City Nature – Monsoon Sky, Across Delhi

That touch of impressionism.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The rainy day draws to a close here in west Delhi’s Janakpuri when suddenly something incredible happens. Suddenly the western sky bleaches, a strange shade of reddish-orange that startles and tantalizes.

So sudden is this luminous display that you might regard it as a sign from some Higher Power. Perhaps, just perhaps, Heaven might look something like this?

As it happens, The Delhi Walla frequently encounters these bleached skies during the months of monsoon. It is as though even the street garbage glowed.

But of course nothing at all is permanent on earth or even in heaven. In a few months, when winter settles upon the capital, our world will be coated with an invisible layer of toxic PM 2.5. The brutally grey sky will be a daily reminder that we dwell in one of the planet’s most polluted places.

But for now we can gaze heavenwards in the early evening, can’t we? As patrons of some impressionist museum.

When sky becomes a canvass