E for Evening Dawning!
Evening descends slowly
in my city like drowsy eyes closing from the weight of sleep. The warm
early-summer days with the sun’s rays dropping on earth approximating drum
sticks beating on the musical instrument will often lead you to wonder if the
day would at all pave its way for the evening hour. I wonder if we can do without evenings. Come to think of it, how do we define evening : a
binary opposite of morning, a stereotype.May be we
can do without them, but the unflinching law of the world as particular about its duties as a
well-bred butler, will always follow the universal code as to the dark and
light hours specified for a place. And so evening is born today as usual from the crepuscular venter
of the day causing the inmates of the city to utter a sigh of peaceful relief.
In my garden I imbibe the sweet smell of wet plants their leaves dripping with
water along with the marvelous colors unleashed in the sky by some invisible necromancer. I
stand and watch the evening-walkers in the park outside my apartment with
cellular phone stuck to their ears seldom stopping to see the marvelous
pre-evening sky above. The children playing downstairs count the scores in some
game and exchange data about the regulations of a sport. They raise their voice
to remonstrate with some rule-breaker and I hear their shrill teenage boy-voice
along with the chirping of the birds en route
their nests, the frequent honks of cars, the tinkling of cycle-bells, the occasional
rumble of airplanes sundering the dome above, and bursts of laughter emanating
from a group of women. I stand and listen to them and wait for another familiar
sound of evening: my door bell. On days when I am home, I get to greet my husband
and eagerly wait for the moment when I am to hear the oft-repeated sound of the
bell, generally ignored but sounding special to my ears on certain pedestrian days.
All the above sights and sounds are part of the quotidian evening ritual. They
occur, these sights and the sounds—the ianthine sky giving way to inky black,
the retreating chirrups from birds— with marvelous accuracy every day, and only
on certain vacant days do I enjoy them. Indeed I do not remember the last time
I enjoyed the dawning of evening; we are way too busy with our life to savor the
fleeting joys of the day. Nevertheless, the occasional treat is good too. It’s amusing
to think that the pulpy evening vision I inject in me will subsequently find
its place in a machine-typed post to be published in a virtual space.
Contrary to my previous estimation of the internet, I now feel it’s more indispensable than anything else, for one it never forgets and so the blog wherein I will
disgorge my thoughts on this beautiful evening hour will perhaps be there in my
virtual diary for me to scrutinize on some later date. Also, I think the idea
that nature or the physical world as crafted by some supramundane agency cannot
co-exist with a mechanical universe riddled with the boons of science is
erroneous. I look at the evening vision around me: tall buildings happily
illuminated by electric light embedded in their torso, cars parked under leafy
greens, manicured lawn looking pretty, a bright red birdhouse accommodating
a sparrow, and airplane lights twinkling at a distance in close communion with
starts blinking in the sky.
Enchanting evening has
set in and it’s time to savor the rest of it over a cup of steaming tea flavored
with cardamom. Ah, the pleasures of
life, what are we without them!
I wish all my blogging
friends a very good evening!
