounding a bit arrogant, I know.
I thought about the beautiful girls (my various crushes) and then to distract myself (having felt guilty at those thoughts), I thought of being a great batsman and playing the toughest bowling attack on earth with confidence and poise; earning praise from Sachin Tendulkar himself! A die-hard cricketer, I practiced a lot of my shots in my mind then – the straight drive, the cover drive, the on drive. Having thought of all those drives, my mind often wandered to driving the best machine on this earth – the Ferrari! I thought of getting to drive the F3000 that Michael Schumacher drove and dreamt of becoming the first Indian to win a Formula One Grand Prix!
My thoughts, as you can see, could run as wild as only thoughts could – only light could match them for speed. On second thoughts, I don’t think that even light is capable of matching the speed of my thoughts – and now I m sounding a bit arrogant, I know.
In the growing years when I started reading politics and tried desperately to identify or maybe make sense of what all these hoarsely shouting leaders are trying to say and what they really stand for. I used to think for hours about the political parties and the government and what is needed for this country and what needs doing urgently … stupid me – I didn’t realise that all of these so called leaders are the same under different cloaks and masks! My trust on these leaders has turned to distrust and yet, my love for the country has only grown – I still believe we are a great nation and we can only get better.
When I was young, I used to study at night and that carried off into my engineering days and now spilled over into my master’s programme. I also found my real calling and the purpose of my life on one of these engineering study nights. It became clear to me what I really wanted to do and what I should do to get there. It felt like a lightening had struck me then. It was so clear. Unlike all the thoughts of my teens, this thought never left me and I was sure that I have found what I want or at least, try to achieve!
It is so special to me – my love, my life’s aim, my best thoughts – have all come at night. All my writing has also, incidentally happened at night. Recently, I moved house and no more have internet and that completely stopped me from writing! Now I am sitting in my room without the internet and thought, what the heck, let me write! I will post it later. And in this last argument, I have found the perfect excuse for explaining my laziness…. I am going to wish it away in the night’s thoughts today ….. or tonight!
