Where Did Guwahati’s Fireflies Go?

There was a time in Guwahati when the night had a heartbeat.

Not the buzz of transformers or the irritated honks echoing down the Beltola road, but a softer, more magical rhythm—one you could feel in the air if you stood still enough. A light, a blink, a pause—then another. Jonaki Poruwa. Fireflies. Living lanterns that stitched the darkness with wonder.

I remember those nights. The kind that smelled of damp earth and betel nut, the kind that came alive after mango rains. In Japorigog, in Hatigaon, on the whispering banks of the Bharalu, they would arrive like secrets too sacred for daylight. We chased them with cupped palms and wide eyes, not to keep—but to believe.

Today, that magic is gone.

The fireflies have left. Silently. Without a warning. Without protest. And without anyone noticing.

If this sounds like nostalgia, it is. But it is also a red light blinking in reverse. A warning. A eulogy for something we never imagined would leave us—not because we didn't care, but because we assumed they’d always be there.

Like rain in April. Like the moon over Nilachal.

But ask the earth, and she’ll tell you in silence. Ask the night, and she’ll reply with neon.

In chasing brightness, we have forgotten light.

Guwahati today is a city in a hurry—taller, louder, flashier. We’ve paved paradise for parking lots, exchanged forests for flyovers, and scrubbed every inch of the wild into something Instagrammable. But in our march toward development, we’ve erased the quiet habitats that fireflies once called home: the damp, the dark, the decaying mulch where magic lived.

And here’s the tragic irony: fireflies don’t need much to survive. Just moist earth. Just a little darkness. Just silence. But we've taken even that.

Where Have They Gone?

Firefly populations are plummeting across the world, and the reasons are heartbreakingly simple:

Habitat loss. Light pollution. Pesticides. Climate change.

We’ve doused their ecosystems in poison, bulldozed their breeding grounds, and replaced their sacred darkness with white LEDs and hoardings that scream into the night.

Fireflies use light to speak—to flirt, to find love, to belong. But in a city where even the moon gets drowned out by floodlights, who’s listening?

A few days ago, I spoke to a child in Six Mile. His eyes were glued to a cartoon where animated fireflies granted wishes. I asked if he had ever seen a real one. He blinked and said, “You mean those fairy lights?”

And I didn’t know whether to laugh or mourn.

This is how extinction begins—not with a bang, but with forgetting. The fireflies are not extinct yet. But they have been exiled. And if we're not careful, our children will know them only as bedtime myths, nestled between unicorns and dragons.

A Call, Not a Lament

This editorial isn’t just a goodbye. It’s a plea.

Let us reclaim the night.

Let us bring back the sacred dark—not the kind that frightens, but the kind that cradles stars and jonakis alike. Let’s turn off what we don’t need. Let’s plant native. Let’s let that patch behind the house grow wild again. Let’s be brave enough to embrace a little decay, a little damp, a little mystery.

Because when fireflies disappear, it’s not just an insect we lose. We lose something in ourselves—the part that still believes in wonder.

I still go out some nights. I climb to my rooftop, stare out over the city—GS Road blinking like a nervous ticker tape, the stadium’s floodlights throwing shadows across the sky—and I wait.

Sometimes, I think I see a flicker behind a banana tree. Sometimes I imagine I didn’t. But I wait anyway.

Because Guwahati is not just a city of concrete and cafes. We are a city of rivers and riddles. A place where folktales say fireflies are forest spirits, where the moon guides our festivals, and where every child should know what it's like to see light blink softly from a leaf.

We owe them that.

Before the Last Light Fades

Fireflies are more than nostalgia. They are ecological indicators. Their absence tells us what textbooks won’t: that our soil is poisoned, our nights too loud, our lives too artificial.

But it’s not too late. Not yet.

We can still change. We can still remember. We can still bring back the kind of night where Jonakis write poetry in the dark.

Let Guwahati be the first to blink back.

Epilogue

Some nights, I still wait. I watch the horizon for a flicker not made by humans. And though I haven’t seen a jonaki in years, I still believe.

Because fireflies may have left our skies—but they haven’t yet left our stories.

And as long as we remember, they are not gone.

Not yet.

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