The place was in the middle of a paddy field — about a hundred miles away from locality. I had to pass several army check posts before I could reach there. An unearthly wind swept across the plane intermittently; the air smelled of nostalgia. I walked through the tree-lined park and along the fences surrounding the field. In the distance, I could see a little girl carefully setting up her toy telescope, oblivious of the woman standing a few yards behind her. Upon sensing my presence, she looked behind.

"How did you find me?" She asked with her eyes sparkling with anticipation; as if to verify something she already knew.

"It was hard." I blurted out. In my mind, I wanted to say, "I walked around ‘till my feet were blistered, ‘till I'd almost given up hope and started regretting even coming here.”

She smiled. She revealed that she frequented that place and therefore knew the best  spot for stargazing.

"Come here, take a peek at Earendel”, she ushered me to her telescope. It was made of paper, pencils and binoculars.

“How do you know it's Earendel?”

“I just do.”

She said Earendel shined bright some 28 billion light years away; It looked buoyant and spontaneous; entirely undeterred by its keen observers on a planet called Earth and that it made her feel infinitesimally small.

Listening to her was surreal. I wanted to tell her how I was doing myself; how beautiful my week was; how I still loved the stars just as much, but was jailed in a city -- a city I grew to like. But I didn’t want to give her any spoilers from her own story. Yet, I felt an overwhelming urge to tell her that her achievements in future will never define her; what will, in fact, define her are the days spent in the mango orchard with a Disney book in her lap; the days that start with slow mornings and end with a peaceful bed-time reading session. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for not protecting her when she was forcefully sent to after-school tutorials during the afternoons that were supposed to be spent playing hide and seek with her playmates. I wanted to apologise for all the times she was made to feel that counting stars was not worth her time and that the only fruitful use of time was doing something she didn’t enjoy.

The wind swept across the field. The place was lit by the starry sky. We sat there on the ground beneath a million stars, quietly embracing nature's serenity with wonders in our eyes. It was nothing. Yet, it was everything. For it was the essence of existence — the only thing we’ll ever know.

“I think you should leave now.”

“Why?”

“This is when I start the counting.”

"Counting what?" I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

"All the stars you couldn’t count in your lost, misspent childhood."

***

Shahreen Khan Taan is a young writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is currently pursuing her bachelor's degree from North South University. She is an avid reader, who also happens to be a Tagore enthusiast.