The festival of Uttarayan recently went by, and sitting on the terrace, catching up about everything uniquely eventful in the year of 2020. I didn’t have much to say except the fact that I did a lot of cooking and eating – best part of it being that it was with my family. There was also something else that I was very happy about, which is associated to an anecdote from my past.

I have never met my grandfather because he had passed away one year before I was born. Despite that, hearing so many stories about him, also listening to people saying that some of my habits were just like him, I had this urge of going into the kind of past and experiencing those lost moments that I could’ve had with him. My mom, being the mind reader that she is, connected me to him. She told me to find the brightest star in the sky, and that would be my dada, looking after me. It was a heartwarming feeling, I could never go to sleep without looking at the brightest star and saying, “Goodnight dada, I love you.”

Eventually, I just knew we had a connection. Slowly, the tinier stars started disappearing but the brightest star was still there. Little did I know how that star struggled to find it’s way to me, every single night. One day it occurred that the sun set, the moon shown, but the star never came. Every single night did I wait, but it never came. Growing up, I knew that the star wasn’t my dada, and that it had disappeared because of the pollution being a barrier between us. I didn’t even think of the stars until I saw them slowly reappearing when all hope in the world was lost – 2020.

Despite possessing the knowledge that it wasn’t my dada, I was able to find solace when I looked at the stars, they’re always there to lull us to tranquility, yet why do we push them away? Why can’t we think of what we feel when we see the stars and be more thoughtful so that we don’t push them away? Why do we surround ourselves with this dark, grey wall of nothingness and toxicity?

When we were sitting on the terrace, I then heard a BOOM. Fire crackers. Then I heard a few gasps and people saying, “Wow,” they seemed to be awestruck. And yet for one hour the booms went on and the wows faded away. After a year like 2020, I don’t fear sickness or solitude, I fear the barrier that we are building every single day – knowingly or unknowingly. Whether we are able to see the stars after a few years or not, I think it is time to recognise the stars of our lives. They don’t say anything, they don’t express how much they are there for you, but what matters is, they are just always there no matter how many barriers we put up. One call, and unlike the actual stars, these ones would always even chase after us. Don’t create barriers, try to be a star for someone.

— Muskaan Darshan