A return to fields where grasshoppers were heroes, kites carried dreams, and life unfolded without hurry—or money.
By Peer Mohammad Amir Qureshi
This year, autumn arrived as if carried on swift wings—too soon, too suddenly—like a memory slipping through the narrow throat of an hourglass. Time seems to dissolve into golden dust, leaving behind only the ache of what once was, now irretrievably lost.
Along a hushed village path, cicadas tuned their trembling orchestra, their shrill chorus ushering in the equinox. There is something mystical about this season, the way trees shed their emerald silks for burnt-red tatters, as if reminding us that even beauty—no matter how radiant—is only a temporary guest. I walked past paddy fields where a stream once sparkled like molten glass. Now burdened with plastic wounds, it groaned like an exhausted vein of the earth. And yet, in its lament, the air still smelled of rain’s promise, cool and cleansing, while the willows stood like solemn sentinels beneath a pale sky. Their leaves drifted down—soft farewells stitched into the wind.
Above them, cicadas sang with stubborn devotion. Some buzzed freely as if intoxicated by the moment; others hushed themselves, guarding mysteries only the trees might interpret. I lifted my phone to capture it all—a futile attempt to freeze eternity in a single frame.
Perhaps it was nostalgia tugging at me. In childhood, cicadas were our summer companions. We believed Allah’s name was etched into their delicate backs. We chased them with reverence, cupping them gently, only to shriek when they baptized us with sudden sprays of their strange “cicada rain.” Then, with a defiant buzz, they would spring skyward, leaving us laughing, chastened, and slightly enchanted.
Those tiny wonders stitched something into us—threads of awe no classroom could replicate. Even now, their chorus ties me to the young boy I once was, to the unbroken rhythm of seasons turning and returning.
The Science Behind the Myth
We once thought cicadas cried when caught—their sudden shower a tearful plea for freedom. Growing older, and learning a little entomology, revealed the truth: it wasn’t sorrow, but the simple aftermath of their feast on xylem sap. Yet understanding the science didn’t strip the magic; if anything, it deepened it, like discovering the gears of a clock and still marveling at the time it tells.
Their empty shells fascinated us, too—papery husks clinging to willow bark like tiny relics. We imagined them as sleeping bodies waiting to wake. We’d gently place them in sunlit corners, hoping for a miracle. But the miracle had already come and gone. What we held were trophies of transformation—proof that even the smallest lives carry the grandeur of metamorphosis.
So today, when cicadas sing, science and memory meet halfway. Knowledge does not cancel wonder; it consecrates it.
Harvest Days and Grasshopper Races
Walking away from the stream, I watched laborers bent over fields, their sickles whispering through golden stalks. The sight unspooled an old cinema reel of my childhood—one where grasshoppers played starring roles.
These emerald acrobats clung to our trousers like chosen companions. My brother and I, joined by a ragtag parade of friends, turned the fields into arenas. We captured grasshoppers, tucked them into pockets or bottles, and crowned them champions of our tiny kingdom.
On golden evenings, we raided my father’s cassette collection, tying glossy reels to the insects like kite tails. When they leapt, the tape trailed behind them like black comets. We cheered as if presiding over a grand festival. But the sky wasn’t always kind—mynas and nightingales swooped like bandits, and we defended our contestants with the zeal only children possess.
A World Without Money
Sundays carried another ritual. After farmers finished threshing, grains of paddy shimmered like scattered jewels in the dust. With polythene bags in hand, we combed the stubble, gathering our small treasure. Mothers winnowed the grains with an ageless grace, separating dust from food like priestesses tending ancient altars.
Then came the chestnut sellers, wandering carriers of joy. Sometimes they bartered chestnuts for our collected paddy; sometimes they gave us clay pots in exchange. I can still taste those chestnuts—sweet, earthy, bursting with freshness. No modern fruit, no matter how delicately cultivated, carries that same spark. Those flavors belonged to a world without money, where barter was not commerce but communion.
The Kite That Carried My Heart
After harvest, childhood crowned a new season—the reign of kites.
I still remember Aijaz Bhaya, the boy who ruled the skies. His parrot-colored kites soared higher than our tallest dreams. I watched him with envy and awe, until one day he gifted me one. That moment still blurs like a miracle.
But my kite refused to fly. The sky seemed to deny me. So I learned to craft my own—from scraps of newspaper, stitching headlines into wings.
Then one day, my kite rose. It caught the wind as if it had been waiting its entire life. I ran beneath it, breathless, a procession of children following like a small festival. We launched not paper, but fragments of our souls, into the sky. Crows shrieked, eagles circled, and the heavens trembled with rivalry. But for us, it wasn’t battle—it was freedom.
Now, when I stand in those same fields, silence has taken over. No laughter, no strings tangled in poplar branches, no scrap-paper wings trapped in hedges. Only wind. Empty, unclaimed wind.
Where did that autumn go?
Where did the sky lose its song?
Epilogue
Time has marched on. The willows still stand, though their shadows fall on sullied waters. The cicadas still sing, though fewer pause to listen. Children still roam the fields—but perhaps without tape reels, grasshopper dreams, or magic etched into chitin.
And somewhere between the rustle of dry leaves and the murmur of a tired stream, I am still searching for that boy—the one who believed the world whispered secrets, who found divinity in tree bark, who raced grasshoppers toward the heavens, who tasted joy in fistfuls of stray paddy.
And every autumn, that boy returns
—if only for a moment, carried on the wings of a cicada’s song.
Where did it all go?
Where did that autumn go?
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of this Magazine. The author can be reached at
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