Wishes...

wishes have a way of coming true…even when you don’t consciously wish…

what is it with wishes…since we were young, that’s what we keep doing…from the fallen eyelash…to going through tunnels…to stars…to wells…so many ways that we keep wishing for things…people…emotions…out of our reach…
my favorite has always been looking at stars…in a city like Bombay that’s do-able…with the odd 7-8 stars that one gets to see, your list can remain fairly short…which takes me to the most spectacular sky I ever saw… Bhinsar…higher than Nanital, Ranikhet & Almoda (wrong spelling for certain!! My mother’s adventurous outdoor-y brothers will shriek if they ever saw me spell it so…)…oh that night sky was more than just the sky…it was the whole package….sitting outside this little cottage…no electricity…just a hint of the mountains…the smell of chilled green grass and earth…a cool summer breeze…the warning that a panther lurks in the vicinity…the candles and matchbox lying close to us…the midnight blue sky peering out through what seemed like millions and millions of stars…each trying to outshine the other… that night, as a little girl who felt you had to wish on every star, I went crazy cos I take these things damn seriously…

of course, the story has undergone the changes that nostalgia and time permit…every time I tell it, I add a few thousand stars…make them shine brighter…make the grass smell better…breeze cooler…but the one thing that remains constant is the feeling I get when I close my eyes and think about it…one thing that remains constant is the way I wish upon stars…one thing that remains constant is the desire to keep wishing no matter what…one thing that remains constant is me…