Lockdown Pastime: Photographing the sunrise every morning and being surprised every day

The day the lockdown began on March 25, I woke up and looked out of the window. I was startled at what I saw and heard. I had never seen anything like it in all my years of living in the sixth floor apartment in Kaushambi I call home.

As children many of us had drawn tall trees with green canopies, a cobbled pathway, a few huts, blue skies and outlines of hills or hillocks in the distance forming an “M” with the sun rising from between them.

In the densely populated National Capital Region, I had never expected to find an urban version of what we drew as children. But that was precisely what I saw. Between clusters of high rise, concrete structures, the sun was gently making its way —a faint orange ball that turned fiery as it rose up in the sky.

There was the national highway at the ground level and the elevated metro track high up. The dense green canopy of the wooded Central Park and the almost pristine blue sky were also striking.

There wasn’t a bike or a car or a bus or a truck in sight. But it was not quite quiet. I could hear a variety of birds chirping and loudly at that!

On Day One, the stunning scene was something I just had to share with family and friends. The next morning, I again rushed to the window, expecting to find a repeat of the previous morning. But I could not believe what I saw! The sky wore an altogether different shade and welcomed a sun that seemed to have changed in tandem.

Kaushambi is in close proximity to the industrial areas of Sahibabad, Patparganj and Gazipur. All these years what I saw from the window was a thick pall of dust hanging in the air, hazy gray skies that did not even allow the clouds to show themselves; the sun rose without any glamour or beauty, becoming visible late like a late-riser. hardly anyone in this tower of 84 residential apartments cared to open the window, for what came in was only very fine dust.

But now, the sunrise was a spectacle. I would run to the window with my Android phone every morning to the window. was there any point in taking yet another photograph of the familiar sunrise unfolding before my eyes? But I would end up taking multiple pictures every morning and hope that friends would also spot the changing colours of the sky at that hour-- a vibrant pink one day or a gentle peach on another. One day it would be clear blue and the next day golden!

On each of the first 68 days of the lockdown, I photographed the sunrise and shared the pictures with the hashtag #SunriseOverKaushambi.

Among those receiving my sunrise shots was a whatsApp group of residents in our building. Soon some of them began rising early to catch a glimpse of the sunrise and the early morning skies, and a few even posted their pictures!