When I was a kid in India, my dad used to take my brother and me out on the balcony at night and show us the stars. He knew all the major constellations and could tell us all the stories behind them. There were thousands, millions of stars. Big ones, small ones, some with a steady glow, others that flickered and went out as we watched. Shooting stars too. I could never understand how many had died hundreds of years before, but we could still see their lights.
I went overseas to university and it was many years before I returned home. That first night, wide awake due to jetlag, I crept outside and looked up at the sky, hoping to see the stars I’d watched with Dad as a kid. It was the dry season, no possibility of rain for several months, but the night sky was dark and there were no stars to be seen.
Where had they gone, I asked? Dad sighed. Factories, cars, cigarettes, he explained, had all conspired to create a pollution barrier between the people and the heavens. It was a long time since he’d seen stars.
Every time I visited, Dad and I would sit outside and stare hopefully up at the night sky. But we never saw the stars. They seemed to be gone for ever.
Last week Dad died and I returned home for the funeral. It wasn’t easy during the coronavirus pandemic. But the Indian government arranged flights for the many thousands of citizens trapped overseas by border closures, and my father’s funeral secured a seat for my son and me.
For the first time in perhaps a century, the road from the airport was almost deserted. No traffic, no roadside fires or market stalls, few people with their cigarettes. The factories which had belched clouds of greasy smoke into the sky for decades were closed and the haze over the rooftops which only a year before had seemed permanent had vanished.
That first night, wide awake due to jetlag, my son and I crept outside and looked up at the night sky. There were the stars Dad and I had counted all those years ago.
Thanks to the virus, factories were closed, cars locked in garages, most planes confined to the ground. Thousands, no millions, of stars could now be seen glittering and dancing above our heads. Symbols of hope for the future.
Dad would have been so happy.
I went overseas to university and it was many years before I returned home. That first night, wide awake due to jetlag, I crept outside and looked up at the sky, hoping to see the stars I’d watched with Dad as a kid. It was the dry season, no possibility of rain for several months, but the night sky was dark and there were no stars to be seen.
Where had they gone, I asked? Dad sighed. Factories, cars, cigarettes, he explained, had all conspired to create a pollution barrier between the people and the heavens. It was a long time since he’d seen stars.
Every time I visited, Dad and I would sit outside and stare hopefully up at the night sky. But we never saw the stars. They seemed to be gone for ever.
Last week Dad died and I returned home for the funeral. It wasn’t easy during the coronavirus pandemic. But the Indian government arranged flights for the many thousands of citizens trapped overseas by border closures, and my father’s funeral secured a seat for my son and me.
For the first time in perhaps a century, the road from the airport was almost deserted. No traffic, no roadside fires or market stalls, few people with their cigarettes. The factories which had belched clouds of greasy smoke into the sky for decades were closed and the haze over the rooftops which only a year before had seemed permanent had vanished.
That first night, wide awake due to jetlag, my son and I crept outside and looked up at the night sky. There were the stars Dad and I had counted all those years ago.
Thanks to the virus, factories were closed, cars locked in garages, most planes confined to the ground. Thousands, no millions, of stars could now be seen glittering and dancing above our heads. Symbols of hope for the future.
Dad would have been so happy.