“An ode to the hot summer nights of the 80s when fireflies came in swarms and put on a soundless light show as we lay on our backs staring at the million stars in the sky.”
There was always a race to spot the saptarishi, the constellation of the seven sages, as we lay on our backs staring at the million stars. It was only much later that I learnt the constellation’s formal name (and rather boring name, I thought) – Ursa Major.
Power outages plunged the entire neighbourhood into quiet darkness and it only made the stars shinier and even more beautiful. We whispered and giggled till some grown-up from the verandah downstairs, who was trying to sleep, would tick us off.
There was more magic to come. Watching the stars was just a prelude to the main feature film that followed… Out of nowhere appeared some more tiny stars, but this time they floated around our beds in the dark. We could even touch them! They were the jugnoos or fireflies!
Decades later, I still remember the first time I saw them on the terrace at Jammu. I was awestruck and also scared (having been bitten by wasps several times).
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The fireflies came in swarms and put on a soundless light show. We stayed still and allowed the glowworms to sit on us. They were weightless and provided us hours of thrill. Much later I learnt that fireflies flicker to find their mates.
Sometimes we raised our arm up in the air and waited patiently for a jugnoo to settle on it. That often caused several arms to bump into each other and that in turn ended in squabbles. But all was forgiven and forgotten by the time alu-puri and fresh creamy curd were set before us on the breakfast table the following morning.
Like my childhood, the starry nights and floating jugnoos are also a thing of the past. By the mid-1990s, I had moved to Delhi for college and the fireflies were few and far between in the national capital.
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My next encounter with fireflies was in 2004 when I travelled to Maharashtra for reporting assignments. I had reached Dahanu, a tribal-dominated eco-fragile coastal town in the north of Mumbai, famous for its Chiku (sapota) orchards, most of them owned by the Parsis. I stayed with Nargis Irani, a fiery Parsi lady, who had taken on a thermal power plant. People in Dahanu complained the power plant was polluting the air and adversely impacting the yield of their Chiku fruit.
I set out for an evening walk amidst the orchards when I spotted them! Fireflies gradually lit up the darkness. At first, there were only a few, but gradually their numbers grew as more and more of them appeared.
I could have cried. It reminded me of the world of our lost childhood; my cousins with whom I jostled for space on the narrow charpais on the terrace and the hunt for the saptarishi.
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Once again earlier this month, I met the fireflies. It was at a village called Kairi near the India-Nepal border. I was travelling through the villages of Pashchim Champaran in north Bihar, reporting on the devastating floods there, when we reached Kairi late in the evening.
The village was in darkness except for some flickering light from a few of the homes. Suddenly, a tiny light detached itself from somewhere, floated past my eyes and settled on our parked jeep. It was a jugnoo and I was ecstatic.
The exhaustion of travelling all day without a proper meal just fell away from me. We had stopped at Kairi for only a little while. And, in those few minutes, I found my childhood again, if only momentarily.
But, unlike our childhood which is a thing of the past, fireflies can be saved from disappearing. They are already on a decline. Habitat loss due to urbanisation and industrialisation, increased use of chemicals and pesticides, and light pollution are killing them.
Want to save the fireflies? Switch off the lights often, reduce the usage of chemicals, and let the grass grow. The fireflies would surely like that.
*Nidhi Jamwal is a Mumbai-based journalist who reports on environment, climate, and rural issues. Follow her on X @JamwalNidhi
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Credit: Gen AI https://deepai.org/
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