When the light of the moon goes off

Pitch darkness is something you can never experience on city roads. Even if there is a total power failure, even if it’s the dead of night, you always have the headlights of a passing car or motorcyclist.

But imagine what it is like to be on a deserted village lane at night when the power fails. The lights in all the house windows go off, the street lights go dark. It’s the rainy season and thick clouds obscure the sky. There is not a star to light the way, not a sliver of moon.

I was on my bicycle one time when this happened. It wasn’t even late, but because of the rains no one was around.

Suddenly I found myself pitched into utter darkness. This is the kind of total blackness in which you don’t see even the vague shape of objects around you. Everywhere is a thick, impenetrable blackness.

To make it worse, there was no sound on that deserted lane, except for an occasional rumble of thunder overhead. Rain threatened.

I got off my cycle and thought I would walk up the slope with it. The lane curved upwards and to the right. This much I knew. But what if I misjudged the road and fell down into the field on the left of me? Best to wait, I thought. But what if it started raining heavily? A few drops had already started falling. What if some tree had fallen (they do this all the time in the monsoons) and the electricity didn’t return for hours? I began to ring my cycle bell to register my presence on that dark road just in case some scooterist came tearing down the slope and knocked me down.

Living in a village you get used to natural light, to the light of the moon and stars. If the electricity fails on a night when you are wandering about in the open, it’s not dark at all. Everything is illuminated by a silvery light, and the effect is magical.

But not in the rainy season when there is no natural light. In the monsoons, sensible villagers always carry a torch.