Sellophane

Central Park, not Perk. Central Park in a very no-i-am-not-obsessed with friends way.
It's evening, the kind of evening where the sky moults into colors that are somewhere between molten chocolate and alcoholic pinks and purples. You know, the colors that most people see in narcotic hues.

Well, anyway it was evening. Slight, cool Wind. Bare feet and callouses, all of them caressing the matted grass. Slightly overgrown, and cool. Relief.

One lies down on the grass, and looks up. Ice cream in the meanwhile is dutifully dropped into your mouth and then you see a bat, one bat, two bats, now three and now more.
Yes it's going to be night.

The sky seems to have welded of the previous happy colors, the hendrixian pinks and the purples have now been replaced with a more Sinatran darkness. Beautiful in it's ambiguity. One moment gray, one moment a cool midnight blue, another minute the rosy shade of blood spilled in the dark.

It's night time. Had it not been Delhi, I could probably have seen more stars. Maybe half a dozen behind the cloud that looked like a lizard lazing in the sun. Maybe another behind the one that looked like a half-eaten pizza.

It doesn't matter though. It's night time, and what counts is that I can see stars. Maybe only a couple, but I see stars.

As I lie on the matted grass that grew unceremoniously on the slope, I laugh at the sky as the stars shine down.

And I roll.