No sunset for sunsets

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We like to watch sunset. I don’t know why we are drawn to it. Like fireflies to fluorescent bulbs. May be we are too fascinated to see the gradual fall of the sun. To see how it ends. I’ve heard that humans are the only ones who think about their demise. But we are not the only creatures who are prone to destruction or death. How about the fireflies, moths and seagulls? Don’t they think of death? As they move to the edge, they may get trapped in a bundle roll of grass or a huge tree and knock down. They will die.

I walked down the fort up to the sandy beach. There was sun gleaming in hot red, right up the dead-end of sea water. It’s not the dead-end. I know. It’s just an illusion we‘ve got into our heads. There is water running miles and miles away. I wonder if anyone could count how far the sea spreads. The sun bent to kiss his own reflection in the water. In doing so he dies. Again and again.

One should watch the sunset. “As the sun goes down into water, you will see a green flash. If you make a wish when you see the green flash, the wish will come true,” a man living by the coast yelled at me. I looked for the green flash with a wish inside me. It was difficult though. I didn’t see the green flash. All I saw was orange and yellow patches surrounded by a red ball. It would have worked if I just kept wishing .You realize the moment you don’t see it, that all this time you have been looking for a flash. Nothing else.

The sun touches the water. And gradually sinks. It gets blown away like a candle fire that disappears to the night wind. It signals that we have to stop for today and get ready for tomorrow. But I wonder if it’s the same sun that appears next day, with the exact colors and dimensions. To brighten the day with light, to give us the necessary heat and go back in twilight is sun’s duty. We have our duties too. Starting from home to office, dishing, cleaning and then to manage files, ledgers and payrolls. But there was a time that none of us wished the sun will come back again. We were lost with last words. Thirty years of horror and terror, uncertain and unexpected peace and conspiracies that nobody knew made nights even darker than this. Even the sea seemed troubled, disturbed, slapping hard on the shore and hitting cliffs making rough noises. To make wishes looking at a sea was risky business then. Unpredictability had lot to do with our minds.

Sunsets have taught me that there is both hope and terror awaiting us. We’ve been told that twilight is the best time for treasons, stratagems and spoils. So we’ve got to be careful.  But there is hope for prosperity. A wish for a new day, with new plans and thoughts. Still, there is uncertainty that walks in between. There could be a day that the sun may get blown away by a gale and will not return. We will be in darkness forever. Like those people who run to us stray inside hearts for a while and go back. Some may come again. Some might not.

 This is what sun does to us. It kisses us and in the meantime pinches us too.

( Featured in "The Nation" newspaper on August 17th  2014)

http://www.nation.lk/edition/free/item/32279-no-sunset-for-sunsets.html#sthash.riSMmwcS.dpuf