Chambal. Merely uttering the name once made the heart skip a beat. Straddling the borders of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, the ravines of Chambal were no ordinary geographical feature. They resembled the torn chest of the earth itself, deep, twisting, mysterious. Even sunlight seemed hesitant to descend fully there, as if afraid it might never return. Dust rose in clouds, each particle carrying the weight of an unfinished story. In places, the silence was so thick it rang in the ears; elsewhere, a sudden sound from an unknown direction would quicken the pulse.

The night feels endless. Thick. Suffocating. Every street corner, every newsroom, every whisper asks the same question. When will dawn break? No one answers. Not the generals. Not the presidents. Not even the prophets. The powerful look up. The helpless look within.

Full-page ads fade from memory, but punchlines stick: “Ye dil maange more”, “Do shoes breathe too?”, “Jeet hai dar ke aage”, “Thanda matlab Coca-Cola”.

There was a time when love itself was rebellion. Falling in love meant defying the family. Challenging society. Whispered meetings, secret letters, stolen glances. The whole affair had the flavour of a Bollywood drama. As the old dialogue goes: “Pyar kiya to darna kya."

From the desert whispers of films like ‘Koi... Mil Gaya’ to the glowing fingertip of ‘Extra-Terrestrial’, cinema has long hinted that we are not alone. In ‘PK’, an innocent alien questions human rituals, holding up a mirror to our own absurdities. Hollywood counters with the haunting vastness of ‘Interstellar’ and the quiet arrival of the unknown in ‘Arrival’. Literature, too, has dared to imagine cosmic neighbours — from ‘The War of the Worlds’ to ‘Childhood's End’, where the sky is not a ceiling but a corridor.

Around Agra Cantt railway station or along Yamuna Kinara Road, you must have seen small children picking scrap plastic. Every few minutes, they lift a chemical-soaked rag to their noses, as if that toxic vapour is their only relief.