on men and heavenly bodies

Good morning! Consider playing Musetta’s Waltz by Puccini (the Moonstruck arrangement) after you’re done. Thanks for reading, I love you!

I like how men from my side of the world pull their pants up from knee to thigh before they sit on the ground. I like how they fold their legs, in ancient mirror of their ancestors. And I like how when they sit, their wrists sometimes rest on their knees, hands curled into gentle fists. There is dance in their barefooted walk, and grace in the little bend in their back upon meeting an elder. They wear white long-sleeved shirts striped with thin blue lines, like the ones in school notebooks, and they fold their sleeves right below the elbow in a perfect flat cylinder. Their hands are veiny from hard work, from moving almirahs and cots between rooms, and foisting suitcases out of cars. Their hands interfold gently, finding spaces between fingertips, as they sit on a woven sunbed and listen to the gossip of their mothers and aunts. Their skin is delicious darkness, practically engulfed by love from the sun. They shine blue by moonlight, like all dark bodies in love. It’s why the blue god Krishna says that among all the heavenly bodies in the night sky, he is the moon.

Would we have invented street-lamps if the moon didn’t exist? If the sun was the lone luminous body we saw in the sky, and only stars shone at night, our mornings would be far more exciting. Think of Helios on his golden chariot, pulling heavenly light from behind two mountain peaks! But I like quiet, cold dusks, and the moon with its paltry reflection of the sun’s own light. It is a muted mirror to the blinding power of day. The moon’s unoriginal light is still more beautiful than that many-peaked globe of fire that drills burning holes in my eyes, holes so deep and spherical that even the darkness of closed eyelids cannot erase them. It is because of the moon that we light our streets at dusk, burn candles in the dark. If the moon didn’t exist, perhaps we would never have lit up the night. We would sleep with an extra blindness, another blanket of black. It is by evening and moonlight that things happen, when the earth cools and the monsoon beckons, when I dream of palm trees, waterfalls, cotton clothes and dark, heavenly bodies.