Ridiculously Brilliant Sunset

October 12, 2017

Goa catches a break.

In an important ruling yesterday, the Justices of the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court, in a departure from turgid legalese, waxed lyrical on Goa. They wrote:

It is a kind and gentle land, of a kind and gentle people. And it is also a land that, given its small size and small population, has had a wholly disproportionate influence on our art, culture, language, music, literature, architecture, history, design and more (even food, for many of what we consider our staples first came from here). Its greatest asset is one: its environment and its ecology — its rivers and riverbanks, its beaches, its lakes and clear streams, its dense forests, its low hills and fertile fields, its boulders and even trees shrouded with moss and vines and lichen in the rains, its ridiculously brilliant sunsets.

This ruling deals a blow to the ridiculous, non-brilliant, IIT-miseducated Chief Minister of Goa and former ridiculous Defence Minister of India, Shri Manohar Parrikar, whose lizard-brained plans to further degrade Goa have been put on hold. For now at least.

The “ridiculously brilliant sunsets” line reminded me of an extraordinary spectacle I was fortunate to witness in Divar in October, 2014. A tropical depression had settled over the Arabian Sea and brought with it atmospheric drama. The progression of the sunset that evening is expressed in the images below. The clouds seen are classified as altocumulus.

Note: No pixels were molested in the making of these images. The Saturation slider in Photoshop was given a well deserved rest.

Sunset in Divar, Goa