DuskAn essay of my tryst with Dusk in Mumbai City as a Mumbaikar & a musician & a playlist to listen to
I’ve always been a night person. Right from my days in school, I would stay up until midnight despite having school the next day. Dusk, even more so, wrapped its unwavering charm on me when we studied and deconstructed the story of Norman Gortsby in the short story “Dusk” written by Saki, for English Literature class in school. So I felt compelled, while revisiting that short story today after decades, to write my own short piece about dusk… in Mumbai. There’s something godly or otherworldly about a sunset across the horizon on Marine Drive in my hometown city of Mumbai. I’d always look at the clock to check for 6:30 pm & the onset of dusk in my teenage years. I’d been conditioned to be excited by the onset of dark after day. School days were fun & so was playing football in my neighbourhood until 6:30–7 pm. But after that, it was my time; it was time for me to be with myself in my room after eating dinner. Time by myself to explore stuff I was interested in into the night. The night was sacred. It had only begun. I’d bury myself in books or comics or paint & draw while listening to music, or I’d be on my PC playing games or watching movies or football on TV into the night. It was glorious. Or maybe it was the fact that the UEFA Champions League was broadcast only past midnight. I distinctly remember watching my first ever Champions League game between Real Madrid and Juventus in 2003. I was a huge fan of Zidane, but in that game, it was Pavel Nedved who took Juve to the 2003 Champions League final despite Zidane scoring late. I’ll never forget that Nedved goal, as he struck it with his right foot on the half volley & jumped across the hoardings & ran onto the outer track to celebrate. Zidane scored in the 89th minute. But by then Real were dead & buried 4–3 on aggregate by Juve. My father frequently referred to me as a “night bird”, as a child, although I prefer Neil Young’s song “Danger Bird”. But I’ve been known to work & be more productive way into the night, into the wee hours of the morning, even as an adult. About 2 or 3 am is when I usually roam the Mumbai streets, nearby King’s Circle, to go buy myself a pack of smokes. Night in Mumbai has its own charm. But dusk in Mumbai, leading up to night in the Maximum City, wields its own spell on not just me, but every Mumbaikar. Dusk in Mumbai is not quiet. It never has been. It arrives with the assured urgency of a late commuter, like perpetually everybody inhabiting the city. The sky, once pale blue smudged with the residue of the day’s packed heat, deepens into burnt yellow & red ochre, then bruises purple over the Arabian Sea as Marine Drive lights up its Queen’s Necklace. The city doesn’t dim so much as flicker like its street lamps blinking awake in synchrony, headlights spilling onto potholed roads, and LED hoardings pulsing with tired electricity. You can hear dusk in Mumbai. It’s a feeling. It’s a sound. The distant clang of local trains screeching into dusk-filled stations, the blaring horn of a BEST bus stuck in the eternal now of traffic, the rhythm of a paanwala crushing betel paan leaves under his thumb. Office-goers stand like shadows at bus stops, scrolling silently, their faces lit by phones gleaming like remnants of the sunset before the onset of the night. In Colaba, a usual haunt of my youth, the sea carries a sharp breeze, the kind that smells like iron and salt and the memory of ships. In Dadar & Matunga, close to home, flower sellers pack garlands with fingers perfumed in marigold and jasmine for idols & temples ringing their evening prayers. In Bandra, pubgoers cradle beers in rooftop bars, chasing the horizon line where the city pretends it meets the ocean. Dusk doesn’t dampen Mumbai. It draws out its restlessness. For me, as a musician, producer & composer, dusk in Mumbai doesn’t descend, it swells like an orchestra tuning up, or like a brass & strings motif in a score I’ve made before. And me, walking its streets with headphones on my ears, I’m both in the world & city and slightly removed from it, like a camera set to slow motion while everything else runs at full speed. The music scores everything. A familiar synth line wraps around the honking of auto rickshaws. The thump of a kick drum matches the rhythm of the bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Voices pass like samples, half heard, half fading. A couple arguing softly in Marathi. A tea vendor shouting for change. The laughter of college kids pouring out of a vintage Irani cafe. Each one fading in and out like a glitch in my playlist. The sky, meanwhile, turns cinematic. Mumbai dusk goes full technicolour & with my music on my headphones, it’s Dolby Digital. Hues of violet, coral, and gold spill between high-rises like paint leaking from nature’s palette. Light bounces off glass towers in BKC, on puddles in Mahim or on taxi hoods in Andheri, or Dharavi and seeps into the cracks of crumbling old buildings in Byculla. You glance up between songs and catch the last streak of sun snagged on the edge of a billboard ad for fairness cream or real estate. The air changes, too. The humid & suffocating heat of the day lifts. In its place comes the musky perfume of the city, diesel, sea salt, fried samosa & vada pavs, and damp concrete from constant ongoing construction work. It’s intoxicating if you let it be. Streetlights come on in broken rhythm, some flicker, some blaze, some sputter and fail. And still, the music carries me on. A lo-fi beat as it rains draws parallels with a scene straight out of an anime movie or lo-fi anime aesthetic. If a jazz track comes on mid-playlist, it makes the traffic jam on Linking Road feel poetic. A deep ambient drone or ambient soundscapes turn every pedestrian crossing & the fluttering trees in the wind into their own combined choreographed dance moves. And then, almost without notice, it’s night. It’s the max city. The city doesn’t sleep, but it shifts, like just the beginning of a marathon; its very own marathon of night. I walk on, headphones on, the city buzzing around me like a restless beehive. And in that moment, between dusk and dark, I’m neither observer nor participant. I’m just there. One note in the music. One heartbeat in the pulse of Mumbai. Here’s a playlist I made titled “Dusk Chronicles” on my YouTube Music channel #1PlaylistAWeek, which you can subscribe to… YT: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiEpN-FJ79dZJ0JCQejLLKF67e_4guin&si=pXeuWEuhlvZq0Ycq
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Thursday, 10 July 2025
Dusk
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