Street Light - In a different light

  

That night my encounter with the street light was different unlike any of the previous ones. It wasn't like the one between a utility and its user., nor one between a photographer and its subject, it was like the one between a path-finder and an usher - both literally and figuratively

When was the last time you stared at a street light from your bedroom window or your balcony or sitting on a stair case or with your head up,standing right below it? Not that I do it everyday, but one such moment I had a few months ago made me think through all the instances of my rendezvous with street lights. It was last August in the middle of a night, when I woke up to feed my 2 month old baby, my eyes fell on the street light through my bed room window. I have seen that streetlight for hundreds of times and tried to capture it a couple of times on my camera. But that night my encounter with the street light was different unlike any of the previous ones. It wasn't like the one between a utility and its user., nor one between a photographer and its subject, it was like the one between a pathfinder and an usher - both literally and figuratively.

That stage of my life -a very sensitive, testing and taxing times for a woman -might have made me imagine stuff or hallucinate something. That night passed by but it left within me some things which will stay for a long long time to come. That was the first time I saw a street light in a different light. It took me back to early days of my life. When I was five and used to stand at the window watching the rising moon at a distance, wandering in my thoughts searching for answers to questions beyond my comprehension - like why the man in a photo frame on the wall is not seen around at home but peeps into my dreams at times? My little brain thought that answers to deeper and difficult questions lie far off like in the moon and hence overlooked the light nearby. I overlooked the fact that while I had my eyes on the far-off moon, nearby streetlight right beneath the window was keeping a watch out for me. 

I did not quite realize earlier but it never left my side. Wherever I went it followed me. It kept shedding its light on me. Be it when I was whiling away my time watching people on the streets busy with their daily chores, it gave me company; when I happen to spot the guests heading towards our home, sitting outside, it shared my excitement; it stood there, seeing me off to school in the morning, along with my mother; it used to wait with eyes on the corner of the street along with my grandma, at times when I used to come home late; it shed tears on behalf of me when I used to try hard not to , fearing someone might see me; it helped me count down days for my uncle's return from his trip. Did I ever pay heed to all this back then? No.I vividly remember three everyday instances I used to deliberately look at a street light- one, to confirm it was raining by looking right beneath its light; two, to see all the flies hovering around it and be prepared before they reach my house; three, to check which areas around our house had power and which did not. Thinking back,whether it was glowing or not, it always ensured that its light followed me like a shadow.

Following that fortunate night, every night when my baby woke me up, I spent a few minutes staring at the street light and it never failed to tickle my memory. All the spots I used to look at a street light from, from across the places I have ever lived, paraded in front of my eyes. The cities, the towns, the villages.. one after the other. The way I used to sit and stare at far off hills, the sky and beyond, the vehicles passing by, people doing  their daily chores and all other trivial stuff. We all do. Unfortunately, one of the constants in my life – the street light – got lost in that trivia. Yes, with these thought experiments I have been doing, I realized that street light has always been a constant in my life. So far I have lived in more than 15 dwellings across India and a few countries outside and there was no single place from among them, which I cannot connect with a streetlight. So, though I have not paid much heed to street light consciously, sub-consciously I have sought some kind of comfort from it. A sort of security, when I had to move around alone in the night. A symbol of continuity, when everything around changed. Something wholly known, amongst all other unknowns. A thing which has been constant, among all other changes.  

 Did I always choose a place with a street light view? No. Is streetlight that common a thing to be found everywhere? Could be. Am I over imagining things? No. It is a well thought through idea, which I would like to call a sort of "psychological inertia". By this I mean the tendancy to continue with status quo and resisting change, unless forced into it. I tend to start reading a new book just before shifting to a new place, so that a virtual connect gets established between my old and new place. I tend to listen to the same song again and again during the journey from old to new, so that a part of my old gets carried to my new. I am sure I am not alone in thinking like this. We all tend to associate particular time periods, events, people with some particular music or smell or food or any thing else. Were these our "Mementos", "Souvenirs", "Keep sakes" ? We might remember a whole lot about our last trip to a new place, but a small souvenir can travel a long way with us. Sometimes, we overdo that too. We end up buying many souvenirs which we cannot associate ourselves with. Unlike those place-specific souvenirs, streetlight has not been a stranger to me and hence could strike a deeper connect. 

There are ample ways to carry our memories with us. Photos, videos, souvenirs, writings, audio recordings etc. In this information-overloaded world, these are all very easily accessible now. Yet, in the end, too much could be too little too. The message conveyed by enormous amount of data cannot afford to be equally enormous. It should be simple and easy on mind. Especially in these pandemic hit times, when loneliness had been the only companion to many during their suffering or their loved ones',  silently these "Mental Mementos" might have given a few sighs of relief. Of course, not every object carries a memory, even if, may not always be positive. And not every memory can flag an object and establish associations. Nevertheless it is important to "hold on" to "something /someone" in order not to get blown away by the winds of unexpected changes our lives are meant to undergo. I found my constant object - the street light - which I see in a different light now. Do you have a constant too?