SUNRISE AFTER YEARS OF NIGHT

It has been a few years since I have woken up early enough to contemplate sunrise and the awakening
of the world it brings. Student life and its incumbent long nights of festivities have ensured this. This
morning however was an exception, not to the midnight revelry but to my morning nap, which was
disturbed by some noisy friends my roommate had over, who kept the party going well past 4:00 AM.

Stepping on to my third storey terrace I looked, bleary eyed, upon the prospect of an early morning in
Vijaynagar Colony. All I could notice, initially, through my annoyed, sleep deprived eyes was the sight of
two long rows of colourful three storey buildings winding into the distance, with a narrow, white
concrete lane below meandering in between. Houses in Vijaynagar always look rather in disarray, like
matchboxes piled carelessly on top of one another.

The air was cool however and the sun was nothing more than light attempting to break out from above
the rooftops, giving no intimation of the scorching heat that would follow in a few hours. The sunlight in
the balcony was white and even a little misty. As my eyes swept across the Vijaynagar landscape, I had a
sense that my brain was absorbing information very deliberately, as if attempting to model the pace of a
slow morning stretch. The whole scene appeared unfamiliar, as if I was observing Vijaynagar for the very
first time. Pedestrian objects like lamp posts and cars were weird and alien to my sensibilities.

There were a few people out in the street, morning joggers and the like; there were also a few garbage
collectors, rummaging among balconies and depositing their finds into garbage bags placed on push
carts along the street.

My attention however, was caught by a rather noisy crow. It was perched on a lamp post on one side of
the street, the light of the lamp still burning its futile electric light. Its cawing seemed desperate, as if it
were trying to draw attention to something important. Yet, none of his brethren paid heed to his
desperate call. His cause for excitement was quite apparently the garbage bag below, which lay in a
push cart, which remained unguarded as the young boy who collected garbage from some houses in
Vijaynagar had gone up an adjacent flight of stairs to attend to the garbage placed outside each house.

As the crow continued its frantic cawing, I was astonished by the general lack of interest in the crows
spectacular breakfast find and looked around to see if I could discern any other crows hovering along
the Vijaynagar Street. I didnt have to look too far, as every other balcony seemed to have one perched
on the ledge looking hungrily at the various debris scattered across the numberless balconies in
Vijaynagar.

This also drew my attention to each individual balcony as I came to notice the various contrasting
colours people had used to paint the fronts of their houses. The contrast was all the more striking given
how tightly packed the houses were, with balconies jutting out at obscure angles. There were green,
pink, blue and of course white balconies, and a couple of times, when I noticed a door open I attempted
to peer inside.

Our prodigious crow, by now had stopped trumpeting his find and had got down to rummaging through
the pile, and very swiftly having retrieved something that looked soggy and rather rancid, he flew over
to a taller lamppost that was closer to me and began to peck it ravenously.

Soon however he found company in the form of another crow who sat on the electric wire leading out
of the lamp-post, close to our prodigy.

The new arrival did not demand anything however; he simply sat there, in the self-assured manner of a
member of society who understands that the obligations of social decency have their benefits. Our
prodigy eventually caved in to this silent demand and left a significant portion of his morsel for the new
arrival. I was surprised to find that he did not fly back to the same rubbish heap. It seemed as if he
believed that half the pleasure of scavenging for food, was that of conquest.

He was about to set off, on a new adventure, when he seemed to freeze next to his lucky friend. I
sensed a sudden presence gliding above. It was a kite: majestic, large and clearly on top of the
vijaynagar avian food chain. His flight carried with it a sense of superiority of species, and seemed to
silence all bird life around, as if they were all whispering its he who must not be named.

The kite circled the area around a few times, and all the while the crows stayed stiff on the lamppost, as
if praying for invisibility. The presence soon passed however, and the crows dispersed in arbitrary
directions.

By now two cycle rickshaws had drifted into the meandering concrete lane, with their riders looking
around hopefully (with humility that one would never sense while haggling price with them) for their
first customers.

As one of the rickshaws passed beside the garbage cart I noticed the garbage boy come down, having
scoured all the balconies of one building for garbage, he deposited his collection in his cart. From the
other side of the diminutive street, a man emerged from his house; he was the shopkeeper of a local
grocery store, a <i>baniya</i>. It seemed unusual to find him outside of his shop, engaging in any
activity other than of sale of cigarettes, cola drinks and groceries. He stepped past the garbage cart; he
didnt seem to mind the presence of the odorous refuse. He got onto a bike, an ordinary 150 cc bike. As
he attempted to remove his bike he found that the garbage cart was obstructing his exit and requested
the boy to shift the cart aside.There was none of the usual acrimony that I had anticipated from such an
exchange. Both men seemed pre-occupied.

I realized that I almost expected the shop-owner to assert his status and shoo the menial garbage man
aside, and perhaps also that I expected the garbage man to look with rancor at the baniya and then with
longing at the bike he was riding, but none of this happened.

There was something, however in the way the young boy stepped aside, that reminded me of the two
crows and the obligations that seemed to drive them. And slowly I began to dwell on the stereotypes
one deals with in ordinary life and on how objects and people can often become concepts.

Take the young boy collecting garbage, I reflected Hes a small and dark, in tattered clothes, without
a slipper on his foot, and his hair is messy and grimy." This image was a stereotype inseparably
associated in my mind with depictions of untouchables in melodramatic 'golden age' Bollywood movies
and solemn Indian socialistic novels.

I considered these things, in the empty morning light, and I found that the absence of people, and the
unfamiliarity of the scene made a number of things I observed seem alien, and staring at them for some
time was like relearning their meaning, and understanding again what place society had for these
people, or objects and slowly I began to fit my own beliefs into this framework of concepts.

But people soon appeared on their rooftops, in their nightclothes, yawning and stretching, and the
sonorous laughter of old men echoed from a park behind my house; a temple from close by had
switched on its loud speaker, and was getting ready to have a go at Morning Prayer.

In the distance I could see a redolence of smoke, seeping out of a fire, the smoke occupied a surprisingly
immense area as it drifted across the rooftops, and seemed to grow fainter as it passed by the now
crackling sunlight. In the sky flocks of birds of all kinds were swimming past the rooftops, and as the
morning walkers returned from their life saving exercise routine,

I felt the sense of strangeness thaw within me, and everything seemed to become familiar and well
fitted again. And as my friends had finally fallen asleep, I decided to retire and resume my morning-
eclipsing life of revelry.