The night is dark in the village. When I say dark, I mean pitch black; the darkness seems to engulf you, slowly, taking its time, relishing every single moment while it blankets you. Even when you are indoors, the LED lights feel low on the eyes, so low that your eyes struggle to focus. Maybe it’s the damned Palli Bidyut with its shady supplies of electricity in the rural areas, or maybe it’s the darkness, seeping into the room through the cracks between the walls and the tin roof. There is no fighting it, this darkness, you slowly give up and the lack of light eats your soul bit by bit.

The days are the opposite. The sun pours gallons of golden rays over the vast landscape, so much so that even the soothing rice fields seem to shoot thousands of tiny needles straight into your eyes. There is no solace in the shade of the trees, you sit stupefied with your heart full of darkness you can’t wipe off, your eyes burning and full of tears.

I have begun writing this journal as an inquiry. I want to see if this can bring some life back into me. Even as I am writing this, I feel like quitting. What’s the point of it all? It was a poem I read when I was very young, in my first year of the university, eyes sparkling, thinking I knew everything, thinking I was a nihilist. I wish I could tell that young me now how ridiculous she was, she knew nothing about nihilism. It is not until you accept defeat that you can ever know what emptiness means in its true form.