New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- When my father died over two decades ago, my mother told my little niece that her Dadubhai or grandfather had become a star. They stood on our balcony in Kolkata, looking up at the night sky and trying to find the "Dadubhai star".

In childish euphemism, death was becoming a star.

I remember looking up at the sky the night my mother died this year. There was no need for childish euphemisms anymore. And it was just as well. The bright lights of the big city had long swallowed up the darkness. The night sky seemed emptied of stars. Only a handful were visible. Perhaps they were not even stars, just satellites.

Beset as we are with many kinds of pollution, we hardly pay any attention to light pollution. It does not sm...