It was a summery Sunday evening. I stood in my window, gazing at the twinkling city lights, sprawled over a great expanse. The roads were quiet, and the occasional sound of a car engine revving up the street was the only significant thing to be heard. Looking at the tall buildings afar, I stretched my vision upto its farthest point. And then I started thinking. Ten years ago, as a young girl of about 8-9 years, I used to stand in the same window, admiring the same city lights. My younger self used to make it a point to stand in the window, everyday for merely ten minutes or so. And here I was, looking outside my own window, like a stranger, unfamiliar with the view. The view hadn’t changed at all, except perhaps for a few buildings here and there. It was me who had grown. I was inevitably reminded of that young girl who used to stare at the night sky, each night and the joy she experienced in doing so. That’s when I thought. Life changes, doesn’t it? You change, your priorities change, the people around you change. The more you grow, life becomes more fast paced. You often forget to enjoy the journey while in pursuit of the destination. You start taking all the mundane things for granted but you realise their worth only when thay are no longer a part of your daily routine. And then this realization hits you, suddenly out of the blue. You realise that the age old dilemmas might have reached logical conclusions, but there are newer challenges to overcome and bigger obstacles to cross. And that is how you keep growing and materialising into newer versions of yourself, each day. They say that nothing changes day by day, but when you look back nothing is just the same. And at that point in time, I could truly feel this. And as I experienced the rush of these thoughts, I noticed that the twinkling stars in the sky had held my attention for longer than I had imagined. And so I wrote,

somewhere between then and now,
I forgot what it was to stargaze
to stare into the depths of the cosmos,
to get lost in the celestial daze.
I forgot how the sky looked like
on a clear December night,
forgot what it was to chase
those tiny pinpricks of light.
and today when I sat,
under the same sequined sky
I was reminded of the small girl;
realised that time indeed does fly.
it was this spectacle that had
been etched so firm in my mind,
never had I once thought that
I’ll leave my obsession to stargaze behind.
and so somewhere between then and now,
I left behind a piece of my heart with the sky
only to find it today, intact just as it was
even if the years have flown by.

-mugdha