Earth hour! When the world sits in darkness for one hour

EARTH HOUR! 

It is my favourite hour of the year. For one hour, lights go off all around the world.

Lights all around the world are deliberately switched off. This happens not because of a power cut. This darkness is chosen by the people of the world.

That is what makes it unusual: the world, on 28th March, however briefly, decides together to switch lights off.

One hour cannot cool the planet. It cannot reverse emissions, restore forests, or solve the tension between growth and conservation. It is too small for that but there is something quite powerful in a global act of unity in restraint, even though it might be symbolic.

Light has become one of those things we no longer think about. It stays on in rooms we leave, on the streets that never sleep, on buildings that remain brightly lit even at midnight. Darkness is now something we cannot relate with, as though something is missing when the lights go out.

Yet when the lights went out here, on EARTH DAY, something changed.

Outside, the sky became clearer. We noticed stars we might otherwise have ignored. We heard sounds that we usually do not hear. It felt as though darkness shone detail on things that light had been hiding.

I asked my close family and my dearest friends to switch off their lights too, and they did. My parents went further and switched off not just the lights, but appliances too. I was really touched by that, because the one hour may have seemed like a big ask, but the willingness was genuine.

Most environmental damage happens through regular habits repeated daily: what stays running, what we assume is too small to matter, etc. Perhaps that is why one symbolic hour still has meaning. It interrupts that world's routine and reminds us even the tiny habits can make a difference.

For one hour, darkness did not feel like the absence of light. The world was quieter and the surroundings calm. In fact even conversations were lower.

From where my feet were, lights were turned off and for that hour the world revealed things to me and the rest that light often hides.