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In An Introvert's World #2: Scent of the Night

            Street, Alley, Lane, Night, Dark, Urban, Town, City 

            Often, late at night, I come out of my study, stand by the heavy iron gate of our home and place my face in a space between its bars. The bars are always coarse and cold. At that moment, I am a prisoner of life, looking out into the open sky, seldom black as tar, unending, unrelenting. There I stand and take a deep breath in, not for the sake of oxygen, but to feel that rich, unpolluted atmosphere. Night has a distinct smell to itself, if you have ever noticed. It is that mixture of dry and wet, flower and dust, tender and fierce. Presence and absence. It is made up of opposites, and that makes it special and memorable.

            There was a young night-blossoming jasmine in our little garden at that time. The shrub had grown taller than me. At night, its scent would fill the air over five houses. In all probability, nightlife zoomed around the plant in disco mood all through the dark hours. Fireflies glowed around the plant in their strange starry, cotton ball-like floating fashion. Moths flapped their ugly wings round the space and sat on its branches as their little caterpillars chewed through its leaves. Tiny creeping insects of uncountable intricacies and styles played on its leaves and in its flowers. As the sun inched back towards the sky, the little playthings of nature crawled back into their crevices. The plant itself released some more scent. Then it went to sleep.

            I would wake up just a little before that. You know that time when the black of the sky has just begun to discolour, there is a hesitant brownish gleam along the horizon and somewhere at a distance, the birds have just started to caw-caw but are still too lazy to leave the comfort of their nests? At that time would I sneak out of my bed, directly out of the door and fix my head into the space in the gate. I would inhale until my chest was stretched, my lungs cried out for want of space but the decrepit warmth of the bed had not yet been replaced with the withering night’s cold cologne. I waited. I exhaled and inhaled again. The tightness of the lungs would not go. The lightness of the air was never enough.

            After having an eyeful of the empty streets, the occasional watchful dogs and a litter of pigs, I would retire to my house. Oh, the wretched heat! I would rush to the bathroom with the wish of quick relief. Back in my study, I would sit down with a cup of black coffee (with the same brownish gleam of the sky) and pour it in in a few sips. There was, as it is there today, the music of Mozart and Beethoven. The first one to wake up next would be my father with his difficult footsteps and a trembling hand, which by the time I saw him, would be holding a metal glass full of tea.

            When he fell ill a couple of months later, the routine of smelling the night was replaced with the rush to work. The many panics of life expanded by magnitudes. The lightness of the night air turned too insignificant under the many weights of that other, harsher reality. An unimaginable change took place. Work was more welcoming than home. The day was happier than the night. Why, you would ask? People die at night. Which night would he die? This one? I would rather live till the late night and study, have a constant check of his bloodstream and breathing.

            The young plant grew old and died in a couple of months. My father died in another few. It was day.

            A week later, I was at rest. He took the troubles of a tense life with him. Some of the lightness returned. The routine did not. Business had etched out for itself a place in my day and my night. Idleness brought uncertainty and discomfort. There was remorse and resentment at the lost and incapability. There was anger.

            Two years later, I made my comeback into the night. It was not a determined attempt, not at all aimed at violating the night. It was only an unwatched foray into the softness of the late hours. There was no jasmine. There was no scent. There were no brown gleams (or any colours, for that matter). Then the night appeared in her true sense. Where were the moths and the butterflies and the fireflies, I wondered, where was the nocturnal tribe? Who was playing in the night today? Was not the night lonely now when it had no one? With the tightness in my chest, I unlocked the gate and came out into the open. I walked on the street. I had wings, so I flew. I chewed on the leaves. I glowed like a Diwali light. I floated like cotton balls. The night came and covered me in her blanket. Her ways are abrupt. There is no sincerity in the night’s manners. There is no knowing of her plans. She is full of surprises. However, that night, all she had for me was memories.

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