Of magical moments in life

In the movie, 'La La Land', which is otherwise an annoyingly overrated movie (I have faced the wrath from a couple of really good friends who are huge fans of the movie for saying this), there is one scene in my opinion which is easily the best scene of the movie. The setting is when the main female lead (Emma Stone) is walking kinda dejectedly, alone on an empty street in the night. She suddenly stops when out of nowhere she hears a captivatingly melancholic tune play out from a piano. She gets drawn to the source of the music and enters a restaurant/club/bar where she discovers the pianist (Ryan Ghosling's character) playing the piano and she just stands there transfixed as she watches him play. I generally consider myself adequately competent in expressing myself when I write but in that moment of the scene, it is just virtually impossible for me to do justice to describe that expression on her face as she hears and watches him play that music. It is clear that the tune has a deeply moving effect on her like she is under some spell and even after he is done, she just continues to stare at the pianist in stunned silence (kudos to Emma Stone for emoting this so brilliantly and at the end of the day she was rewarded with an Oscar for this movie). It is such a simple moment but so magical.

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23rd and 24th June 2016

 “You know when I went trekking in a nearby area of the place where we are going to, the sky was so clear that I could see the Milky Way!!”, claimed a friend of mine who from teen-hood has always had this amazing knack of knowing exactly the right thing to say to make me hyper excited about anything she thinks I would look forward to.

I tried desperately hard to be calm and measured in my response - “You’re joking right?! Don’t do this ok….don’t build my expectations so much with your exaggerations!”

“Nooo! Even if not the Milky Way you probably will see more stars than you have in your life. Seriously!”, she exclaimed responding to my incredulous look.

The context of the above conversation was when 3 close pals and I were enroute to a remote place in Himachal Pradesh named Kalga for a getaway from city life for a couple of days exactly one year back. And I gotta say…despite not being a real great fan of the mountains, that place was one of the most breathtaking I have even seen in my life. It was pristine, green and untouched by commercialism. We were putting up at a guesthouse in that area which was literally in the middle of a forest with a spectacular view of the mountains. The best part was that as we had reached on a weekday, we had the whole of the cottage guesthouse where we were staying to ourselves

But well as pretentious this may sound, the thing I was looking forward to the most was star gazing at night.  Lord knows what it is with some people and stars! Maybe its the whole ‘we are such a tiny speck in such an enormous multiverse’ thing. Or maybe it just something as uncomplicated as liking twinkly, glittery and blingey things.  Truth is that being a resident of some pretty polluted cities, I have never actually seen a sky clear enough to be dotted with stars. The only time I really recall seeing a gorgeous night sky was when I was a kid and visited my native place during one of my summer vacations but I guess even that place has become quite polluted now ‘cause I never saw that sight again ever since. So I thought this was my best opportunity – a high altitude, secluded and a virtually pollution-free village situated randomly among the Himalayas to see a crystal clear sky. So by the time the night rolled in, literally every 15 minutes, I would stick my head outside the terrace and check the sky. And frankly, the only thing I could observe was one or two stars playing peek-a-boo in the sky. “I see more than this in the sky of the most polluted city on the earth where we live” I whined  to my friend who had gotten me excited about this whole aspect in the first place. “Well our bad luck that it’s a bit cloudy today .Maybe tomorrow will be better” she said sounding apologetic. Any way after a point I think I gave up gazing outside and after making a mental note to not overhype any personal expectations in the future, I turned my attention to the excellent surroundings, food, drinks, music and company for the remainder of the night.

The next day which was a Friday, we had an extraordinary day where we trekked most of the day and by the time we returned to the guest house in the evening, we were pretty exhausted and were looking forward to cap what had till now been a PERFECT day with a quiet, chilled out night like the one we had previously. To our annoyance, when we came back, there were 2 (or more) big gangs of college kids who had hogged the common dining space which we had entire ownership of the previous day and who more less took control of the music playlist. I can become quite a grouch especially when the music I am listening to is completely opposite to my taste and so as the night progressed, the constant loud chatter from those kids and the irritating music got to my nerves (god I am old!) and I just took off, leaving alone from my friends group to our room and, as an attempt to better my mood, made a last ditch effort to look skywards from our room window. "The last night in this place and still no goddamn stars.", I muttered to myself when the sky view exactly like the preceding night managed to disappoint me. I proceeded to lie down and try to go to sleep. I think an hour or so must have passed and it had reached beyond midnight before I realized what an ungrateful brat I was being for sulking for the silliest of reasons and not being with the people with whom I had spent one of the most incredible days of my life discounting the final few hours of the day. I decided rejoin my friends who at that point still had not come to the room. 

<Now as this is a one year old memory, the exact sequence of events from this point are a little hazy so I reproduce them to the best of my memory.>

When I got out of the room, I saw 2 of them still sitting in the common area and was going to rejoin them when I heard my name being called...I turned to see from the balcony, my 3rd friend calling me from just outside the cottage. "What on earth are you doin---" I started saying a bit confused. "Come down fast and call the other 2 ...", she responded urgently. I called my other 2 friends and the 3 of us went down just outside the house to join our friend who had called us. Even in the dark I could make out the excitement on her face and then she pointed upwards. We all looked up.

And there it was.

A clear clear sky filled with stars....... It was a setting where 4 friends were huddled together on a wooden bench in a small clearing just outside a cottage guesthouse surrounded by thick intense greenery under a dark sky full of stars at I think at about one am in the night, For most part, we were gazing upwards. I don't remember the conversation that probably went  on for at least an hour. But I do remember that warmth, that camaraderie , that feeling of utter contentment. As more time passed, the sky grew darker and the stars grew so bright that now it was virtually impossible to look anywhere besides skyward, Suddenly ...out of the blue...out of nowhere, the biggest, brightest most dazzling and in my case the only SHOOTING star I have ever seen just whizzed passed us.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", we all gasped loudly. This breathtaking moment was succeeded by a moment of comedy of sorts.

"What? Where? What just happened? yelled one of my friends frantically. 

The rest of us pounced on her with flabbergasted variations of Oh my dear god!Wtf? Wth? You missed it?....you missed THAT sight? How tf ? Whats the matter with you? ...........and even till today, we give her a hard time on how she managed to miss THAT shooting star. Amazingly enough, even after that massive shooting star graced us with its fleeting presence, there was a trail of more shooting stars which followed it albeit much smaller. 

"A wave of intense happiness washed over me, and I told myself to carry this moment as a talisman of a time in my life when I was both truly content and lucky enough to realize it."

I guess the above quote describes best what I felt in that moment. I guess a lot of times, we fail to really enjoy the moment as it truly deserves to be savored and then when we look back, then we realize that in hindsight what a moment it really was. But there are those rare moments where you are just fully 100% consciously present totally and absolutely aware that what you are experiencing is magic or something very close ....whether it is being completely struck paralyzed by a piece of music or star gazing lost in the mountains with close pals. Best part is I guess beauty of life lies in the simplest of moments. 

Probably, the above 2 moments I have listed in this post sound over-dramatized or over-romanticized but there is absolutely no way...no darn way I could ever ever ever, even when I look back after 50 years, over-dramatize or over-romanticize what I felt on that trip in a June night of 2016. On the contrary, even if I exert my most powerful vocabulary skills, any word/s would fall short of the sense of wonder I truly felt that day. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) not all the most superior moments in life can be captured on camera....but they get captured in your memories... and in the heart. An sometimes, in addition, they get captured flimsily in a post like this....to serve as a reminder if or when reminding is ever needed that no matter what changes - whether the people, whether the surroundings or anything else for that matter, magical moments in the past and the happiness associated with them never change and more importantly that there will be countless moments like these that are yet to be lived in a lifetime.