A sunset sorrow

I reflect on scarlet skies

With embers all ablaze,

And stare at ruddy beauty

At the end of burnt-out days

 

Is this what beauty does?

It brings out joys inside?

Spangles of setting sun

And a smile you cannot hide

 

Until the smile withdraws

There’s more that beauty does,

Beyond joy, when the Divine comes

You doubt all that was

 

The smile disappears, you feel the touch

Of the cosmos and your god

You feel the kindle - sans the joy

You find your river’s ford

 

Is this what beauty does?

It makes you feel divine?

You grow beyond your human role

Beyond the yours and mine

 

Until the spark withdraws

There’s even more, as dusk disbands

And the ember clouds are all now blanched

He who sees now understands

That true beauty only makes us sad

It makes us yearn and cry

The fleeting moment, if really deep

Makes us wistful, sigh

 

It reminds us all we were meant to be

But that we go astray,

To trap ourselves in walls of four

Then wonder of a way

 

It makes us long for something more

But all in a fraction time,

If in that moment, we bleed our hearts

We see the truth sublime…

 

1^st August, 2025

 

The thoughts above came to me for the first time, when I was watching a long peaceful sunset atop a fort on Siliserh Lake, Rajasthan. After a full day spent on activities including a safari at Sariska, the dusk made one quieter, reflective and brooding.

At first, seeing the red clouds of a carmine sunset gave me joy. Euphoria, an icing to the day’s cake. But as the colours started changing, from orange to a deeper shade of red, I asked myself, is this pure joy? The feelings seemed to expand, making me philosophical, more contemplative, asking for something deeper, as if wanting to connect with out primal selves, wanting to touch God. Happiness seemed to make way for the divine.

As the colours faded away, as dusk usually does, the reds and carmines make way for whites and a light tinge of blue. As if resonating with the skies, my feelings changed - the happiness, the search for spiritualty made way for melancholy: Sadness at the ephemeral moments, longing for the warmth to stay, sorrow for the human inability to expand even further, yet consolation from the stirring skies of spangled starlight. The final version of beauty ushered melancholy, as if the canvas was that of longing, all other emotions becoming palimpsests of the past.

Many may argue over the order of the emotions – there may be many more, they may come in a different order, and everything is a correct answer, for there is no correct answer. Everyone’s journey and realisation is different, they may not even converge for they are not meant to be. Their only purpose perhaps is to make us wonder, ask questions, refuse to accept thereby urging to continue the walk on our ways of solitude.

Ever since that dusky evening on Siliserh Lake Palace, every time I had the privilege of watching the fireworks of sunset giving way to the marmoreal silence of night, I have revisited the same emotions, the transition from merry to melancholy, from intoxications outside to interrogations inside, the strange satire of a sunset sorrow…

(Image Courtesy: Rajasthan Tourism)