The ideal sundown island.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The Delhi Walla always imagined that the perfect sunset belonged to cities with a beach or a mountain range. So obviously there couldn’t be any place in Delhi to watch an ideal sundown.
I was so wrong.
One evening I enter the circular India Gate grounds through the side that faces the Coast Guards headquarters. Here the lawn is free of tourists and ice-cream sellers.
Only a few loners are sitting on the dusty grass, apart from a couple and an athletic man stretching his legs.
Nothing, however, prepares me for the sight directly ahead.
The sun is reduced to a small coin. It is sinking behind the war memorial — quite fitting since the British-built arch commemorates fallen soldiers of World War I. Indeed, the western sky is bleeding like a braveheart making the ultimate sacrifice.
The only distraction is a flock of birds flying from one tree to another, as if drunk on the evening. But this is a welcome intrusion.
I do occasionally sight picturesque sunsets while driving over flyovers (depending on the state of the sky, of course). But those are fleeting glimpses that disappear before we can truly savour them.
In this part of India Gate circle, I watch the nature’s great show in explicit detail — the view is unencumbered by high-rises or elevated metro tracks.
The show lasts a few minutes but it hurls me out from our city-life routine, briefly propelling me into another space.
Twilight in Delhi
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
