An ode to evenings

I've often wondered what time of day I most associate with -- when I feel most alive and receptive to the sights and sounds around me. I like early mornings because they're so rare in my world. I like the crisp morning air that crackles with promise, and watching fathers drop their children to school makes me nostalgic about times gone by. Until recently, I used to be a creature of the night, coming to life just as everyone else was ready to call it a day.

But increasingly, I feel most drawn to dusk -- that time when the sun has set but the sky is still full of light. Watching the birds call out to each other and snooze on the branches of the tree outside my office window, I feel the mad urge to be elsewhere. Ideally, in an open-air cafe, alone with coffee and contemplation. Being indoors -- as I often am, at work -- at this time makes me melancholic.

I think this is a quirk my mother has handed down to me -- to her, as to me, evenings are when we contemplate everything that's right about our lives, before the dark of the night stirs up a cauldron of worries. When my brother and I were young, growing up in our grandparents' home in Ratlam, an utterly nondescript town in Madhya Pradesh, evenings were meant for cricket. My mother would bowl -- and when we could connect bat to ball -- my brother and I would compete to hit the ball outside the periphery of our sprawling garden. Just as the sun was beginning to set over this town, dotted with squat houses and desert shrubbery, we would retreat indoors to the warmth of loving grandparents and the smell of good food.

My grandfather passed away at the ripe old age of 95, a few years ago. With his passing, the home I grew up in lost the spirit I'd always associated with it. I haven't been back to Ratlam since, or witnessed the magic of sunset on the terrace, surrounded by the call of birds on the tamarind tree, and the red gulmohar blossoms bobbing in the wind.

But my love affair with dusk continues. In these wonderful, pre-monsoon evenings, when the promise of rain hovers over a muggy city, I sometimes wish I could slow down and savour the moment. I miss Paris, the city that has honed what we'd call "chilling out" into a serious art form. Come sundown, Paris puts on her prettiest dress and unwinds over coffee and several cigarettes in a street-side cafe. The business-like bustle of the day gives way to a slower, more decadent vibe. The city exhales and raises a toast to life. And locals and visitors alike stop to take a big sip of this beautiful city.