Sunrise

There are places on Earth where if you can stand beyond the shadows’ reach of tree or building, you can see the sunrise and the set of a full moon simultaneously. At the southern tip of India is such a place. And since it was first noticed thousand of years ago, it was decided that to experience such an event would lead one into an auspicious day.

“The three musketeers” were to leave on the morning bus at ten fifteen. They had a schedule; I did not and planned to stay in Kanyakumari until the urge moved me. I was (and am) behind in writing, the cape would be a good place for me to stop and regroup. Therefore on my first wake-up, I was unpleasantly surprised to be brought out of sleep by the blaring prayer from a public address system. It was like taking a room too near a church with a full complement of bells and an ambitious bell ringer. But at five o’clock?

The boys burned energy like ferrets and should have slept in but having chosen a place to sleep this near electric vocal cords would bring them into consciousness. No coffee, no tea, just dress and go. The four of us followed a crowd shuffling down through the deep shadows of what had been a pitch black street last night. We in turn were followed by others. After a turn here and a twist there and dodging a postcard salesman and a dark-glasses vendor, we passed beyond the buildings and onto a road that ran down paralleling the beach. The only light came from a deep red splinter of cloud just above the horizon. It was still very dark, enough light to see the ground you walked over but not enough to make out what stood on two rock islands to the right of where the sun would in time rise. I lost my bet that I made with myself. The clouds had evaporated and we would have a clear sunrise.

The crowd stopped along the top of a retaining wall that kept the town and the road from slipping into the sea. The earlier people stood to our right and higher up while the arriving crowd along with us found a place along the road the wall held up. The town to our back, the Bay of Bengal before us, we waited and watched. By then I made out what looked like a temple crowned the farther rock but on the nearer one, there looked to be a great stone pillar. As time passed, the coming day showed the pillar to be the shape of a man Then as time went on, I could see a colossus his head probably more than two hundred feet above the sea. Any tourist with a half-well ordered mind would have read the guide book. Sometime it is to one’s advantage just to see, discover, and experience. The light in the east grew.

I looked back at the people along a wall above us, and behind them at the faces framed by windows, and by the figures high atop the hotels and on its balconies and marveled at how people had turned out just to see something as ordinary as a sunrise. The moon was out of sight. I don’t remember the phase but what I had earlier estimated to be hundreds of people now stood, at my guess, near two thousand, all watching, all waiting.

The boys, never still, always moving, had climbed down the wall and stepped along the rocks to get a closer look…at the sun? at the horizon? Strobes flashed all through the crowd. And by now the stratus formation was turning from orange to near gold. The waves lapped against another smaller wall at the water’s edge. Anthony had rock-hopped his way there and was wondering aloud back over his shoulder if they should charter a rowboat for a closer look. Since the horizon bends away from the viewer as he approaches and since the sun stands about ninety-three million miles away, I called to him that this was about as close as he would get.

Then as quietly as the crowd, it happened. The sun’s edge showed above the sea but if you looked quickly you saw that it rose in several parts with the lower part ragged like a crust nibbled by mice. Over the curvature of the Earth and far, far out to sea, possibly over Sri Lanka, cumulus cloud tops blocked part of the red arc. I had not seen them before and within seconds they disappeared into the building glare. They could have stood a hundred fifty miles or more from Cape Comorin. But by now the sun’s edge became one and rose slightly changing from a blood red to a brighter and lighter orange. Cameral clicked. Off to the right I could see both the temple that I would learn was a memorial and on the rock nearer the cape, the massive form, still a work in progress, of the Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar.

Looking back at the people, I could see the saris take on colors in the brighter light. Then a family here and a person there withdrew from the front rank and walked back toward the passage between the buildings from where we had all come. Anthony and Avinash conferred with each other. The lenses retracted into their cameras. They asked Anil and I what we thought. It was breakfast time. The sun had risen.

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