Illusions:

Night fell even as I was taking down notes of the stories of a few amazing women from a forest-fringe village in Chhattisgarh. Hundreds of stars sparkled against the silhouettes of the massive trees; and I gazed and gazed till I couldn’t strain my neck anymore. The outside temperature fell suddenly.

The talks moved invariably to ghost stories over piping hot dinner served in the verandah of the house. I wasn’t afraid listening to them here like I usually do in the cities. Here I felt attuned to nature and thought that most of these ‘stories’ could relate to nature spirits.

An almost full moon had come up bright and sharp by the time we were ready to go. The entire forest was suffused with its cool incandescent light. The silvery mud-tracks going off into the deep jungles beckoned me, promising more mysteries. The moonlight was so dazzling and the air so nippy that I was almost convinced of moondrops instead of dewdrops at night.

The tarot card ‘Moon’ speaks of a world of illusions – a world which is not what it might seem. But standing there in the middle of a dark forest illuminated by a shimmering silver light, a night sky full of brilliant stars, a chill which made you aware of your senses, and a deep quiet that surrounded everything, this world was more magical than anything I had seen in the sunlit world.