Sunset
Every time I take a walk on the streets in the late evening close to sunset, I become more convinced that life is worth living. Sunset has been my favorite between sunrise and sunset, of course, because every day I wake up late enough to miss the freshness of sunrise. So invariably, I am left with one option – the sunset. Ever since my high school days, I have always enjoyed a walk at sunset, and almost every evening, I make a conscious effort to take even a five minute walk close to sunset. Else, a sub-conscious feeling of suffocation lingers about me for the rest of the night. However, being far away from sea-shore or even from any big river or vast plain land, I do not literally see the sun kissing the horizon in the literal sense. It is the evening colors which the setting sun weave in the sky that I refer to as my ‘sunset experience’.
A work-burdened day of course restricts me from taking my favorite evening walk. Back in Golaghat (Assam, India) which is where my parents live and where my home is, I will take an evening walk around the small town of Golaghat whenever I am there, no matter what, unless of course it pours too heavily that I need to take an umbrella. It’s a really small town with narrow concrete streets and a typical Indian set-up of shops, restaurants, road-side vendors, etc. The densely scattered houses, both of cement and of mud, with tall bamboo and other kinds of trees, prevent me from seeing the setting sun even when it is at least twenty to thirty minutes to set. As the increasing deep bluish to black color starts engulfing the sky with dusk, I can see a variety of birds flocking back to their nests, each type of bird making a distinctly different kind of sound as they fly, reverberating the surroundings with a ‘day-is-over’ feeling…..or maybe that’s what I feel! The colors of the sunset were always there I believe, but while strolling down the people-packed streets of Golaghat, I never cared to observe the colors of the setting sun. All I cared was the feeling of taking the walk, among people whom I felt I knew, on the streets and alleys where I grew up years back.
While I was an undergraduate in Pilani (Rajasthan, India), which lies some 2400 km (about 1500 miles) from Golaghat, my habit of taking an evening walk decreased to almost zero. The reason was obvious. The days were intensely packed. The study and assignment loads were unacceptably high. The frequency of tests and exams was unbearable, literally. Worse, the weather was extreme. In summer, it would peak to above 500 C while in winter, it would be a biting sub-zero celcius. But those undergrad days had their own charisma, own fun, own memories and nostalgia which are unmatched.
While I am now pursuing my PhD in Columbus, Ohio, which is not such a great place to enjoy life unfortunately, I do take an evening walk or a stroll, pretty much every day unless I have serious experiments going on in my lab or something like that. However, here my evening walks are not ‘pure’ evening walks, for often, what I end up doing close to sunset is going to a nearby coffee place with one or a couple of my colleagues (or friends) and sitting there with a coffee until the sun almost sets. So this becomes a coffee plus sunset to be more scientific. Often times, however, I walk to or from department (to my apartment) close to sunset. The sky here in Columbus looks much more pristine, clearer and non-polluted than anywhere I have lived. The azure blue of the sky here in daytime therefore is simply breath-taking (at least to my eyes!). The buildings here too prevent me from enjoying the sun gently touching the horizon, but I have started to actually enjoy the colors of the setting sun here. Every sunset is so different from that in the previous day. No two sunsets are identical. The combination of colors, the gradient of diffusion of the colors from deep orange-purplish to light blue, the distribution of clouds around the sun, the colors scattered by the clouds and by the objects around such as buildings and roads etc. – everything is so different each day. It’s simply marvelous. I try to capture with my phone whenever I can but it’s not a great camera in it and so I miss out the intricacies of the play of colors in my phone’s camera. Sometimes the reddish sun encased in a soft whitish-orange attire of clouds presents a site similar to what I see in web-sites as ‘artist’s impression of an exo-solar planet’ – an exotic sight nowhere seeming like anything mundane, while sometimes the deep purple-violet hue worn by layers of stratus clouds make me gaze at the sky for a long time.
Nature and her designs are simply unparalleled. Science can explain precisely, phenomena such as scattering of light, Fraunhofer diffraction, photons, wave-particle duality, refractions, etc. with elaborate mathematical equations using which you can actually explain why the evening colors appear as they appear, you can describe mathematically why the setting sun is enveloped by a diffusion of purple and orange colors on one day and why clouds present mild violet colors another day. But, just stand and watch the setting sun, the nature-designed mosaic of colors, and experience with your mind, the feelings of serenity, contentment and optimism that it delivers. It defies all science. It needs no mathematical equations. It’s right there.
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