Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Saturday, November 24, 2018

The Mother and the Mask


I recently posted an old black and white picture, of two sisters. I called it Persona, the Mask which we present to the world, while the real self remains concealed.

Looking through my photographs, I saw that I had taken a number of pictures of the girls and, as I discovered, their parents. I felt that this picture, of their mother, could be a character in a Greek tragedy; except that she does not appear to be wearing her Mask.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Nautilus


Jules Verne (1828-1905), the famed French writer, named his fictional submarine, Nautilus, which featured in two of his novels (later made into films), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, after the real, rudimentary, submarine invented by Robert Fulton. The living nautilus is an ancient cephalopod.


Jules Verne wrote about submarines when there were no submarines, and about balloon travel when there were no spacecraft. His adventure novels were among the earliest works of science fiction, and were very influential in the genre, which excited man's imagination and, together with a small group of writers in his genre, led mankind to curiosity about the waters and the skies, and creatures in between. Verne was a lawyer by profession, who wrote in his spare time. He has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979.


Monday, November 12, 2018

Persona



the mask
peeling gradually into uncertainties
of growing up
from childhood's end
towards the caprice of not knowing
what is ahead
in living
in life

(This picture was taken sometime in 1973. The girls' parents were very good friends of mine. Their father, who hailed from Jammu and Kashmir, where he was working in a hospital as a radiologist, had come to Madras, to the Government General Hospital to do a post-graduate course in radio-neurology, where I was exploring with the Head of the department, the famed neurologist Dr. N. Ramamurthi, research and possible practice of Bio-feedback techniques. I only hope that, wherever they are, they are well, and secure.)

Monday, November 05, 2018

Above the Clouds


O clouds floating
with the dark rainclouds 
carry my message
to wherever
wind-blown
you travel

be my messenger
though like you
I have no destination
I am also adrift

when you have consumed
all your storms
may the wind
disperse my words
into the vacuum
of silence

---------------
Bhashwati wrote:

Aap ki tasveer ati uttam hai, jise su chitra bhi keh sakte hain :)

Text bhi gulo gulzar hai bilkul.

Clouds bahut aape se baahir ho ja raye hain, having consumed all the storms that came their way.