In the 1990s in Assam, we used to regularly face load-shedding every evening. With no mobile phones and gadgets at the time, we all had to just sit in the dark with candles and lanterns, and talk to each other and play. Sometimes someone would switch on the radio, or simply hum a song, waiting for the electricity to come back before its time to cook dinner. Back then, most small-town houses in the region were characteristically ‘Assam-type’ houses: a sloping roof, spacious verandah and simple rectangular structure. It is actually a great architectural style for an earthquake-prone area. I was between 5 and 8 years old, spending time at my grandma’s place. I remember being very happy when the lights went out – I didn’t have to study and could just escape with my thoughts, in my imaginary world. There was a piece of land outside her house with lush grass, shrubs and plants. When everything went dark, the fireflies would come out, shining bright and sparkly. It was like my imaginary world merged with the fairytale surroundings. I surely tried to touch them, catch them, but my grandma instilled a funny fear into my toddler brain.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyShe used to say: “Don’t touch it, or you’ll have an upset stomach!”The good little naive girl in me didn’t ask for logic. I just believed her, and I really didn’t want to be sick. So, I never caught a firefly! But I danced with them and roamed around. We let each other be, coexisting in a world with real delights of nature and my expansive imagination. Looking back, I realise that my grandma’s warning, albeit unscientific, taught me something: some beautiful things in life are meant to be admired from a distance, not held, acquired, or possessed.It wasn’t until years later, working in Mumbai’s concrete urban sprawl, around the 2010s, that for the first time in many years I realised what we had lost. My cousin mentioned that there were ‘firefly festivals’ being organised. As he reminisced about growing up in actual firefly-filled lanes, I got a flashback of my load-shedding nights at Grandma’s place. That was also when I realised it had been a long time since I had seen fireflies myself. I felt a bit sad. Fireflies are called jonak in my native language, Assamese. And there are a lot of references to it in Assamese songs and poetry. There are also streets titled “jonaaki path“, but I wonder if the fireflies survive now with the urban environment, pollution and noise. Jonaki seems to now exist just as word used for romanticisation. After the Covid-19 pandemic, I moved out of Mumbai and started living in a village in Goa with a local family. Last year, one day when the lights went out in the village and the inverter stopped working, I went out to sit on the porch. I was chatting with the house owner, his teenage daughters and his mom, eating chips, when the youngest in the house, a 9-year-old girl, exclaimed: “Oohh, kazulo!” (in Konkani), and pointed to a few tiny fireflies near the mango tree in front of the house.In a flash, it brought back memories from my childhood. As I told them my childhood story, they laughed at my grandma’s quirky way to stop me from disturbing the insects. My house owner too reminisced how fireflies were in abundance while he was growing up in the same neighbourhood, but now they can only catch glimpses of a few. Today, the firefly populations are declining, and events like ‘firefly festivals’, meant to celebrate them, may be hastening their disappearance. These are delicate creatures, and if we want the future generations to witness the magic that I (and probably you too) witnessed in our childhoods, we have to be careful. Let them be. Don’t click pictures and flash lights on them. It may not be true that you’ll have an upset stomach if you hold a firefly, but we might make them vanish just for our vanity.Namrata Gohain is a craft entrepreneur-turned-storyteller, writer and content producer.We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.Read the series here.