Delhiwale: Light in August

“There’s a lambence, a soft, luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times

“There’s a lambence, a soft, luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and—from Greece, from Olympus—in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone.”

Under a partly clouded monsoon sky, daylight, moonlight and electric light mingle unevenly among the trees, grass and monuments. (HT Photo)

American writer William Faulkner was describing the August light of his own part of the world. Something similar happens on August evenings in Delhi’s Lodhi Garden. Under a partly clouded monsoon sky, daylight, moonlight and electric light mingle unevenly among the trees, grass and monuments.

Take this humid evening. The centuries-old Sheesh Gumbad stands beyond the trees, its dome rising above the branches. A tiled track leads towards it between rows of shrubs. A man and woman have stopped midway to talk. Above the dome, the moon has appeared. The sky is still blue.

Minutes later, the sky darkens and the moon grows brighter, but an orange band remains along the horizon. Meanwhile, Sheesh Gumbad’s dome has become a dark shape. On the sloping lawn, across a narrow pathway from the monument, park people are sitting in twos and threes. No stars are visible, not because of clouds but because of Delhi’s haze.

Then the garden lamps come on.

For a few minutes, three kinds of light are visible at once. Daylight remains along the horizon. The moon is overhead. Electric lamps cast light on the ground. The sloping lawn receives the light of these lamps in separate patches. A few people are sitting inside the patches. Others, seated outside them, are barely discernible.

Elsewhere, beside the Bada Gumbad monument, a large group is sitting on the grass in a circle. They are laughing and talking loudly. Their heads cannot be seen in the dark, but their mobile phone screens can. As their arms move, the lit screens move with them, appearing at different points in the darkness.

Nearby, beside a walking track, a chai vendor is sitting on his haunches. He is in an unlit part of the garden. From a distance, his body is hard to distinguish from the ground behind him. The metal kettle beside him is easier to see. Tiny points of light reflect from its surface.

Things are now clearly or faintly visible according to their distance from the lamps. Light falls on the leaves of one tree, but the tree beside it cannot be clearly seen. Lamp posts stand at intervals along a straight walking track. As people walk along the track, their bodies become clear near each lamp, then indistinct after they pass it, becoming clear again as they approach the next. Beyond the last lamp, nothing can be seen.