I used to love the nights! There were still and soothing most unlike the fiery insecurity offered by the day. They were cool and calm like the healing hands of a mother. The whole world could rest, and think and ponder about their existence. The moonlight shines on the mind to magically activate it. Then the mind takes a deep walk in the impenetrable woods of self-realization. It gets lost in its own thoughts, a liberty the busy day doesn’t offer. The crescent moon with its sharp ends ploughing out romantic thoughts from the fertile depth of our hearts. Oh the many pleasures of the night! The beautiful disguise of darkness to slip into the unknown and the unexplored. The shadows and dark corners which double up as meeting places with strangers. There is excitement everywhere.

Another gift of the nights are the dreams. Dreams so real, that it makes one wonder what is real, life or dream? Watching movies all night long in the mind’s theatre, what fun! The liberating flying dreams where one can fly like a bird in the sky, the nightmares of a rigid education and the out-of-body-experiences, such vivid experiences, movies in which invariably you are the star, can you ask for more? The revelry, the company of intoxicated friends, the parties – “Oh its night time, thank god the day is over.” The duality of nature is driving me crazy. This constant switch from day to night, night to day, seems never-ending. Just let there be night forever!

I used to love the nights but no more do I love them. Now I wait patiently for daybreak to hit. The creepy feeling of the sun entering the earth’s womb and giving birth to the helplessness of the nights, where everyone is asleep and no one can help. Isn’t this hell? A place where there is no help?

The people I called friends, were they demons? Where are they now? Laughing and drinking, so busy in their revelry with little care for matters of the world! Like vampires they change their garb and put on their “face of the night”, all drinking the poisons of their choice, which gives them temporary relief from their wretched existence, departing only at daybreak. Refusing to acknowledge their nightly misdeeds, blaming it conveniently on the intoxication.

The days are so glorious, full of life. Nature, the earth, people are all alive and awake. There is nothing you can’t do or achieve. There is help at hand. Communication is fast and aplenty. There is energy and action. Fire and light abound. Oh the glorious day is here finally! Piercing through the darkness of the howling nights. End of an era. End of darkness. The magnificent sun shines light on our dark areas, making us more aware of our surroundings and self. Trees and plants feel exhilarated as the sap runs up and down their stems, feeding their immobile bodies. Day is birth and the night is death.

Alas but we have to love both. Twin-children of the same mother. Why should the mother differentiate between her dark child and her fair complexion child? Complimenting energies that cannot do without each other. The dual nature of the universe. The yin and yang, dog lovers vs cat lovers, Shaivities vs Vaishnavites, attention seekers vs attention givers, tea drinkers vs coffee guzzlers, the observers and the one observed, the constant interplay of two opposing forces which is part of a universal construct, a universal plan, probably needed to make the world go round!