“Two moons, two moons! Wake up man. You don’t want to miss
this.” He woke me up from deep weekend sleep. I must have had a blank look. He
pointed to the window. “See there, two moons in the sky.” Still lying on the
bed, I turned my sleepy eyes toward the window. He was right. Two pale moons,
side by side. ‘Yes’ I agreed, ‘two moons. Now get some sleep.’ I closed
my eyes turning to the other side.
Ravish, my cousin, room partner and best friend was not
ready to leave it at that. “C’mon man, we cannot just keep sleeping after
witnessing a wonder like this.” He shook me from behind. He pulled my hand asking
me to get up. I cursed the astronomical wonder that had to happen on that
weekend night, and sat up.
It must have been around two and half hours in the early Friday
morning. The weekend spirits seldom settle down in two hours.
We were both sitting on my bed now trying to get some
explanation as to why there are two moons. ‘It’s the drink’ I suggested through
my closed eyes and yawning mouth. ‘We should not buy it again.’ “Huh” he
dismissed me with a wave of his hand and was lost in thought for a few seconds.
“It could be something like the Big Bang. The moon just broke in two!” I saw
sleep fleeing his eyes. ‘But…’ He didn’t
let me complete. “A closer look. How can we take a closer look? Do we have a
telescope here?”
A Telescope! The last I had my hands on a binocular was when
I visited my friend during college days. He was a bird watcher, watching birds
taking bath at a stream near his house! ‘Why don’t we go to the terrace for a
closer look?’ “Not a bad idea, you go get the keys from the security” came his
orders.
Sleep had deserted me too. Sense hadn’t. Waking someone up
at two thirty was criminal. I retracted on my idea. ‘Let’s take a closer look
from our window.’ He wasn’t convinced. “What more can you see from here? Let’s
break open the terrace door.” I had already moved towards the window, in awe (and
to some degree, in sorrow that something so romantic as the full moon is going
plural all of a sudden.)
‘Lo, behold!’ I rubbed my eyes and took a second closer
look. The second moon was moving away from the first. The moons have drifted
apart. Something the scientists believe took millions of years, has hardly
taken ten minutes to happen!
Wait a minute. Did I see a hand like shape near the second
moon? The picture is clear now. ‘It’s no moon damn it! It’s the light from the
crane!’ How did we forget the construction
site just behind our building? And this crane had to be positioned in such a
way the lamp on top looked just like the moon in the dusty sky!
We sat in silence waiting for the other to speak. Since
neither of us had anything left to prove, we preferred silence, the golden silence
to prevail till well into the morning…
