# The Manuscript of the Firefly: 2 The night settles in like an old familiar guest, one we've stopped trying to impress. The firefly—if we can still call it that—moves through the darkness with a rhythm that has nothing to do with the seasons or the habits of its kind. It is older now, or perhaps it has always been old. Time seems to have lost its grip on it. I watch from the threshold, neither wholly inside nor outside. The manuscript lies open on the table, its pages yellowed like the skin of someone who has lived too long. The words written there—in a hand I recognize as my own, though I cannot remember writing them—speak of a hunger that is not for light, but for the darkness itself. The firefly pauses above the page. Its glow flickers, uncertain, as if it questions the purpose of its own luminescence. I understand this hesitation. There comes a time when one must ask: what is the point of shining when all around you is already incandescent with suffering? But the light returns. It always does. Not because the firefly is heroic or resolute, but because it has no other choice. This, perhaps, is the truest form of courage—not the courage to burn brightly in defiance of the dark, but the courage to continue burning even when the dark has convinced you that burning serves no one, least of all yourself. The manuscript speaks of a certain woman who once loved me, or thought she did. Her love was like that firefly's light—intermittent, yes, but never quite extinguished. She died long ago. The firefly, however, is still here. This is the cruel mathematics of existence: some things endure that we wish would pass, while others vanish that we wished could stay. I turn the page. The handwriting becomes shakier as I move forward. It is the writing of someone who has begun to lose faith in the power of words to change anything. And yet—and this is the paradox that defines all writing—we continue to write. We continue to arrange these small symbols in the hope that they might somehow reach across the vast emptiness and touch another human heart. The firefly descends lower. Now it hovers just above the words on the page, and I wonder if it can read them. If it can, what must it make of this chronicle of my despair and occasional grace? Does it recognize itself in the text? Does it understand that it has become, for me, a kind of companion in the dark—not because it promises light, but because it asks nothing of me except to watch it continue to be? The night deepens. The manuscript grows heavier in my hands, though nothing has been added to it. This is how sorrow works—it does not increase in weight because we accumulate more of it, but because we finally understand the weight of what we have always carried. The firefly settles on the edge of the page, and I allow myself to hope that it will stay there. Not forever—I have learned not to ask for forever—but for tonight. For this small, circumscribed moment in which two solitary things, one living and one merely containing life's traces, sit together in the dark and permit themselves to believe that this, too, is a form of companionship.

Four.

I love—in the simplicity of water

I want so badly to tell you—I love.

Wait. Don't misunderstand. The moment people hear this word, they think romance, they think claims, they think relationship, they think wanting and having. But 'love' is not so narrow a word—it's an ocean, and romance is merely one of its waves.

The way people love the heroes of stories—those they'll never meet, because they're made of ink, have bodies of paper, live on the blood of imagination. Yet people weep for them, worry about them, think of them even after closing the book—is this romance? No. This is love—greater than romance, purer than romance, because it asks nothing in return.

The way a reader loves a favorite writer—doesn't know them, has never met them, wouldn't recognize them on the street, yet has memorized every word, carries every sentence in their blood. That's how I love you. This love demands nothing—it simply exists, like water. Water flows downward; that's its nature. Water doesn't know why it flows; water doesn't know where it's going—it only knows it cannot stop. My love is like that—flowing toward you, without reason, without destination.

How many things I want to tell you!

Thank goodness I'm writing, and can erase. If I were speaking, I wouldn't have that mercy—words once released into air cannot be taken back, like birds set free that never return, like seeds blown on the wind that can't be called home. But in writing there's this kindness—a finger pressed and everything vanishes, as if it never was. Half of what I've written today, I've erased—and now those deleted words float somewhere, invisible, like ghosts—the things I didn't say, those were perhaps the truest of all. Truth has such fortune, I suppose—it always disappears, while lies endure.

And after that afternoon—you know how much I slept?

A sleep like that came to me for the first time in so long—the kind of sleep where dreams don't come, only a deep darkness, so soft, so safe, like a mother's lap. Where you don't have to think of anything, don't have to become anything, need no identity, need no qualification—just existing is enough. The peace people search for their whole lives—in temples, in mosques, in mountains, by the sea—sometimes that peace comes on its own, after an afternoon, after a pani puri, and people fall asleep—the most worry-free sleep in all the world.

Five.

Three questions—or rather, the extraordinary in the ordinary

May I ask—how are you? What are you doing? What are you thinking about?

Three questions. Utterly ordinary, terribly old—from the first human to the last, these questions will be asked. Millions of people ask them every day—at tea stalls, in office elevators, over the phone. Most of the time they're not really questions at all—they're politeness, habit, an excuse to start talking.

But when I ask them of you—there's an extra weight in every word, the way petrichor clings to rainwater—the water is ordinary, but the smell is different, and that smell alone tells you this rain is not like other rain. My questions carry that scent—the smell of concern, of curiosity, of a little love—something that never makes it to my mouth, but if you're listening, you'll feel it.

Six.

The land of rivers—three desires meeting at once

You're going to the land of rivers?

I learned it the other day. Then a foolish idea took hold in my head—I told myself, I'll tell you, I'll come too. And I truly meant it, quite seriously—which boat I'd take, which ghat we'd meet at, on which bend of the river our eyes would first find each other—I planned it all out in my mind, the way children plan weddings with dolls—everything perfect, everything impossible. Then I stopped myself.

But the thought lingered even after I stopped—like air trapped at the roots of hair, invisible, yet felt the moment you turn your head.

You know, I’ve long harbored a desire to board a ship and drift down the river’s breast. And if that day were to be a full moon night—then it would be perfection upon perfection.

I love water—water teaches humility, teaches the art of flowing, teaches that when blocked, one changes course but never stops. I love the sky—it teaches vastness; teaches how much space exists on this earth; teaches us how small we are, and that this smallness is not a shame but a liberation. I love the night—night teaches honesty, because in darkness there is no need for masks; when no one watches, a person can simply be what they are.

Three things draw me separately—like three melodies that are each beautiful in their own way, but when played together, they create something else—not music, but prayer. Lying on a ship’s deck; surrounded by infinite water, above my head a sky full of stars—and that silence of night, which exists only above water, because water swallows sound, and whatever sound survives is only water’s own—*splash, splash*—the world’s most ancient lullaby.

Seven.

Re-reading—The Weight of the Word ‘Iss’

I am reading your writings again and again.

The more I read, the newer they feel—like a beloved song that sounds a little different each time you hear it; each time a new note reaches your ear that you hadn’t noticed before. The song doesn’t change—I do, and in my changing, I find new meaning in the old song. Your writing is the same—each time I read, another layer unfolds, like peeling an onion skin to find another skin beneath, and another, and another—there is no end.

You said it tenderly that day—a small word—*’iss’*.

No one has ever said it to me that way. Two syllables. One breath. Nothing more—yet sometimes two syllables are enough to change everything. ‘Ma’ is two syllables—but in these two syllables lies all safety. ‘No’ is two syllables—but in these two syllables lies all devastation. Your ‘iss’ is two syllables—but hearing it from your lips, the whole world seemed to soften, like how hard earth becomes tender when rain falls, and in that tender earth you can plant something—a seed, a hope, a beginning.

Tell me something. Anything at all. If I could hear just two words from you, I would keep them as my provisions—the way desert travelers save a little water for the hardest days, for the thirstiest nights. Your words are that water for me.

Eight.

The Roof—Face to Face with the Sky

You know, tonight again I wanted to climb to the roof.

My roof is my secret kingdom. There I am queen, and the sky is my subject—or perhaps the reverse, the sky is king and I am merely one of its subjects, and there is no distance between us, no throne, no crown—only two infinities sitting face to face, in silence.

Sometimes I sit alone on the roof through long nights. Sometimes I lie there—cold cement against my back, infinite sky before my eyes. Once I went every night, now only sometimes—like meeting an old friend now and then, but when you do meet, it feels as though no distance was ever created, no time ever passed, everything remains as it was. The roof is that friend to me—faithful, silent, eternal.

There I watch the sky—I don’t count the stars, just gaze, the way you gaze at someone’s face without needing words, the gazing itself a complete sentence. I caress the tree leaves—the tree never refuses; never asks why you’ve come so late; never says you are strange. The tree simply is, and that simple being is the greatest comfort.

I whisper—to whom, I don’t even know myself. Perhaps to the night. Perhaps to myself. Perhaps to God, if God exists. Perhaps to someone who has not yet come—or will never come—both are equally possible, and both are equally beautiful, because the beauty of waiting does not depend on its outcome.

Many people I know find me a little strange—the way I’m not afraid sitting alone on the roof at night. They think there are ghosts; they think there is danger; they think it’s abnormal to be alone in the dark.

They don’t understand. To me, the roof at night is the safest place in the world—because there, you need wear no mask. In the daylight, we are all actors—smiling before one person, solemn before another, steely-faced before a third, courteous before a fourth. But on the roof, at night…alone—I am, only I. And I love that ‘I’ the most—because it is honest.

Tonight I’ll sit to read. My mood is splendid—and when my mood is good, I can read like nothing else. Joy sharpens my mind, the way a whetstone sharpens a blade—tonight the book won’t cut me; I’ll cut through the book.

No.

Morning—a God descending by the temple stairs

On what morning did you call? No one knows.
My heart weeps in solitude—no one believes it.
I return with a melancholy soul, I gaze at everyone’s face—
No one draws me the way you do.

Good morning.

I wanted to tell you a poem. I thought long about which one to give—there are so many beautiful poems in the world, but none of them fit quite right, the way borrowed clothes don’t sit properly on the body—either a little too big, or a little too small, or the color isn’t quite mine. In the end, this one came—because it isn’t borrowed. It comes from within me, in my own voice, in my own imperfection.

You know, all this time you seemed like someone very close to my soul—yet beyond reach.

Like a god. Or mist frozen atop a distant mountain—visible, but if you stretch out your hand to touch it, you grasp only air, and your fingers return wet. Or like a childhood memory—which exists in the mind, but there is no way back to it. You were that god, that mist, that memory—present, but untouchable.

Then when that person spoke to me—if a god were to suddenly descend the temple stairs wearing sandals, step into the dust, and sit beside me and say, ‘Tell me, what’s happened?’—it feels a certain way; that’s exactly what I felt that day. My mind became utterly confused. Something inside my chest was racing. My hands turned cold. And no words came from my mouth—because what would a person say to a god? Then there is only looking.