diwali, and excerpts from a forgotten novel...

....She taught me to love the sun, its angled gold light from November to March, Diwali to Holi, from the festival of light to the festival of colours. She taught me to look at the tarmac on evening bus rides, how it glowed gold-orange, splashing on to the road through tree shadows, how the harried crowds of Delhi hurrying home could look so beautiful. She taught me to look again at the crumbling stones of my city, how the sun spread honey over the hard blue-grey quartzite, how the inscriptions and arches were moulded by the soft light of sunrise and sunset, as parrots burst bright green through the crevices. She taught me to stay to watch the sunset through latticed Mughal windows, and the lovely, lonely patterns that the slanted sunlight cast across the floor, gradually lengthening towards the headstones of the forgotten graves, and fading before they did as night set in. She taught me what beautiful elegies the fading sun wrote in gold....