Mangrove Hour

Coastal India · landscape

A line of mangrove crowds a slow-moving creek as the sky breaks open in pale yellows and grey. Reeds in the foreground catch the last of the light.

Mangrove creeks at dusk are an acquired taste. The water is brackish, the air thick with the smell of mud and salt and slow decomposition. The light has nowhere clean to land — it filters through the leaves of the mangrove crown and bounces back off the water in shades of grey-green and pale yellow. Almost nothing in the frame is exactly any one colour.

I was on a small boat that had stopped moving, drifting in the centre channel while the boatman waited for me to take what I needed. The reeds along the right edge were the brightest thing in the picture — long-stemmed, gold-tipped, almost glowing. The mangrove behind sat in deep green silhouette. The sky above broke into bands like a watercolour wash. The boat rocked. The water made small sounds against the hull. I had perhaps a minute before the light was gone.

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