Sun worship

When travelling, sunsets and sunrises and the capture of them becomes something of a holy grail. To have taken a photo of your current location while it and you are under the influence of the setting or (much more rarely) rising sun, seems to be the peak of photographic achievement. It tells you that this is a Good Place and a Beautiful Place. Being in a position to be able to shoot a sunset seems to be a shorthand way of saying, 'Look I'm on holiday and I'm having a good time,'. So sunsets, in particular begin to attain an almost religious significance. This is especially true if the sunset takes fiery place over a beach. Beach sunsets are there to be enjoyed, adored and lingered over, like nature's version of the exotic cocktail that may well accompany them.

The one that happens every night at Arambol beach in Goa is no different, yet it is different. This one is feted and celebrated and 'worshipped' with a nightly feast of impromtu drumming, dancing and general hippyish behaviour that is a sight to be seen.

Around 6pm, drummers congregate on the beach opposite where the sun sets and form a temporary semi-circle seated on the end of a series of hastily drawn-together sun loungers. Here they play their Djembe drums to serenade the dying light of the day, while other beach-dwellers sit around looking on, or dancing frenetically to the rumbling beat.

When I arrived there were six drummers drumming (but no pipers piping, even though it was nearly Christmas). One man, probably in his early thirties, had a long thick bushy goatee and waist-length dreadlocks, thick as sausages. One arm was almost completely covered in tattoos. His djembe was clamped between his knees, nestling in the folds of his capacious green Ali Baba trousers. He didn't even look as he beat expertly on the skin, all the time looking either at the sunset, or at the other drummers as they all followed imperceptible cues from each other to quicken or slow the tempo or change the rhythm. The others were all lesser versions of this man, with or without his majestic dreads and tattoos.

I sat down near them to watch and as I did I could feel the sound beating through the cooling sand and vibrating in the air. Now another man came to join them. Although foreign, he had on nothing more than the white knee-length loin-cloth, favoured by Indians. His long, straggly blond hair and stringy muscles made him the perfect Iggy Pop tribute act. His instrument was a broad flat hand drum, the name of which I don't know. As the others played, he wandered back and forth across the semi-circle, apparently in a daze, beating his drum - mostly in time with the others - with a little stick.

As I watched, I became aware of a strange but musical low whistling sound, a bit like the sound it makes when you blow across the top of a bottle. To my left there now stood a tall tanned man with his head shaved but for a long, dreadlock pony tail at the back. With one tattooed arm he was whirling round a the end of a length of flexible bright green plastic tubing, while blowing across the other end. The faster he whirled the tube, the higher the the pitch of the whistle and the slower the movement, the lower the sound. This quiet wail-cum-whistling sound threaded through the sound of the drums like some ethereal butterfly, settling and swooping endlessly.

Looking round I now took in my fellow spectators. Hippies, travellers, groups of friends and families with small children all looked on, along with a few clutches of bemused Indians. Small tanned children wandered happily among the crowds, wearing either nothing or an ill-fitting outfit that probably belonged to an older sibling. Toddlers sat in the laps of their bearded fathers, staring enthralled at the spectacle or mothers walked round slowly, joggling babies strapped into papooses, round their bead-strung necks. An achingly pretty girl of about seven with the wispy curly blond hair of a cherub rushed past wearing a full-length frothy dress that was once white but was now beach- and dust-coloured. She had delicate scrolls and swirls painted on her temples by some romantic adult who didn't seem to be anywhere nearby to check her roaming.

Elsewhere, 'normal' people sat in groups watching and tapping to the beat, drinking cool beers and smoking. The sweet tang of weed wafted across the air, mixing with the smell of suntan lotion and sea breezes.

Looking out to sea, the sun was beginning its descent into the Indian Ocean, the same as every day, but also different every time. The few rags of cloud that appeared as the heat died, were soon stained egg-yolk yellow and strawberry lassi pink, as the orange sun slid behind the waves. Down in the bubbling white waves as they died on the shore, a lone woman in a bikini, walked and 'danced', swirling a hula hoop expertly hound her hips. Slightly removed from the action, she was still a part of it, but in a world of her own.

Now the sun had set, the dancers began to emerge. As if by unspoken courtesy, they waited until the magic show of the sunset had finished before making their move. People missing the self-consciousness gene or displaying the 'look-at-me' one, of which they had been given more than their fair share, swooped out onto the 'dancefloor' in front of the drummers. First came a tanned and toned lady who was probably of years that would normally dictate that she didn't wear the sage green suede miniskirt and low-cut top and no bra combination she was now sporting. Flicking her hips and twirling her hands she expertly avoided all eye contact to denote that she wasn't seeking the attention she obviously was.

Next came a tall skinny man, whose tan was mostly covered by the thick black hair that seems to sprout from every pore. He wore an explosion cloud of salted-matted hair and wild beard. His thin, hairy body bent, twisted and jerked into contortions and positions that I was sure would snap his frame in two. Yelping out intermittently, he shook his head with sheer abandon and writhed around, sometimes sinking to his knees, but all the time, keeping up the strange jerking motion that seemed to connect him physically to the beat of the drums. A small child wearing only a babygro undone at the crotch and trailing in the sand like a forlorn tail, stood there rooted and staring at the man, before mimicking him with small jigs and waves of his pudgy hands.

The mood was infectious and before long, I could no longer see the drummers through the mass of twitching and writhing bodies that danced in front of me. Everyone was enjoying themselves and it didn't matter what they looked like or who was watching as long as they were there.

In a place where so many different groups of people co-habited, the experience was an unspoken coming together of the community. No-one organised it, but everyone knew about it, and every night, like clockwork it just materialised. Gradually, as the twilight deepened, more and people from all corners of Arambol gathered on the sand to come together in an almost religious affirmation of life and a ritual of gratitude that they should be living in such a beautiful place at that time, however permanently or temporarily. Although I didn't dance my gratitude that day, I certainly felt it.