City Season – Sky Watching, Gurgaon
Season’s scenes
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The sleek Rapid Metro train is sliding noiselessly along the elevated tracks. The glass windows of the high-rises are gleaming under the noonday sun. And tufts of greying clouds are wafting about these tall edifices.
The sky upon the Golf Course Road is currently looking magical. But then it is that peculiar in-between season, again. This is a special time of the year when the winter and its pollution is still to set in, and rainy season is almost gone. It is now that Gurgaon’s towers-speckled sky comes into its own. You ought to again experience a host of getaways that are within the city limits, and which shows an ethereal world of oceanic sky and floating clouds.
Start with the tried and tested Delhi-Jaipur highway. The stretch falling between Gurgaon and the national capital is one of the area’s most picturesque destinations these days, especially in the evenings when the sky is forced to play hide-and-seek with the setting sun and the clouds. So, join the rush hour traffic—the destination is this brief drive, with all its jams.
As the 6pm commuters drive back to their sectored flats, their anxious minds distracted by WhatsApps and e-mails, you must simply stare out of the car window. These are the moments when the sun has gone but the light has not, and the sky is stained with various versions of blue, purple, pink, red. In IFFCO Chowk, large stretches of green grass are sandwiched between the highway lanes where folks get together to enjoy the glorious sight. These spots also have frangipani trees in full blossom.
The other magical highway spot is on the stretch that goes past DLF Cyber Hub where you see glass windows of the high-rises reflecting off the sky (and the clouds in it). While the rapid metro, sliding along the elevated track, literally looks like a silver lining (as in the aforementioned Golf Course Road).
As a bonus, there is almost always a jam near the Delhi-Haryana border, which gives the viewer longer time to appreciate the scene. The left side of the road is a sea of open land punctuated with giant electric poles looking like Ravan’s dushera effigies. The sight is haunting.
That time of the sky
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