A Summer Respite
Priyanka offers some respite by weaving a bougainvillae garland to beat the summer heat.
written by Priyanka Sacheti
A glowing cloud of fuchsia bougainvillea.
A clear blue sky.
The jugalbandi of sunlight and shadows.
The rustling of a neem tree.
For many years, while growing up in Oman, these sights and sounds would unfailingly greet me first thing every morning. The only detail that varied over the year would be the sunlight; the summer brought forth scorching, piercing rays followed by their mellower, kinder winter cousins. But whatever its iteration, the sun was a constant - and I could not imagine my day or world without the presence of sunlight. But, of course, I have to admit that there were times when the monotony of relentless sunshine and blue skies bored me. The appearance of even the smallest of gray clouds punctuating the sky would conjure up hopes that it would rain, that the smell of damp earth would replace that of warm dust and hot tarmac. Of course, the desert smelled differently after a storm, but it was a smell that we encountered rarely enough: if lucky, several times a year, if not, perhaps only once.
And so, living in a perpetually sunny land, I became accustomed to sunlight’s many moods. I recall watching the sky swiftly empty of sunlight at dusk, the sun-washed blue turning into deep sapphire before eventually embracing the night’s star-speckled black.
During winter dusks, the sun would take longer to leave for the day, leaving behind mauve, vermilion, and flamingo pink water-color sunsets in its wake.
But as with so much else that we take for granted in our lives, I never thought more about the sunlight than beyond the fact that it was simply there. During the furnace-hot Omani summers, I would actively avoid the sun and venture out only during the evenings. Years later, I learned that many of those living in the world’s hottest, sunniest cities were ironically often Vitamin D deficient due to rarely going outside during the day because of the intense heat and therefore experiencing limited exposure to sunlight.
And yet: one of the most vivid, visceral nightmares I recalled from my childhood was that of a sunless world. I still remember waking up in the dream and drawing open the curtains to see a sunless sky: the sun had just vanished. Had the sun been kidnapped?
In the dream, I still recall thinking in thick fear and disbelief: how could we possibly live in a sunless world? Dreams as it turns the familiar into hauntingly and frighteningly unfamiliar - and the absence of the sun made me feel terrified.
I don’t know if it was after experiencing this nightmare that I found myself reading up about the sun. I pored through the internet of my time: encyclopedias, and learned that the sun was a star and that its decline would begin by turning into a red giant in four and half billion years. The engorged sun would swallow up Mercury and Venus and initially render Earth uninhabitable before eventually engulfing it. By then, the encyclopaedia author gravely stated, human beings would have successfully colonised another planet or created space colonies, leaving Earth forever.
Afterwards, I would gaze up at the sun, unable to fathom it being so angry that it would annihilate the planets that had faithfully orbited around it and, in the case of the Earth, relied upon it for life billions of years. Even though the sun was so unbearably harsh during the summers, I would remind myself that it would inevitably become a gentler, soother presence in only a few months. Yet, the reality of the sun’s future furious avatar and its impact upon Earth haunted me for a long while. It’s billions of years away. I would console my anxious mind - and indeed, months later, soaking up the delicious-smelling winter sunlight, hearing the birds cheerfully chirp, and feeling the soft breeze as it ruffled my hair, it was hard to imagine the sun as anything but its present benevolent form.
Had the night permanently swallowed in the sun?
In the dream, I still recall thinking in thick fear and disbelief: how could we possibly live in a sunless world? Dreams as it turns the familiar into hauntingly and frighteningly unfamiliar - and the absence of the sun made me feel terrified.
I don’t know if it was after experiencing this nightmare that I found myself reading up about the sun. I pored through the internet of my time: encyclopedias, and learned that the sun was a star and that its decline would begin by turning into a red giant in four and half billion years. The engorged sun would swallow up Mercury and Venus and initially render Earth uninhabitable before eventually engulfing it. By then, the encyclopaedia author gravely stated, human beings would have successfully colonised another planet or created space colonies, leaving Earth forever.
Afterwards, I would gaze up at the sun, unable to fathom it being so angry that it would annihilate the planets that had faithfully orbited around it and, in the case of the Earth, relied upon it for life billions of years. Even though the sun was so unbearably harsh during the summers, I would remind myself that it would inevitably become a gentler, soother presence in only a few months. Yet, the reality of the sun’s future furious avatar and its impact upon Earth haunted me for a long while. It’s billions of years away. I would console my anxious mind - and indeed, months later, soaking up the delicious-smelling winter sunlight, hearing the birds cheerfully chirp, and feeling the soft breeze as it ruffled my hair, it was hard to imagine the sun as anything but its present benevolent form.
If I were earlier interested in the sun, it would later become an obsession, although only after I moved to Bangalore a few years ago. The gray that I had so yearned for during my childhood had now become a constant reality of my life. I counted the number of days the sun made an appearance during what appeared to be a tediously unending monsoon. The moment I saw the sun peeking through the clouds, I would rush outside, determined to soak up every ray, already wondering when I would next meet my elusive, fickle friend. The forever weeping skies and lack of sunlight dampened my mood, robbing me of energy and will.
My wardrobe donned sunnier hues: turmeric, mustard, and lemon, shades that I previously had never worn but now found myself gravitating towards. I found myself gazing at sun-drenched paintings, sunlight-splashed breakfast tables, quadrilaterals of sunlight speckling marble floors, and sun-soaked gardens. I also became obsessed with photographing shadows, describing myself as a ‘shadow collector’; the presence of shadows meant that the sun was around, and I couldn’t be more glad for it.
If I had taken sunlight for granted, I had done the same with the flora that grew around me. Perhaps, when I began to yearn for the sunlight, I noticed bougainvillea plants, little knowing that they too would become yet another obsession, just like the sun. I briefly called Pittsburgh, United States, home in another lifetime, yet another city where gray days often outnumbered the sunny ones. I was bemused to see that even in May, I still needed to wear my winter coat on occasions, and the sun was often an irregular, infrequent visitor. And so, when we took a trip to Puerto Rico, needing to escape a winter that refused to leave, the first thing that struck me when we landed was that the air smelled different. It took me a while to figure out that it smelled of sunlight. The skies were an eye-popping blue, the houses were the color of ice-cream sorbets, and bougainvillea clouds gaily festooned rooftops and roadsides. I had not been homesick for Oman all this time, but now I saw home - and that too nestled inside the bougainvillea.
As if recompense, I found myself foraging for sunlight in art and the clothes I wore.
My wardrobe donned sunnier hues: turmeric, mustard, and lemon, shades that I previously had never worn but now found myself gravitating towards. I found myself gazing at sun-drenched paintings, sunlight-splashed breakfast tables, quadrilaterals of sunlight speckling marble floors, and sun-soaked gardens. I also became obsessed with photographing shadows, describing myself as a ‘shadow collector’; the presence of shadows meant that the sun was around, and I couldn’t be more glad for it.
If I had taken sunlight for granted, I had done the same with the flora that grew around me. Perhaps, when I began to yearn for the sunlight, I noticed bougainvillea plants, little knowing that they too would become yet another obsession, just like the sun. I briefly called Pittsburgh, United States, home in another lifetime, yet another city where gray days often outnumbered the sunny ones. I was bemused to see that even in May, I still needed to wear my winter coat on occasions, and the sun was often an irregular, infrequent visitor. And so, when we took a trip to Puerto Rico, needing to escape a winter that refused to leave, the first thing that struck me when we landed was that the air smelled different. It took me a while to figure out that it smelled of sunlight. The skies were an eye-popping blue, the houses were the color of ice-cream sorbets, and bougainvillea clouds gaily festooned rooftops and roadsides. I had not been homesick for Oman all this time, but now I saw home - and that too nestled inside the bougainvillea.
Perhaps, it was a poetic coincidence that I was drawn to the bougainvillea just when I started to realise the significance of sunlight in my life. But, as it turns out, the bougainvillea is a sun-loving plant that requires a minimum of six to seven hours of sunlight every day and thrives in the heat. And so, once I began to notice the bougainvillea, I found myself drawn towards it just as the plant does to the sun. I could not get enough of glimpsing and photographing its graduated hues of fuchsia, ivory, vermillion, pink-white, red, and deep pink, wondering how I had been oblivious to its papery beauty all this time.
Sometimes, when I cradle the bougainvillea leaf bracts and flowers in my palm, the colored leaves represent the distilled dhoop, sunlight having reincarnated into this exquisitely complex lattice of pigment, cells, and veins. When I hold up a fallen bougainvillea leaf bract to the sunlight, I am in awe of how deeply and intimately we are connected to the sun. Just as the rain that falls upon our head was once snow in a distant land, the flowers we hold are perhaps sun rays that once shone on foreign land.
Glimpsing bougainvillea in sunlight is truly the embodiment of all that I find special and beautiful about both of them. And, when I am feeling both homesick and actually sick, I turn to the ever-burgeoning library of bougainvillea pictures I have taken wherever I have travelled and lived. Yet, no matter where the bougainvillea call home, they emerge their most powerful and magnificent in the presence of sunlight, their illuminated jewel tones energising and often healing me as effectively and powerfully as the sun itself.
In the end, perhaps like us, they too know that the sun is our first and last home.
Sometimes, when I cradle the bougainvillea leaf bracts and flowers in my palm, the colored leaves represent the distilled dhoop, sunlight having reincarnated into this exquisitely complex lattice of pigment, cells, and veins. When I hold up a fallen bougainvillea leaf bract to the sunlight, I am in awe of how deeply and intimately we are connected to the sun. Just as the rain that falls upon our head was once snow in a distant land, the flowers we hold are perhaps sun rays that once shone on foreign land.
We aren’t just seeing or drinking, or eating sunlight: we are sunlight.
Glimpsing bougainvillea in sunlight is truly the embodiment of all that I find special and beautiful about both of them. And, when I am feeling both homesick and actually sick, I turn to the ever-burgeoning library of bougainvillea pictures I have taken wherever I have travelled and lived. Yet, no matter where the bougainvillea call home, they emerge their most powerful and magnificent in the presence of sunlight, their illuminated jewel tones energising and often healing me as effectively and powerfully as the sun itself.
In the end, perhaps like us, they too know that the sun is our first and last home.