Beauty of Silence and Darkness.

Imagine complete silence in a moonlit night without any artificial lights. I haven't experienced the same since I started my life in Bangalore. Getting a chance to enjoy the beauty of darkness and silence is a remote dream for people living in cities like Bangalore. Cities are always lighted with lots of huge sodium vapor lamps, and fluorescent lights. In cities if we look at the sky in night we can see the light reflecting from the clouds and it will almost like the late evening sky. We can see clouds in orange color (Let me call it, the sodium vapor lamp effect.)

But in villages like Payyampally (my home) the night is always dark except for the moon light or the lights from the stars. In Malayalam the light from the stars in a night without moon light is called the “Nattuvelicham”. I am sure that people living in cities will never experience this.

In my home town, a cloudy night means a complete dark night. And the one night which falls on the new moon during monsoon is the one which is the darkest night. The feeling of being out in the the cultivation lands in such a dark night and silence is something which I can’t describe. We call it the “Karkadaka Karupu” in Malayalam. “Karkadaka” stands for the particular month and “Karupu” means black.

During my schooling days, I used to go for patrolling in our plots in the night with my brother (Babu V Jacob), during the harvest season of pepper and watering season of coffee plants. Sitting some where in the cultivation fields and listening to the sounds coming from the nature is a great experience. If it is a full moon day with no clouds, the beauty of the nature tenfolds. We can see everything clearly, though it is dark. Watching the distant mountains in dark blue color, and the leaves of trees and coconut leaves shining in the moon light!!!! Oh! I don’t know about when I will be able to feel these amazing moments in my life once again. I love the scene of the fog getting developed in such a full moon night slowly and slowly and at last hiding the moon leaving a hallow in its place. Even the black and white clouds and silver lining at their edges in such a night is soo beautiful to watch.