Sunrise in south

After coming out of the lavish airport in Chennai and being greeted by gusts of hot air at night, I headed towards my destination, a small village seven hours away (as an Indian, I am accustomed to measuring distances in terms of time-of -travel) from Chennai. “Sometimes the journey itself matters more than the destination” this statement proved true for me, quite literally, as I was shaken up from oblivion by a series of rather usual “waking” encounters.
It had been three hours of continuous travel on a dusty road, with jolts and jerks in a screeching bus, through mixed smells of fish, oil and jasmine. The sky was thick, dark blue and a faded moon hung lazily. Inside, the bus was lit with a dim old fluorescent bulb that flickered with every bump. Everyone inside the bus was asleep, rather peacefully, and would wake up now and then only to recollect their dangling bodies. I found myself muttering God’s name every time I would be sent several inches up in the air with every rabbit-hole in bus would dive into.
The horizon in this part of my country was defined by two shades at this time, blue and black, and silhouettes shaped as trees and huts raced against the bus on the far side of the road. At certain times, when the creaking of the old bus would turn low, one could hear the hooting and howling of nocturnes and for the first time in my life I became aware of the shadows that shrouded my country each night after the feast and color of the day. As unknowingly this thought had sprung in my tired mind, in same abrupt fashion, I fell asleep, effortlessly like other passengers.
The bus took a sharp turn at around four in the morning and came to a halt for some reason I do not know, nor did I bother to find out because I was busy recollecting my own dangling body and my precious luggage. At this moment, something both beautiful and hurting caught my attention.
Right outside my window, a few meters into an open field, on a bed of dry grass and dust, over a pillow of rags, under sky shaped roof and between two stray dogs as guards, laid asleep a mother with her arms protectively wrapped around her child. Farther in the horizon, the sun was gently coming up, shade by shade, closing the curtains of dark blue sky, slowly awaking the mother for another day of struggle and the child for another day of splendor. I awed, not at the state of the mother and her child, but at my ignorance of my own country and of course the beautiful sunrise