The Night poisons the Sun

And yet it's not the real enemy.

It’s less than 20 days now…
Results are coming in and these might make my career or break it (sort of).

What most study abroad aspirants don’t know is that sometimes you have to think it like how the Americans are thinking. And getting your application in the early action or early decision might be the best bet you could have as an international applicant.

I took the plunge. Eight schools in the Early round.

Three will respond in January, the rest by December. And here I am, a small guy from the small, sweet city of Kalyani, chasing the biggest dreams in the best universities in the world. It’s terrifying.

My heart’s racing like it’s in a marathon with no finish line in sight.

Even when I’m quiet, my mind makes me ask, question & doubt almost everything sometimes… It’s like putting yourself in a box full of loudspeakers…

Constant questioning, relentless self-interrogation.
Sometimes, hearing your own thoughts on repeat is its own kind of hell.

You know that feeling? Parents yelling out of nowhere, and you’re just there, stuck. It’s like that, but worse because you’re trapped in your own head.

No escape.
Just your thoughts spiraling into the darkness.

The darkness creeps in and you can’t do anything except than becoming a part of it.

I watched it…
The sun getting eaten by the dusk…
I was practicing kicks in karate…

The time would be around 5pm in India right now…
The sky turns into a slight orange tinge… No one notices how the night poisons the day, how the orange shifts to crimson like a wound slowly opening.

The slight orange becomes crimson. Especially the clouds.
The clouds are like knights fighting through the dark shallow haze that slowly sets in.
They are blood red… Like the countless lives going through the darkness and becoming one with it… the dark and light… no, it’s Prussian blue against blood red.

The clouds slowly enter the mid-darkened sky…
They take on a pale white cloak.… Sun is just two-thirds below the horizon…

I feel like the one in control.
Just like you watch the villain kill someone.

Either the villain controls the killing or works on your orders…
The villain isn’t the night…
And yet the sun & its rays are getting plunged into the darkness.

No, perhaps the villain is the silence that comes with it.

I feel like a prisoner.
It’s like the villain is punishing me to see that holy sun die.
And yet, here I’m incapable of anything.

I can’t rescue the Sun…
I can only be one with the darkness and let it ravage through me.

What if this is it?
God, is this what you have made me???…
I’ve seen quite a few sunsets and sunrises and yet, running through the loop of time.

The darkness finally wins…
I can see a lone star. I know it’s Jupiter.
Because that’s the brightest. That’s not because of this brightness.

Proximity and size. That’s what makes it stand out.

Relativity.

One word to define the absurdity and beauty of human existence. Everything matters because of something else. Without the night, would we cherish the day? Without darkness, would we even recognize the light?

No matter how bright we burn, there will always be shadows waiting to reclaim the sky.

The night has won the battle.
The war can’t be won.

It’s a loop after all.
The sun rises…
Night loses, the sun sets…
And yet, the night wins again.

And so, the loop continues. The sun will rise again, triumphant for a time, only to fall once more. The night will return, claiming its victory in silence.

The moon rises, the lone messenger, & whispers…
The night isn’t absolute & it’s not the enemy you think it is.

Few notice, fewer appreciate it.

The Seduction of Shadows

Darkness isn’t always the enemy. Sometimes it cradles us in its velvet embrace, offering a kind of solace the day cannot. It strips away the distractions, forcing us to confront the raw, unfiltered truths we bury beneath the noise of light. There’s a seduction in its silence, a strange euphoria that hums beneath the surface.

It’s a paradox: the darkness that terrifies us is the same darkness that reveals who we are. We fear it, yet we need it. In its depths, we find our most honest reflections.

The night whispers secrets the day dares not speak. It tells of endings and beginnings, of the inevitable decay of time, and the small, fleeting moments that light up our lives like dying stars.

Perhaps the real war isn’t between light and dark but within us—the eternal struggle to find meaning in cycles we can’t control, to make peace with the knowledge that even in light, shadows persist.

And maybe, just maybe, the moon doesn’t rise to console us but to remind us of a truth we often refuse to see:

The darkness was never the enemy. It was always part of the ‘design’.

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