Midnight Wanderings

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
- Jorge Luis Borges


A few weeks back, after meeting a friend for dinner, I was about to hail a rick to head back home but something stopped me. I felt this urge to walk instead. I had never walked that particular route so late in the night and I knew it would take me at least an hour and a half to get back. I had been out the whole day and was quite exhausted. Reason dictated it was an ill advised venture but something more powerful than rationality seemed to be at work.

Walking is something I’m quite prone to doing at pretty much all odd hours of the day but something just felt a bit different about that night. I didn’t have anybody for company nor did I have any music to listen to-nothing to distract me or to keep me occupied. Instead I felt a curious sense of attachment to the road I was walking on. There’s something about walking in the heart of a city at night that is entirely different from the daytime.

My senses just seemed heightened somehow. The road had so much to offer that I hadn’t even noticed before. Details opened themselves up for observation. Everything appeared to be telling a story, right down to the litter strewn at the side of the street-movie tickets, old chocolate wrappers all illuminated by the eerie yellow glow of a streetlight.

I noticed old houses I had always driven right past before. Trees obstructed most of the view and walking gave me a chance to stop and look through the gates at the overgrown gardens, flaking walls stained by decades of rain, reeking of neglect but still standing tall. Yet I had never even seen them before. I didn’t just glaze over the homeless man under the bridge. I saw his tiny bundle of possessions, how he was totally oblivious to the passing cars pouring their headlights on his face, seemingly content with his lot, the rickshaw driver fast asleep in his vehicle under an old banyan tree- a newspaper covering his face, dogs exploring the streets- free at last to roam about without fear in the territories they’ve carved out of the man-made landscape they inhabit. I read the graffiti on the walls, read the posters-everything seeming so much grittier, so much more real.

As the number of people on the roads diminishes, a curious sense of harmony in the world starts gaining predominance. Although I don’t know if I can attribute that to genuine peacefulness, or a feeling of resignation and acceptance of the way things are.

There’s something about the night that reveals the extremes of life. You see luxury sedans passing by- music blaring, the road below them lit blue with the lights on the underside of the car. You go by unnoticed, as inconsequential as the homeless man asleep with his tarpaulin sheet for warmth. I realise that most of the time I’m the one who’s whizzing past-seeing but not really observing what’s passing by.
Emotions, moods, feelings are heightened in the late hours of the night-loneliness, love, sadness, camaraderie, anger, joy- all of it comes pouring out, becomes more intense in the dark. People finally drop their masks, their facades of normalcy, whether it’s because of exhaustion, privacy, alcohol or a return to the company of someone they love and trust. People become their ‘true selves’, with all the associated good and bad connotations. The soft fuzzy glow of a halogen light seems to reveal more than the blazing sun on a cloudless day. The neon lights of signboards casting a glow on people lets you know more than the brightest of days.

The waiters, standing under a streetlight, smoking a cigarette after a long day’s work were finally back to being themselves. The girl sitting on the back of a bike, screaming at the top of her lungs felt her inhibitions fall. The night is more accepting of us as we really are-flaws and all. When you’re lying in bed ready to go to sleep, when your guards are down, when you don’t need to project an ‘image’ to the world, when there aren’t a million sounds around you filling your mind, that’s when you see yourself for who you really are.