Load shedding and Moonlight

I grew up in this small town called Dhubri. On Assam’s map, you will find it as a tiny dot on the left corner bisected by the river Brahmaputra on its way to Bangladesh. Night descended very early in the sleepy town where people returned from their offices and retired for the day, coming out for only buying groceries or catching up with latest tid-bits in nondescript tea shops. Students with big dreams slogged out at home or tuitions, making notes, and hungrily lapping up every word and understanding nothing. Load shedding would be the order of the day and the children would strip off their clothes ( keeping the minimum required) and continue reading by the flickering candlelight, making a low humming sound ascertaining their parents that they are reading, their torsos violently moving back and forth. I remember doing everything except study. I would drop the molten wax on my books to make haphazard designs only to find I could not see the words anymore. I would then try to take the wax out by rubbing with the pointed nib of my pencil, only to find that that spot was a gaping hole. I also tried the humming trick only to invite a smack on my head from my father after sometime because the humming was by then a full fledged hindi song. I would also give in to other sadistic pleasures like roasting an insect or two in the candle flame by picking it up on my pencil, resulting in my pencil being burnt sometimes. I need not tell you how my parents reacted to my study time antics. They are kind folks but did lose their temper sometimes.
But sometimes, when baba ( father) and Maa would be a in a good mood, the heat too unbearable to stay inside the house, we would toss our books away happily and gather in the courtyard of our house. Ours was a small family, my parents, my brother and me. My parents would settle on chairs, I would either sit on the compound wall or hang from the gate, and bhai on the ground chasing insects. On such nights, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and Yesudas would visit our humble courtyard, as my father would sing his favorites one by one, sometimes accompanied by a mouthorgan. My mother would request her favorites and hum in between and I would be all attentive. I was a different student now, not the one finding ways to escape my lessons, but absorbing as much as I could, my ears all open and my soul free. A strange kind of happiness would overpower me, would fill me and consume me, as I welcomed each note, each word, each rising pitch of that loving voice into my soul to be embedded forever. I would clap, I would sing, I would dance in sheer ecstasy. And some of these nights would be full moon nights and a light breeze would blow. The sweat on our bodies would cool until a slight shiver ran through our bodies. Have you ever seen the leaves of a peepal tree moving? It looks as if two leaves are clapping in unison, happy and carefree. I just used to love watching that, as the moonlight bathed our courtyard, falling in abundance from the open sky, the stars fading away at such brilliance. The world seemed to be made of silver, intercepted only by the dark silhouettes of our bodies on the ground and the dancing shadows of the leaves. The breeze seemed to carry baba’s voice further away, and one or two neighbors would drop by.
I always cursed the load shedding, the plainness, the boredom of our town, but now I realize, if there was no load shedding, we would have never come out to feel the magic of the moonlight, I would have never noticed the clapping leaves, I would have never felt the cool breeze caressing my body. Today, I have forgotten all the discomforts that the load shedding and the boredom caused, I only remember the silvery courtyard, my father’s soulful voice and my mother’s constant warnings to my brother not to swallow the insects :-)
Moonlight, music and the love of dear ones- what a heady combination!