Where the Sky Reflects

South India · landscape

Mats of water lilies float on a cloud-mirroring lake, a tiered stone ghat stepping down into the water on the far bank. The whole sky lives twice in the picture.

Indian temple lakes — the long flat tanks attached to old shrines, with their stone ghats stepping down from the bank — are built for two things: ritual bathing, and the patient holding of the sky. On the right kind of overcast day, they do the second job better than the first. The water becomes a darkroom plate of whatever weather is happening above it.

This lake was somewhere in the south, with a stone landing on the far side built tall enough to be used even at low water. A tiered pile of cut blocks led up to what might once have been a shrine. The lily pads sat in two ragged rafts at the centre, half-submerged stems holding their dry pods just above the surface. The clouds in the picture are doing two things at once — drifting overhead and falling back into themselves on the water — and the whole frame feels suspended between them. There is a category of Indian landscape that only really makes sense in the rains. This is one of them.

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