The night unfolded in front of her like a canvas, painting everything around her in many shades of black. She had been journeying for what felt like an eternity, traversing spaces both familiar and foreign. But it was in the embrace of the dark that she truly felt alive; as if the veil of mortality had lifted from before her eyes and freed her spirit.
The moon hung above her like a glowing disc. The stars were eerily static, eying her from their silent vigil a billion leagues away as she ventured deeper into their realm. She felt the burden of existence pressing down upon her. Yet it was in the darkness, that she found solace and escape. She was but a mere speck, but in the comfort of the dark, she felt within her the words of the bard resonating: “সীমার মাঝে, অসীম তুমি, বাজাও আপন সুর।” – “fettered, yet free, thou doth write thy own melody.”
Outside of her, the ancients were whispering. She strained her ears, but she knew not why. It was as if some deep, instinctual part of her knew that she needed to listen, to hear the secrets of the ages. The words seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once; from the earth, now no more than a distant blue marble, and from the moon, her chosen final destination, from the steely gaze of the stars, and from the inky blackness of the interstitial infinite. “There is geometry in the humming of the strings”, they whispered, “there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”
She knew her time was nigh. No one could possibly hear her since the system malfunction, precisely seven earth hours and sixteen minutes ago. She had hailed on all possible frequencies but received no response. If she had to go, then she couldn’t think of a better way to go out on. The halo of the sun was slowly disappearing behind her, as her tiny craft drifted closer and closer to the argentine orb. Her mind raced back to the days of her youth, to her first assignment as lieutenant. Those were the days! She smiled behind her visor. “What do you hear, Jhansi?”, she remembered the captain asking. “Nothing but the rain, sir!” she had replied.
As her orbiter drifted closer and closer to the moon, her mind wandered yet again. If her calculations were correct, it would take her another fifty-three earth minutes to float past the bright lunar face, while spiraling down, powerless, to the dark lunar surface. She would probably see the sun again, and the blanket of darkness would be lifted, albeit temporarily. Taking into account the moon’s gravity, and her current approach velocity, it would be another couple of hours before she crash-landed. Who knew, perhaps she might get one last peek of her home planet before it disappeared from sight.
A tingling sensation went down her spine. The far side of the moon, shrouded in mystery since the beginning of human history, and revered by peoples both old and new, would witness its first visitor. Or at least, its first human visitor. An accidental human visitor, but a human visitor nonetheless.
–
It wasn’t before she was merely a few miles off the lunar surface that the magnitude of the occasion got to her. Over the past couple of hours during which her craft had hurtled haplessly towards the pitch black, a part of the sun had swung into her view for a few minutes. It was the exact moment when it disappeared for one last time did the full weight of its absence strike her with an overwhelming sense of poignancy. Was that the last time she would ever see the sun, she wondered. Would she ever see any light ever again? Almost certainly not, unless, by some miracle of fate, she survived for long enough on the surface to see the dawn of a new lunar day. Did she want that? She didn’t know. What she did know was that there were craters and valleys, mountains and cliffs strewn across the surface, far greater in number than on the side more familiar to humans, but it was all pitch black from where she was. Would she crash inside a crater? Or would her craft slam into the jagged face of a cliff, instantly breaking in two and killing her? The many possibilities flew through her mind. It felt oddly calming. It shouldn’t, she thought, but why did it? Perhaps, when they eventually found her – many years, possibly decades later – the site of her crash would be named after her? A wry smile spread across her lips. Life flows on, she reflected, within you and without you.
She laughed at the absurdity of it all. It was a silent laugh, but a maniacal one. Nothing mattered anymore. She laughed for a full minute, throwing her head back and almost bumping the back of her helmet against the reinforced panel of her cockpit. She felt powerless yet powerful. Enervated yet invigorated. It was a feeling unlike any she had ever felt before. Her lips parted and words escaped her mouth like a hesitant traveler who was unsure of their destination. “The lunatic”, she whispered, “is in my head”.
Pause.
“The lunatic”, she repeated, “is in my head”
A shorter pause.
“You raise the blade, you make the change…
You rearrange me till I am sane”
She knew the words of course. But she wasn’t quite ready for the spontaneity with which they tumbled out.
“You lock the door,
And throw away the key…”
Pause.
“There’s someone in my head but it’s not me”
A wave of profound melancholy swept over her, followed by a feeling of inexplicable calm. Sadness and serenity, she observed. Hope and horror. Anxiety and … wait. Was that a hint of… amusement? Waves of conflicting emotions swirled in her mind and crashed against each other as her tiny craft glided silently over the pockmarked terrain. It dashed against the edge of a crater, bounced thrice, flipped over, and came to a standstill.
–
To billions of people on earth, it was just another moonrise. A handful even looked up to marvel at the full moon under a cloudless sky. On the far side, however, a voice. Silent and still, emanating from within a ruptured bodysuit inside a tiny craft that had crashed against the rim of a nondescript crater.
She gasped on her last few minutes of oxygen, as the remnant air whistled past her face and escaped into the desolate lunar wilderness. What followed was silence. An infinite and unrelenting silence. She felt her body decompress as a penetrating iciness pierced her skin, numbing her to the core. She opened her mouth to speak, but could hear no sound.
“… and if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear”
Her face turned white, as the final few words rushed through her head.
“And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”
