Experiencing the golden hour
As the morning sun rises, for at least 30 minutes every day, you can experience the golden hour. This is a time in the morning and evening mellow, buttery light, energised by a certain slant of sunrays, honeying everything it touches. It is a period that never lasts an hour, yet this time can give you memories for much longer.
This month, while recovering from an illness, I dragged myself out of bed to see the golden hour (or golden minutes). It can often be tough to wake up earlier than one has to. Life tugs at us, dulling our senses and inuring us to its hidden surprises. One imagines adulthood to be full of freedom, but it also comes with its own set of robot-like servility, the arduous repetition of things one doesn’t want to do, ironically in order to be able to accomplish a few things one does like. One has to wake up to go to work, fetch milk and medals, go and service cars, devices and our bodies. It seems like our days get condensed into the act of going. Very few things mark a return or a homecoming. And fewer things can motivate us to make these homecomings regularly, signifying a centring of the self rather than its dissipation. I have learnt that though it is difficult, waking up early to do something we like can make the day a gilded one.
And so, I woke to experience spring before the maw of summer ate it. In the gentle morning, the leaves of a peepal tree moved quietly. Peepal leaves are heartshaped, and they tend to spin on their boughs. The tree seems like it is chuckling deeply; the leaves laughing at their private joke. Except right on top of the tree, it wasn’t tree leaves that were moving, but a tree pigeon—the Yellow-footed green pigeon. These birds are very different from their widely known (and widely reviled) cousins, the Blue-Rock pigeons. Unlike rock pigeons, green pigeons stay on trees. They have a melodious call, are of a shy countenance, and are pastelshaded beauties to behold. As I watched them warming themselves in golden light, looking more yellow than green, I realised how precious a few minutes of time one chooses can be. It’s not easy to see the green pigeons in a city at any other time than the morning golden hour. That morning also had a pair of Grey hornbills tossing bakain fruits into their mouths. On a pot on my terrace, I noted peepal leaves in close-up; they had aphids on them, and two ants were farming the aphids, protecting them in return for a sweet honeydew the latter secrete.
The air wasn't clean. Poor urban air quality hasn’t just become a complaint; it is also an election issue; the recent Delhi elections might have been lost because of this. But the air right then was golden, and it was quiet. It made convalescence bearable. The Yellowfooted green pigeons called, their voices ricocheting in a coo-coo-coo over the terrace walls. I was reminded of a Golden Jackal at the same time of the day in a rippling meadow in Central India; an endangered Pallas’s fish eagle sitting on a bare tree on the banks of the Ganga in Uttarakhand, blinking in the light. These were all snapshots taken in different parts of India. But photography is a play of light, and the golden hour’s light brought all the images forward in a mental slide show. Sunrises are beautiful but overrated, containing all the beauty in the sky. Perhaps what we all need is a spill of golden hour each day, galvanising everything it touches.