Saturday, December 29, 2018

Libra


I took this picture just before dawn in 1990, in the atrium of my old house in MRC Nagar. I saw the slice of blue in a gap in the parapet around the first floor of the atrium, and the shadowed angles which formed an L. I had to lie on the floor on my stomach, and twist my body to get the exact vantage that I needed.

My late, foolish but loving dog, Sheru, flopped down beside me for moral support. No one else was awake but us. That sliver of celestial blue, and the memory of that morning with my dog, gives me a moment of happiness.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Sweeping the Heavens


With invention and unlimited imagination, we have made and are making our current home, Earth, inevitably impoverished; and who knows, perhaps soon even hostile. We are making, therefore, our new home ready for us, to do the same in outer space. And from there? Not to worry, there is a lot of space for us to keep on harming and moving away from, within our own galaxy and even beyond.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Balika Badhu


a child bride


The subject of the child bride must be part of almost all human cultures, manifesting itself in different forms, like, at best, marriage; at worst kidnapping, molestation, rape, purchase, prostitution, enslavement, etc.

In India, while myriads of writers have dealt with the subject, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhya, arguably one of the best writers of prose of whom India, and particularly Bengal, are proud, wrote most movingly on the subject, to emancipate the girl child as well as women.

There have been countless books on the subject. The ones that have been filmed in India have, among them, one which recurs again and again because of its name, Balika Bodhu (English: Child Bride), written by Bimal Kar, who received the Sahitya Akademi award, India's highest award for literature, in 1975.

In reality, the premium on virginity or on very young females continues to fascinate the so-called virility and sexual dominance of men throughout the world, whether through marriage or without it.

Indeed, human sexuality, at best, is the most unfair among all living creatures. At worst, it is 'inhuman'. Apart from Men being the main benefactors, in a lighter vein, the second biggest beneficiary is the profession of psychiatry.

My picture is a contrast to what I have written about, because of the tranquility and joy of anticipation in the eyes of the subject.

Pardon me if I have been unfair to the fair or unfair.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Konarak, the Chariot of the Sun


Taken circa 1949. Note the people climbing the steps to the right, to see the chariot's enormous size. I took this picture with a borrowed box camera.

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.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Longing, Shortly


The moon came out again
But you did not
My heart was aflame with longing
But without you
It is cold and dark as the sky

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

Lata, S. D. Burman, Nutan, Paying Guest



translation:


The moon appears again but you have not come yet.
My heart burns and aches.
What should I do now?
This night says those days are gone.
My heart knows that you are not mine.
Yet I am standing looking for you anxiously.
What should I do now?
The smoke rises from my burning heart.
Do come back please, for I find it difficult to even breathe.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Ascendance


fasten seat
and other belts
what more

the speed of light
cannot be experienced
or felt

apart from being
fascinated
no alternative
to waiting
as no comprehension
will be dispensed

suspend belief
and expectation

-----------
Music of
Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Life, the Baffling Phases

I recently heard this song, from the movie Karwaan, for the first time, and was moved and humbled by the melody, the lyrics and the voice, all of which were created by Prateek Kuhad, himself. Here is a video of the song, with the lyrics (in Hindi) below:

To me, endowed and cursed with human life's beginning, and journey to its end, it is more baffling to mankind than anything else in the universe.

 

Main kadam kadam
Badalta hoon yanhi
Ye zindgi baldalti hi nahi
Hai lafzon ki kami

Main idhar udhar fisalta hi raha
Ye man kabhi sambhalta hi nahi
Hoon yaadon mein chupa
Ye shaam kaise rang si hai
Uddti utarati patang si hai
Main kal ki raahon mein hoon pasaa
Ye waqt bhi mujhe bhulaa gaya

Main ghadi ghadi bekhabar hi tha
Kya raaj mere dil mein hai chupaa
Hai naam kya mera?

Kyun? sawalon ki lahar mujhe mili
Main ghul gay samya ki aag thi
Ye nazmein bhi ghul gaye

Ye raastein kyun alag se hain
Likhate tahalte kalam se hain
Main kal ki saanson mein hoon chupa
Ye waqt bhi mujhe bhulaa gaya

Ye shaam kaise rang si hai
Uddti utarati patang si hai
Main kal ki raahon mein hoon pasaa
Ye waqt bhi mujhe bhulaa gaya

Ye raastein kyun alag se hain
Likhate tahalte kalam se hain
Main kal ki saanson mein hoon chupa
Ye waqt bhi mujhe bhulaa gaya

Ye waqt bhi mujhe bhulaa gaya!

Music Label : T-Series
Year : 2018
Lyricist : Prateek Kuhad
Music Director : Prateek Kuhad
Singer : Prateek Kuhad
Album : Karwaan

Monday, October 08, 2018

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

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Boy With Bucket


Picture taken and hand-coloured by me, circa 1956-57.

A bucket full of innocence of childhood,
unaware of the next moment,
let alone millions of moments,
that lurk beyond.

________________ Anonymous wrote: Verrrry verrrry nice photo only. And very amusing to me because I had an exact replica of me holding a bucket and grinning with not a stitch on me except a baby chuddy and a small chain on my frail 18 month body. Some fetish that generation of parents may have had with their children holding buckets because I know two others who have been photographed in the late 50 s early 60 s :) But the photograph is extremely endearing.

Monday, September 17, 2018

Bapa


My father, in our barsaati in Calcutta, tying a rakhi on the child of a friend, 1964.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Aranyer Din (A Day in the Forest), 1962


The title is derived from Satyajit Ray's film, Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest).

Saturday, September 08, 2018

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Loner


Red Hills, near Chennai, 1969

I am a traveller 
of that path
which has a beginning 
but no end


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

Distance and expanse is what i thought of
And how a human life is but a speck and how the distance between its beginning and end that is a human's journey from birth to death, which seems so momentous to us is of no import in the unfathomable expanse of the unknown which carries on with business as usual, regardless of all the lone travellers that come and go.

The composition is very humbling. 
Clouds, cumulus, the tree multi limbed and man all alone in the twilight zone straddling the light and the dark, the diabolic and the divine.

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Home, Once Upon a Time


In the centre of the house was a six-sided atrium, lighted by a hexagonal pyramid-shaped dome made of triangular panels of wire brick glass in a concrete frame. The dome was so out-sized that all builders, contractors whom I contacted, took a look up and declined to undertake the installation. I had to finish the job myself, so that it would not rain inside the large area, which contained boulders, three small pools, an artificial waterfall, and plants, including palm trees which reached two stories high. It was some insane idea of mine, who designed that house, which actually worked. When the moon rose it lit up the whole space, and when it rained, the sound was like thunder.

As I aged, maintaining the house, its terraces, utility areas, a badminton court and 'whatnot' began to be difficult.  At the same time, it became popular, and evenings were full of people who gathered together to play badminton, listen to music, laugh, drink, and 'whatnot.'

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Night Window


night window
moonlight window
light on the outside
inner darkness
hidden
hiding

Thursday, August 09, 2018

Darjeeling Toy Train, 1948


At the age of about 12, I captained the first tour from my school in Calcutta, with 16 other boys. We took a train from Sealdah station to Siliguri, and then boarded the so-called toy train, which chugged very slowly up to the hill-station of Darjeeling. The toy train still exists, but India's steam engines have all been retired.

We were full of mischief, curiosity, enormous appetites for food, sight-seeing, and staring at the local children, with their cheeks as red as ripe tomatoes, especially the girls. We found the cheapest place to stay, in the basement of a Marwari dharamshala. Since it had a dirt floor, we had to unroll our own bedrolls and spread them out in order to walk on them instead of the mud beneath. It was so cold that for seven days, I was the only one who bathed, and that too with great difficulty, in the icy-cold water coming out of the tap.

Friday, August 03, 2018

Rickshaw Puller, Calcutta, 1972


The rickshaw-puller is ubiquitous in Calcutta. I used to wonder why the hand-pulled rickshaws were not replaced with cycle-rickshaws; eventually, they were introduced, but the hand-pulled rickshaws still remain.

As a child and a teenager, I tried hard to examine my mixed feelings about them: I refused to ride in rickshaws; but when they followed me, clapping their bells against one of the long poles, hoping that I would jump in and let them carry me, I really did not know whether by walking I did them a favor, or made it more difficult for them to earn a living.

Sometimes I would stop by a footpath vendor of sattu, the powdered, roasted grains which seemed to be the pullers' main diet, and watch a group of them eating. Three or four of them would squat by the road near the vendor. He or she would give each one a shiny brass plate,  one onion, one green chillie, a small pile of powdered grains and dals, and a brass vessel of murky water. The pullers would use their hands to mix the powder with water until it cohered into lumps, then eat it with carefully-paced bites of onion and chillie, so that they would last for the whole meal. At the end of the meal they would use the remaining water in the vessel to wash their hands and the plate. The sattu was the cheapest food available, yet I never saw them ask for seconds. After eating they would rest for awhile before taking up their rickshaws, and pulling them slowly once again down the streets looking for business.

Today, when my income is so much higher than theirs, I know that their sleep is more peaceful than mine. I have rarely seen the tranquility which I saw in the rickshaw-wallah whom I photographed, while I felt guilty, apologetic, and helpless.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Wind-blown




the leaf landed

where I sat contemplating
the meaning of life


as I took the picture

suddenly I felt
that its fall


detached from its tether

deadened
aimlessly blown by the breeze


told me a lot



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

Bhashwati wrote:

Thoughts on
A leaf no more ...

From a shimmering spot of colour 
where light and breeze marry
to a rusted relic of itself,.. 
the leaf's life is all too brief 
as it lies defeated by death.

Just as, shadows of former selves, 
frayed at the edges and weary at the core
discarding all quests for the meaning of life,  
withering away we await,  

the triumph of death

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Innocence

(1954)

 Does one really know, at that age, the meaning and purport of the word?  The irony is that by the time one has learned its meaning, one has generally already lost it.

(This is my first picture ever with a Rolleicord twin lens reflex camera, which was lent to me by a friend, the brother of this girl. In appreciation of this picture, he left it with me for the year that I stayed in a college hostel in Matunga, Bombay.)

Sunday, July 22, 2018

From the Window, the Convalescent World

 (Coonoor)


This small hotel in Coonoor was originally a British-owned hotel called Hampton Court, built in 1857. When I first visited it in 1968, it was owned by a Parsi couple. At that time it was still a bastion of British/English colonial culture, adjoining All Saints Church with its old cemetery, filled with mostly young English men and women who had failed to acclimate to what they called pestilential India. The hotel subsequently changed hands several times, and was later owned by a British executive of what was then known as Imperial Tobacco Company (now ITC), and his wife, Mrs. Das. Mrs. Das, who doled out breakfast marmalade and pats of butter very frugally, and locked up the bar at 6:30 p.m., expanded the hotel a little, and eventually sold it to the Taj group. It was renamed the Taj Garden Retreat, but now it is simply the (Taj) Gateway Hotel, Coonoor. Film crews and actors, who lip-synch songs, and dance in and around the trees and gardens of the area, regularly stay there. Its small restaurant is now much more liberal with its butter and marmalade, which, along with the lovely views of tea gardens and hills, make it my favourite place to visit in all the Nilgiris.