What a hypnotic dawn and dusk can do

Take the hills and mountains: Still snuggled in bed, you are awoken by the melodious whistle of the blue rock thrush singing from the roof of the cottage opposite yours. Soon enough, other birds join in and when you hear the maniacal call of the great barbet, yodelling right across the valley to his ladylove, you know you’d better get up. Outside it is crisp and cool as a salad. In the pearl grey-blue haze, you can barely discern the majestic panoply of the mountains floating halfway across the sky. But wait a few minutes. The sky lightens to peach and suddenly the imperious silver mountain is etched in tangerine-gold as the first misty rays of the sun touch it. You watch mesmerised as adjoining peaks quietly illuminate. All too soon they are silvery-white and half-hidden by the teal blue haze in the sky – and already there are low banks of clouds drifting across.

There is a magnetic, hypnotic effect that both dawn and dusk have that is impossible to resist; a spell cast over all that beholds them. (Photo: Ranjit Lal)

You shift focus. A gold and black dragonfly, profusely bejewelled from wingtip to wingtip, waits stock-still on the stem of a plant, waiting for the sun to warm its mighty flight muscles. A ladybird, pearled with dew, trundles labouriously like a VW Beetle, investigating the heart of a great maroon dahlia. The wood spiders are squatting in the centre of their dewdrop necklaces draped over the foliage, a little bemused perhaps by the riches they are now endowed with, with which they can do nothing but wait until they vanish. On the ground, a fuzzy brown woolly-bear caterpillar spangled with silver dew makes its way across the fragrant soil. The leaves in their myriad shapes from hearts to scimitars backlit by the sun look like a treasure-trove of jagged emeralds. All too soon the sun is platinum bright, the shadows witch-black and the dawn has changed to day. But your mood has been lit up for the rest of the day. Dawns are not quiet because now all the birds in the world are rousing from their overnight slumber, exuberant with anticipation.

Early that evening there is a rainstorm that clears soon enough. From the west, the sun shoots gilded rays across the dark green valley, as in the east, the great gunmetal clouds still glower like a massed battalion in dignified retreat. A rainbow spans the sky like a suspension bridge as parakeets shoot across it dart-like. On the other side of the valley, a locked white house glimmers faintly in the fading light as the sky now turns to Prussian, washed with brushstrokes of pink. Dusk swiftly gives way to darkness, silence and stillness and already the first stars begin to prickle and wink as a fingernail moon hangs, sharp as the blade of a scalpel. Here at least, there is peace on earth.

Watch the sun come up at dawn and go down again at dusk. For no two sunrises and sunsets are the same.. (Photo: Ranjit Lal)

Sunset and dusk on the coast can be so different. At first, the entire ocean ahead is a vast pulsating sheet of beaten gold. Swiftly the blinding light softens until you can actually look at the sun – first shooting a bar of pure bullion across the restless water and then, like a frosted tangerine taken from the fridge, slowly sinking into the grey-blue sea. The wavelets, frothy and lacelike, sigh and hiss quietly as they expire in a welter of rainbow bubbles at your feet, done for the day. But you, sitting on the damp dark sand or gingerly on a jagged rock are mesmerised by the sun – watching, watching until it sinks into the water and gradually disappears. Even before the mauve sky turns to black velvet, an echelon of angel-white egrets threads its way across with lazy languid wing-beats. Behind you, flotillas of parakeets and mynas swirl in noisy turmoil to their roosts in the canopies, screeching excitedly about their day before falling suddenly. The evening is at peace.

Even hardcore city-dwellers need not deprive themselves of these treasures. On a late-evening flight from Ahmedabad, I remember being stunned when the entire sky outside the vast terminal window suddenly flamed lava-gold. It lasted but a few moments, but held one transfixed. Those on red-eye or pre-sunset flights need only to look out of their aircraft windows for a show they are unlikely to forget. In the city canyons, giant plate-glass skyscraper facades blaze like sheet flame gloriously if briefly.

There is a magnetic, hypnotic effect that both dawn and dusk have that is impossible to resist; a spell cast over all that beholds them. Photographers know this only too well and unleash their cameras only now. Every dawn brings with it the sense of a new beginning – it is time to step out, every dusk a sense of serene closure, time to return home. Either way, they make you know that you are a part of the great natural scheme of things, which in these bleak and hostile times can be so redeeming and comforting.