Grove Light

Central India · landscape

A grove of trees opens onto rural farmland, a small figure crossing the patch of light at its centre. The whole frame has the tone of a remembered photograph.

Indian groves like this are remnants of the older land — left standing when the surrounding forest was cleared, sometimes because of a temple at their centre, sometimes just because no one ever got around to cutting them down. They tend to be cool inside even at midday, the canopies braided together so completely that the light only reaches the ground in scattered patches.

I walked through this one in the late afternoon and emerged at the edge of a field. A small figure — a farmer, or possibly a boy with a cow, I couldn't tell at the distance — was crossing the bright patch where the grove gave way to open ground. The light was warm enough that the whole image picked up a sepia tone, which I left in the edit. There's a particular kind of Indian landscape that feels less like a photograph than like an old memory of one. This is that kind.

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