All we are is dust

Our neighbor, Pranjal, also a photographer, invited me to photograph a meteor shower over the Himalayas. The celestial event I was invited to witness was called the Geminids meteor shower, a predictable annual event which usually peaked between December 13 and 14. Under optimal conditions, there was a possibility of viewing more than a hundred meteors per hour. The first time Geminids was observed was in 1862. In 2020, this prolific event happened to coincide with a new moon and clear skies.

I considered myself mostly a people photographer, but Pranjal and I shared a mutual fascination with light, nature, and the maya of life. He said, the meteor showers would peak at 2 a.m., some three hours past my bedtime. I kept discovering more and more excuses for not going — It’s at two in the morning. I need to wake up early to meditate. I have to finish writing the piece I was working on. I’m going to freeze my backside off. I have to wear all these layers. The list went on, but the best excuse of them all was “There will always be another night.” And then I thought to myself, how often was I going to get an opportunity to witness a meteor shower in front of the Himalayas on a new moon night. All I had to do was agree to be driven twenty minutes at midnight. Reason eventually prevailed over laziness. I decided to go. 

It was 34℉ when I started getting ready. I wore six layers above my waist — a t-shirt, a thermal vest, a flannel shirt, a sweater, a woolen jacket, and a down jacket — in that specific order. Below my waist, I wore three layers — a pair of underwear, a pair of pajamas (thermal pants were in the laundry), and a pair of corduroys. Below my ankles, it was just two layers — a pair of regular socks and a pair of woolen socks. Other accessories included a pair of hiking shoes, two woolen hats, and two pairs of gloves (one pair that allowed me to operate my camera, and one to wear over the other pair when I was not using my camera). When I returned home at two in the morning, I would have to strip off sixteen items before changing into my sleeping clothes. Cold weather enthusiasts would call me sissy, but it didn’t matter; I needed to be comfortable.

The vista point, Him Darshan, which literally translated to himalayan views, was nestled up in the Nainital hills at an altitude of 7,500 feet. It was a twenty-minute drive from the place we have been calling home for the last three months. We drove on Kilbury road, wide enough for one car to pass through, but when two cars had to cross each other — one car had to pull over towards the mountain wall, and the other towards an unprotected cliff. When we arrived at Him Darshan around midnight, two photographers were already busy setting up their cameras, but I was not quite ready to set up my gear; I wanted to take it all in first.

Few hundred feet below where we stood, a few scattered street lights in the valley nonchalantly mingled with the stars above. The night was clear; we could see as far as Mukteshwar, Almora, and Ranikhet — popular hill destinations in the state of Uttarakhand. The seemingly endless sky was lit only by stars. Satyanarayan temple, a few hundred feet to my left and lit by a focus light was flaunting its vibrant yellow paint. Behind me, the canopy in the hills was dense and mostly just dark. Much further in the distance, beyond what seemed like a dozen mountain ridges, were the mighty Himalayas — silhouettes of Trishul, Nanda Devi, Nand Kot peaks were barely visible, but marked the horizon and kept us oriented. It felt like I was standing right in the center of nature.

I set up the tripod and pointed the camera towards the sky. Touching cold metal with half-gloved hands on a freezing night was quite the departure from the winter sun I basked in the morning before. The two other photographers whom we had met earlier, set up their cameras to automatically shoot fifteen-second exposures one after another. They smoked a couple of cigarettes and went back to the comfort of their heated car. Thirty minutes in, my toes were numb and I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. A white car, lit only by itself, blaring music and all, pulled up. It was Pranjal’s friends. Two young men and a woman stepped out of the car and joined us. They were not photographers, just a group of people who preferred star gazing over sleep. The five of us seemed to have the Himalayas and the galaxies all to ourselves. Together, we witnessed everything we were part of, and everything we were excluded out of. 

When one of Pranjal’s friends spotted his third shooting star of the night, one of his other friends complained, “All I see is a question mark in the sky!” The question mark in question was the backside of the Great Bear, a constellation also known as the Ursa Major. Someone pointed to other constellations visible in the moonless sky — The Orion, Ursa Minor, and the Andromeda. “The earth is moving around the Sun at 67,000 miles an hour and spinning on its axis at 1,000 miles an hour. Yet we don’t feel a thing. How can you even begin to explain that?” he wanted to know.

Thank gravity, not God, I remember thinking to myself then.

“Did you see it? Did you see it?” one of Pranjal’s friends screamed, giddy with excitement — when I was still fighting with my camera to lay its focus on a single star, any star. There were thousands of stars to choose from, but my camera was in no mood to cooperate. I was here to see shooting stars, not get frustrated with technology, I said to myself before I broke with my camera to watch the night sky.

Every time someone spotted a shooting star, we heard oohs, aahs, and wows. And for every one of those sounds of euphoria, there was always at least one voice which conceded, “I missed that one!” I was yet to see my first shooting star that night. One of Pranjal’s friends suggested that I keep staring in a single direction while expanding my peripheral vision. Sure enough, about a minute later, I saw a streak of light blast through the sky — a tiny speck with its brief appearance, was mysterious enough for anyone to get excited, let alone me.

I didn’t understand why meteor showers happened, and neither was I interested in learning the science. Somehow, the absence of curiosity and the lack of enthusiasm for gaining knowledge seemed gratifying; observing without seeking understanding made the celestial event all the more enchanting. 

The knowledge we accrue goes only so far. Why do comets leave debris that lights up the sky? Why do comets exist in the first place? Why does the earth spin? Why does gravity exist? Why does life exist? At some point, we are bound to run out of answers for a string of why’s. I’m convinced, neither science nor faith can explain the deeper mysteries of the world we live in. Sometimes, we need to leave magic alone without trying to make sense of it. What we don’t know is what makes our world so much more beautiful. If we knew everything, and if we understood everything, life would be far less exciting. 

I spotted one more. And another one. And another one. The curtains were drawn and the luminous spectacle in the sky had begun. Cosmic dust flamed themselves erratically and dainty light drops kept falling from the sky one after another, without a whisper. When the meteors took a break, I returned to fiddle with my camera. Pranjal, clearly having photographed stars before, helped me set up the focus. Using a powerful flashlight, he painted the trees with light while our camera shutters remained open. Brake lights from one of the parked cars cast a red light on the mountains. Despite all the drama, all my photographs from the night were worthless. I wasn’t complaining; the memories from the night made up for it a billion times over.

With no exchange of words, the five of us agreed to speak no more and just watch the theatrics conceived and performed by nature. Without commentary, without excitement, and without judgment — in silence, we were all but one, connected only in spirit by the stars above us. I had never seen these many stars in my life, let alone so many meteors. When the night was over, I must have seen at least ten meteors, but the count didn’t seem to matter. 

 Meteors, after making themselves felt, disappear just as fast they come to life, much the same way humans exist on a cosmic timeline. Apparently, there are two hundred billion galaxies and one billion trillion stars in the “observable” universe. In the midst of it all, there is one planet we call home. And on that insignificant piece of real estate called earth, each of us occupy no more than one square foot of space.

All we are is dust. All we are is dust.