Saturday, September 21, 2019

Conversation 2: Past Present


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Bhashwati wrote:

Actually not one but several conversations are happening here.

The diminutive adult who may have been a helper or attendant at an earlier point and could be conversing with his memories of those "better" days which actually may have been hard days of toil for him but considering the ravages of time on the building and his own life, the present must seem far more unbearable.

And then theres the gnarled knotted tree bent but not broken and still visited by spring. conversing with itself and with the walls that will never be revisited by old glory.

And the doors windows pillars passages conversing together in a perennial assembly of mourning.

And the light outside and the dark shadows within, they may be conversing too.

To say nothing of the embedded traces of lives that have lived loved lost within these premises. 
Would they not be conversing with each other too?

Bahut khoob hai.

i wonder where it was hidden all these years.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

A Little Girl? Or My Brother?


When my younger brother, Bhupen, was a baby, he had several serious health scares, including diphtheria. My parents made a vow for his protection, that they would not cut his hair for several years, and then the hair would be offered at a temple. Even today, one can see little boys with unusually long hair, sometimes braided and be-ribboned, waiting for the moment when it would be cut and offered to a deity.

I looked at this picture and saw my brother's face; but then my wife pointed out that the child was wearing earrings. Did my parents go that far with their vow? I don't know, but I like the child's open, determined expression, fearlessly facing the world.

Monday, September 02, 2019

Old Names, an Old Tank, and a Kingfisher


I think that I took this picture somewhere on the New Mahabalipuram Road (now ECR), between Madras (now Chennai) and Mahabalipuram (now Mamallapuram?).

It is a ruined tank, with steps leading down to the water. I was pleased to see, sitting on a rock near the water in the lower left corner of the picture, a kingfisher.  (A kingfisher darted through our garden several times every day in a flash of blue, before we left it behind. Now we try to make do with pigeons, two ravens and a couple of mynahs, but it is not the same.)