Compassion, not Light, Creates Beauty
The time was 5:30 on a Sunday evening in January and I was headed towards the market to run a few errands. I decided to walk, instead of hopping into a vehicle, and took a route I had not walked in a long time. Soon I was appreciating the changes that had occurred on this stretch of the road since I last walked it. How many days had it been? Or was it months?
I realized with some astonishment, that it is the same route I take every single day. Each morning and evening as I zip past this route, in an auto rickshaw, I busy myself with the phone, checking notifications, and forgetting to watch the road. This evening however, I revel in the sight that is- the orange orb suspended in the sky, uncertain whether to set or linger a little bit longer to savor the day. I take in the view and promise myself to walk more often. Walking helps me slow down. In the everyday harried rush to get things done, I have been forgetting to pause, and appreciate the beauty of a setting winter sun or to take a stroll with my thoughts for company.
Soon, I encounter a familiar face. He is my neighbor Ganesh. He is walking towards me. I wave to him in greeting. He has seen me, but his expression is telling. He has not recognized me yet. I smile, and watch recognition dawn in his eyes.
“Hi Sunanda,” he says excitedly, “It’s you!”
“What man?” I feign disappointment, “Don’t you recognize me outside our neighborhood!”
“You look different. New hairstyle, or what?” He replied with a laugh, then added, “You are looking so bright and beautiful, I didn’t recognize you.”
By this time, we had stopped at the edge of the road and turned to face each other, out of the way of moving traffic. He was now facing the setting sun and I suddenly saw what he may have a moment ago. My repartee was lost.
The sunlight reflected off his grinning teeth, flushing his face with a bright orange glow. I watched the sun multiply and mirror in the blue rings outlining the iris of his eyes, telling of a life that had seen over twenty thousand sunrises and sunsets. In that fleeting second, touched by the sun, he looked resplendent, unlike I had ever seen him before.
“Same hairstyle,” I said with a self-depreciating shrug, “It was the sun that made me look brighter. See, now you are looking bright and beautiful.”
He glanced at the setting sun and nodded, “Sun makes everything beautiful.”
“Yes, it does. Doesn’t it? So long as one is facing the sun.”
In a silent pause, we both acknowledged the beauty and wisdom of the moment, and then moved on to discussing other mundane topics.
Thirty minutes later, my errands over, as I headed back home, the conversation was still playing on my mind and I deliberated, ‘does light truly make things beautiful.’
Ganesh and I are both environmentalists, so our mutual love for the Sun and its importance to life on earth, is sacrosanct. However, the idea I toyed with now was, the relevance of (sun)light to beauty. The right lighting brings out the details, colours and nuances of a thing or person, highlighting the subtlety and beauty of it. But it also brings to focus the crevices, gaps and spots. So, is it the object in question that is beautiful or ugly, or is it the light that renders it so?
In photography, dim or diffused light is favored for its soft shadows, while bright sunlight creates a sharpness that is unbecoming in portraits. Hotel rooms too are often equipped with warm mellowed light instead of the whiter cool or daylight, to bring out the ’mood’ or to ease one into a restful state of relaxation. As an architect I understand well the psychology and neuroscience of light and how it can be altered to manipulate emotional responses. But today my thoughts hovered on the role light plays in perceiving beauty or the lack thereof. It was as much a philosophical dilemma as it was visual?
I watched my thoughts ebb and flow like a river, take a turn here, pause; gurgle; gush.
Franklin’s words, ‘all cats are grey in the dark,’ came to mind unbidden. Light does reveal that which is considered beautiful and what is perceived as ugly, while darkness conceals it all. Darkness embraces in its depth all forms- making them shapeless and ambiguous; dousing the distinct profiles and colors of the day into one unifying shade of grey and a homogeneous indistinct mass. Isn’t darkness, then more generous and equalizing than the all-giving, all-revealing light? In that moment it seemed that light reveals diversities and inequalities, that darkness does not care for.
As my thoughts sifted through layers of understanding, covering uncovering notions I had read, imbibed, believed, and discarded over the years, a new layer revealed itself:
Light does nothing, but reveal. It neither creates, nor obliterates, that which we call beautiful or ugly. Light is objective. It is our state of mind that makes light and what it reveals subjective.
Blame not the light, that it reveals the ugly.
It is a lack of understanding and compassion (on the part of the observer), that makes an object, person, or event appear ugly.
Lack of compassion, makes an object appear ugly.
In that moment I realized, if we were to honestly examine the people, things, or events that we may have ever deemed ugly, it was because either we did not understand them fully, or that we did not perceive them with empathy.
No one is ugly.
Light merely reflects the mirror within.
Light reflects the mirror within.
By the time I reached home, the sun had set on the horizon, and yet I sensed a dawning within.
