Let us light the lamp. Let the roof, window, veranda – entire house, the road that takes a left turn down the south to a Chhatim tree, which intoxicates the evening with wild scent of its unwieldy flowers, be awash with light.
Let us light the lamp the red-earth road that runs parallel to Damodar river that till the other day was a home to Kash plants that broke into flowers in lakhs mile after mile and from a distance, looks like an extension of river in its foaming fury raging forth and now is reduced to sporadic pile of burnt-down Kash stubble.
Let us light the lamp the other side of river where Babu da fries a potato pan-cake in a run-down shop in greasy mustard oil under a fader light from a hurricane hanging off a nail from an old and infirm bamboo pole. In reality, the hurricane emits darkness more as the glass chimney darkens gloomily from over-use. Babu da recently comes back home from other state after losing job in pandemic-induced crisis.
Let us light the lamp cutting across the borders of my town, village, district, state, country after country, across the oceans, in a country where people give voice to their liberty that was trumped by a bully.
Let us light the lamp the entire planet so that an astronaut or a scientist — a man who roams about in other planet in his search for home away from pandemic that is turning threateningly endemic to civilization, pollution that is getting pulverizing in its devastation to life, population that goes into exponential explosion, can look up and find his own planet that is lighting in blinding flame in celebration of life with its due share of smile and cry amidst grinding darkness impregnating an eerie silence all around.