2013, Falling

fallen

Restive Season

where, whence

greetings

peace

prosperity

wade your way

through the darkness 

outside

or wend it

into the inside

or else

find the magic wand

Seeing Red

before green came rushing

A Smile and a Frown

... generations ago

Accord Discord

accord

difficult to attain

easily lost

discord

quickfire annihilator

of accord

and durable

Sexualitybisexuality

if errant

deviant

transgressing

delinquent

it is nature

and not the culpability 

of its accidental creatures

and if it is nature

by definition

it is natural

Forever Stairs

Future Past

THE MOMENT I TRIED TO GRAB IT
THE PRESENT BECAME PAST
THE FUTURE WAS CONTINGENT
AND THE PAST WAS IRRETRIEVABLE
UNSTOPPABLE, TIME SURGED ON
ILLUMINING EONS, LEAVING BEHIND DARKNESS

Salutations

to humility

Rhyme and Rhythm

in hymn and gospel

excavating reason

logic

and higher thought

first became facile

and on deeper application

not only produced

layers of futility

but also darkness

rhythm, then

created sense

and enhanced sensibility

-----------------------
Charu wrote:

Bhai,

A pair of discerning eyes turned drapery into a keyboard. Even without strumming, the music was born.

I adore this picture. 

-----------------

Anonymous wrote: 

Rhyme and rhythm is absolutely muaaaaaaah. The text with the photo is like a flood light... leaving no room for any ambiguity. Stunning too in its simplicity.

Arch Bisected

Still, In Motion

In 1949, when I was 13 and on vacation to Madras from Calcutta, my uncle, who lived in the Sowcarpet area of Madras, arranged for me to take a day-trip to Ennore with his friend, Shankarlal Davey. Shankarlalbhai was a photographer who was known all over India, and even abroad. His work was viewed regularly in The Illustrated Weekly of India, which was the ultimate for Indian photographers and writers to be published in. He was carrying two cameras that day: a Rolleiflex and a Leica. 

Still

When he asked if I would also like to take pictures, I nodded without thinking, as I was ignorant of the machinery and the mechanism. What I probably had in me was a sense of aesthetics.  He handed me the Leica, saying that his plan was to use a reflex camera. I did not know the difference between a Reflex and a View-finder camera, nor had I heard of the excellence of the Leica brand. I gratefully acknowledged his trust in me, to utilise his Leica safely, without knowing that I would never use one again.  

In Motion

Ennore was a small fishing village, not the heavily industrialized suburb that it is today. I took a number of pictures of catamarans, the beach, fishermen, women, hutments, which included the two photographs shown here. After a few days, Shankarlalbhai gave me the film and the contact prints, and told me that there was nothing worthwhile in the pictures.  Many years later, some friends in Calcutta saw these prints and had them enlarged.  Subsequently, at least nine or ten of them have been part of several one-man shows, both in India and abroad. I considered it a privilege that Shankarlalbhai visited two of my exhibitions in Madras (USIS, Max Mueller), which gave me the opportunity to tell him that I owed a lot to him for that sultry Sunday in Ennore, decades ago.

--------------------------------------- ------------------------
Anonymous said...

Great dynamism in motion: the boat being pushed, the waves gushing, rushing, the crow in flight. Bravo!
-----

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy said...

Bachpan ke din bhi kya din the.....

Huzoor bahut din ke baad maine aapke blog ko dekhne ka mauka mila. Sab Khairiyat?

Coincidentally only today did I write a blog on my photography but without any shows ever though..... :-)

Pesh kar raha hun aapki qidmat mein...

http://hemantha-kalam.blogspot.in/

-----

Anonymous said...
Bhai,

'Still' in every sense; calm waters, stabile dinghy and bird alighted.

'In Motion' in every sense; roaring waves, man pushing dinghy and bird aflight.

What is uncommonly common between them is the sense they are creating. Both, the man and the bird, by their still-ness and motion-ness are suggesting that someone else use the boat.

By very virtue of its calm I prefer 'Still' over 'In Motion'.

charu
-----

I said...

titli banke na kho jaao
bachpan ke dinon ki yaadon mein
bina paankhon se udoge kaise

is beraham aasmaan mein

Different Strokes

Before After

before

withering

releasing 

amorous 

aroma

perhaps germinating

procreating

after

-------------------------------------
Charu wrote:

Bhai,

It has been a fruitful season; 1:7.
I draw the line! No more!

Great picture of a beautiful flower.

The Other

not infrequently 

the heart has raced 

with fatal longing 

and stopped 

even as it rushes and gushes 

to be alive 

to belong 

to possess

forever and ever the mind 

has served a warning to itself

and remained subjugated 

to the impositions of civility 

and respect

even as it cannot stop venerating 

the other 

and another

confused between the desire 

to possess or to give

forever dying yet living

or ecstatic in living by dying

forever the desire

the longing

forever the holding back

 most frequently
albeit unreasonably
the heart has its own reasons

Sidelong

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.)

Oculus

eye 

inside outside

who where

emptiness

before or after

the event

cycle of birth

and death

up and down

which way

heavenwards

or a seductive

abyss

who knows

who cares

who is there

for that matter

the question is

who am 

I

Flayed

foot arm elbow 

dissected chewed 

opened for study repair

rbc wbc capillaries

muscles skin 

exposed to be covered

or consumed

no matter what

eventually 

no question

no doubt

earth to earth

Singed

a butterfly

or maybe

an angel

Bonds

BONDS
BIND
CREATE AN INTRICATE NETWORK OF LINES
AND THROUGH THEM COMMUNICATE
SUCCOUR
EMPATHY
SUPPORT
STRENGTH
WEAKNESS
HELPLESSNESS
PAIN

BONDS
BIND
AND DEMAND
EVEN AS THEY GIVE

BONDS
OFTEN EVEN STRETCH ACROSS MOUNTAINS AND SEAS
AND TIME
BONDS
BIND

-------------------

Anonymous wrote:

What can i say about bonds.

The image and the text are as made for each other as can be.

The text is the most succinct exposition i have read anywhere of how the conscious being transacts the business of co existence, deploying all the intricate tools of thoughts and emotions in an amoral framework, more as an imperative than as a social compulsion or moral obligation.

It complements your other poem, The trap.

Both are clear objective statements on the human condition that 'depends' and at the same time vigorously resists dependence thereby rendering conflict inevitable, every step of the way. You educate on things that the world presumes to be knowledgeable about.    

thank you.

Manna Dey

(1919 to 2013)

lyrics by Kapil Kumar

Phir kahin koi phool khila, chaahat na kaho usko
Phir kahin koi deep jala, manzil na kaho usko
Phir kahin…
Man ka samandar pyaasa hua, kyun kisi se maange duaa 
Lehron ka laga jo mela, toofaan na kaho usko
Phir kahin koi phool khila...

Dekhe kyun sab woh sapne, khud hi sajaaye jo humne
Dil unse bahel jaaye to, raahat na kaho usko
Phir kahin koi phool khila…

This is my version, heartfelt and inspired by the original, that has haunted and haunts me.

Don’t be a fool, you are plain pathetic: 

every time a flower blooms, 

here, there, somewhere, 

you think it is love, 

that you are in love, 

while actually 

you have only fallen. 

A light twinkles here, 

shines, glitters there. 

Beware. 

Do not assume that

that is your repose, 

the end of your journey, 

fulfillment.

The swirling, twirling 

at the pit of your heart, 

hurting like an emptied ocean, 

cannot find succour by going begging.

It would be perilous 

to assume that the gathering 

of waves upon waves 

is a storm

Where is the fulfillment

in living by watching dreams 

conjured and carved 

out of vacuum of emptiness. 

Fool, do not be seduced by comfort, 

even if dreams create ecstasies 

of satiation in your mind.

A flower may bloom again, you fool.

---------------------------

Anonymous wrote:

Reading through this composition is like walking through a pile of fallen leaves with a twig in hand and turning them and flinging them about... a pile of thoughts disembodied from the experiences that generated them merging and mingling with thoughts from countless other experiences, long gone with seasons past.

But instead of letting the thoughts blow away too, the mind holds them captive, perhaps in the vain hope of being able to reconstruct in memory that which will not return in reality. 

Many flowers will bloom. Again and again. Yet fools will pine for the ones that have fallen and will bloom no more.  

As for the singer, no tribute can suffice but here are some words you sent me when he passed away:

Incredible range and trained voice, widest variety of rendition, classically sublime to ridiculously funny,traversing effortlessly various octaves and falsettoes; not even half got his full due, a rare good man.

-----------------------------

Pravin Gandhi wrote:

Nice. Both.

My reply:

Thanks Pravin: Both came from the cardiac region of the brain, which habitually infarcs.

-----------------------------------

Life and Death

Futility and Darkness Before, During and at the End of It, the Same About the Blog Below:

On October 18, in response to my statement that "I did not want to be born, and I have never considered life as an imperative," Dr. Taralika Trivedi raised the query, "Can you name a person, at least one person who wanted to be born...Sir, you are YOU only after your birth, not before. Now you can wish there may not be next birth, if you believe in reincarnation."

My reply:

To begin with, to have volition of or for or against anything at all, you have to have life. This statement is immutable. It is an absolute and a constant. For life, without going into the almost infinite impossibility of its accidental, contingent nature, chromosomes loaded with any one of the myriads of DNA material have to come together for conception to take place. This unity of conception precedes conscious life, which awaits very complex processes of fertlisation, germination, survival against countless odds, etc., before it acquires shape and identity, to breathe and exude what we call life beyond its birth.

It has been our privilege or curse to be aware of only two forms of life, with one deviant: plant and animal, and the deviant being the animal with the difference: homo sapiens, humans. Since this last of the species is the only one out of the three forms of life which is not only conscious of itself in the sense that it knows that it is born, it exists, and that it would die, the question of this life-form protesting the issue of its birth prior to gaining this consciousness (or immediately thereafter, until the consciousness grows into the capacity for conceptual thought, including the capacity to understand the meaning of life itself, to protest, accept or abhor it) absolutely cannot and does not arise.

Mostly, however, almost in their entirety, human beings assume life to be a given without any choice. Given by whom, is a question that few have asked,  in all our previous and current times, and it would continue rarely to be asked until we are wiped out or we mutate into some other conscious species, most probably in some other place, which we may discover and into which we may cohabit and create new civilizations. Superstition, religion in their myriad forms, have provided succor and helped to conceal the urgency or need for an answer to this question.

The rationale behind not wanting, approving, being born, being alive, being part of this turbulent process, can occur only after birth, which is both an irony and a sad paradox. At such a time, one has the option of terminating life by conscious or unconscious self-destruct devices which are endlessly available.

I can therefore be asked, Why, if I did not want to be born, am I continuing to live. I would consider that a fair question, to which my most honest answer is: I exist by virtue of self-deception, cowardice; in this case, it being part of the makeup of my mind, which has been so rigidly constructed that it is not given to me to take my life.

This is a conditioning of mind by our societal environment. I have no alibis, and I offer no justification. I do not accept praise for not committing suicide, or terminating my existence artificially and unnaturally by some other clever or devious means. The immeasurable strength of the DNA material contained in my system, which is encrypted with the message to survive, also includes another message: to reproduce. I have not been able to overpower the former, but I have refrained from succumbing to the latter: I have not reproduced.

If, dear Dr. Taralika, all the above is abhorrent and arguable, please do not spare me from your wisdom.
------------------
Pravin Gandhi wrote:
Got it.
Just one technicality: we do know a third form of life - the cellular or uni-cellular life which we do not see/experience, and also a fourth - the bacterial/viral : good ones which are good for health and bad ones which cause diseases.
Also why crib only about not having the choice of being born, it is only one - albeit 1st - of many: you don't have the choice of parents or relatives; one is born a naturalised citizen of a country or of a particular faith by default which in varying degrees is blasphemous to change; one does not have the choice to be born without deformity/incapability; the choice of running away from responsibility (e.g. by suicide, abandonment of dependent spouse/ward etc.), is considered despicable unless one turns out to be a Buddha as a result.
What about having the choice of the mode of death, like Bhishma? I would love that. I think most people are afraid of the mode of death rather than death itself.
Pravin
------------------------
my response:

Pravin, you did not Get it fully: the one technicality that you are alluding to specifically referred by you as “the cellular or uni-cellular as well as the bacterial/viral life” are covered in my comprehensive dissertation. My definition of life is total inasmuch as it considers everything including viruses, bacteria and other known, unknown, or even invisible forms of any sort which have a determinant self-defining DNA. For example, tuberculosis, typhoid, et al., are all forms of life. I hope this would clarify to you the broader and total meaning of life that I have surveyed.

Similarly, within what I have asserted, is included everything and beyond what you have mentioned in your second paragraph about deformity, choice of running away, suicide, parents, nationality, etc.

What you are, what you become, what careers you choose, or how you or for that matter any life, again, the emphasis being on any DNA-endowed matter, is circumstantial, accidental, coincidental and contingent, which itself is again contingent upon other contingencies, by definition, ad infinitum.

I hope you will be able to re-read my post, if necessary, to find that within words and sentences all of these details have been factored, either overtly or by implication.

Please do not take this clarification amiss.

Bhai
------------------------
Anonymous wrote:

It brings such relief and often the only peace i know other than [watching the] Ashoka [tree], to read your essays, both for their content and their manner of presentation. If ever one comes across matters beyond the quotidian it is in the framework of religious ideology, morality, and other dialectics. To read and absorb such elucidation as you present of complex issues fundamental to our very existence is so reassuring. To know that thought and its expression can inform, educate and lead to new thought outside the harsh unaccommodating bounds of isms is so liberating. Thank you.

Dawn

dusk

either beginning or end

first stirring of life

or the last image

chanced upon by

aged unseeing eyes

an image

of dawn or dusk

of beginning or end

not seen but felt

before the last breath

from scattered pieces

of mind

last breath

in wondrous glow

of dawn or dusk

-----------

Anonymous wrote:

It's one of your saddest compositions. It embodies and contains sadness, emptiness, absence where traces of presence linger in the tenuous glow. Also almost liberating... as if the need to continue has been abdicated without struggle. In a tacit pact the glow of dawn and dusk have agreed to fill the vacuum.

Half-Opened Eyes

MEMORY:
NOW PAINFULLY FAMILIAR
AND AGAIN NOT;
FLEETING ELUSIVE
BUT OBSESSIVE

DEFIES DEFINITION
STIFLES WORDS
RECOGNITION
BUT NOT YEARNING
THAT BECOMES A PAIN IN THE THROAT
A GROWING LUMP THAT IS
A HOLLOW MOUNTAIN OF CLOUD
BEFORE BURSTING
TO BLUR MY VISION
INTO UNCONTROLLABLE TORRENTS

MEMORY,
FOREVER PERSISTENT, FOREVER
DISSOLVING,
FOREVER
HALF-FORMED MEMORY

Enlightenment

lights lightened

a production of man-made contrivances

is it the same

as the real one?

it cannot be, for

if it were

then there would not be so much darkness

engulfing us, suffocating us

it is far more elusive

so rare as to be almost

perhaps

non-existent

laws of physics versus

the gray cerebral awakening

light and enlightenment

can be together and be the same

but if they are not

then only the abyss

------------------------

Anonymous wrote:

i was not present at the site but the impression i get is of the darkness permeating the light rather than the other way round. It resonates with something you often say, that the more one knows, the more one knows how much one doesnt know. And yet we flash our figments of knowledge in ornate packaging, blinded by arrogance while the darkness of vast ignorance envelops us swallows us, 

But the composition is extraordinary, each shade telling a tale as in a sound and light show in some monument.

Verdant

Generations to come will scarcely believe that the word existed, and if it did, then what it meant. Even if the world survives, the phenomenal phenomenon, alas, will not. Cannot.

Homeward

on the road to suspended disbelief

--------------

Anonymous wrote:

Both homeward and horizonward are full of yearning and promise and much that lies in between but that is only a very subjective impression of one who is distant from both.

The Relevance of Prehistory

Is it real, or only conceptual?

Words, Encapsulated

how much mankind 

depends on words

that we need to pick up

by learning 

or stealth

use reuse

misuse

to glory or

abomination

words indeed 

are so much

of our existing breathing 

living loving

creating destroying

hating

we would not stop at anything

to steal spread

conceal

words indeed

and therefrom language

and thence communication

words

words

_________________

(See also an earlier poem of mine about words: Words, My Master)

---------------------
Anonymous wrote:

the buzz of words or a blur of words

does it matter do they matter?

they must for they contain 

all that matters and that which is immaterial

come to think of it

words indeed are all we have 

From the moment that we become matter

till the moment that nothing matters

French Fly

The Allure of a High Neckline

Eureka!

In the bathtub, a rocket ship passes Jupiter (?) on its way out of the galaxy.

Skylight and Incandescence

Natural light is created by nuclear fission, and pervades nooks, corners, crevices and great expanses, across and throughout the universe, which is infinite and eternal. Incandescent light is produced by the creative part of the human brain. But then, human beings emerged from natural selection of the widely known process of evolution and survival. So? I am merely showing a direct product of nature and an indirect one. Perhaps one or both sources of light will prod my brain to enlightenment, natural or evolutionary.

Convocation of Leaves

Meditative

-----------------------------
Anonymous wrote:

i dont know why you chose that title but what i noticed was that each of the three natural light sources, one of them not in the frame lead to areas of darkness rather than the more expected darkness unto light progression. as if light is preparing to meditate. And here the kadappa stones bestow such a spartan look. Same stones exude luxury in the pool side study. Kamaal hai. And the unsteady edges of the stone so well compliment the precise vertical lines of the door frames, the wall and the tiled wall pattern in the foreground. 

And the human silhouette... its like you dropped it in to a pool of light but ensured that not a beam of light would hinder its meditation. 

a very singular powerful composition.

thank you. 

The First Temptation

-------------------------------
Charu wrote:
And perhaps the last.
Harmony and color of nature beautifully captured.
--------------------------------
Anonymous wrote:

This one is joyous wicked shameless inviting and elusive. i think its the fall of the folds and the light teasing them both. Reminds me of vanity flair.

Forest Inside Outside

------------------------------
Charu wrote:
Fifty percent of last ten or so pictures are 'reflective', 'squared',
'tiered','cornered'. Musical in a sense. Very clean, perhaps pristine is a better description. Enjoyed them all.
-----------------------------
Anonymous wrote:

This is like a dream i dream about. To bear witness to an entity that is complete and yet able to dissolve into that which can hold it. An entity that can immerse itself and still retain its essence. Mushkil hai bhaut mushkil lekin na mum kin nahin.

Music Inside the Grand Piano

-----------------
Anonymous wrote:
Your piano reads like a musical note replete with light shade colour and pattern. Its an aria.

Writing on the Wall, or Failed Calligraphy

... to cacophony

---------------------------

Charu wrote:

Footprints; reminds me of ancient hand prints in the caves around the world. They were really on the walls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

---------------------------

Elemental Home

-------------------------------
Anonymous wrote:

i was musing. Is it the home of the elements... where the elements dwell?

OR a home built of the elements... where life dwells? 

The path laid out too and a built in roof to grant protection from the elements when necessary. 

Complete insurance. 
-------------------------------

Dear Mr & Mrs Gandhi

The verdant rainforest is missing you and so do we all.. please come back soon.

Best Wishes
Krishan Kant Aggarwal

--------------------------------

My reply:

We have no idea where our bodies are:
pulverised and mutilated on that seven-kilometre stretch
of uprooted, treacherous road between two parts of the golf course
– what a shame, what a travesty of justice –
or somewhere en route to or in Mysore, or loitering in the clouds, or declared lost.

What we do know, however, is that our minds, spirits, and hearts
are there in the midst of Verdant, Homeward, Meditative, Forest Inside Outside...

We have not left, because we could not leave;
we could not get away from there:
from you, and your entire team, top to bottom,
all loyal and intensely loving;
and all the leaves, trees, insects, animals, birds et al.

We are there; just look for us.

Ramesh Gandhi

Up and Down the Stairs

A Brief Encounter

-------------------------

Anonymous wrote:

i think of it as a capsule of elegance, because a single frame says it all. i see several encounters. Light greeting shade, height diving to depth, distance rushing in and movement held between two steady walls. And the conscious being negotiating it all with tentative halting steps.