Weed

Cinematic

The only thing I can say for sure about this picture is that the place is Darjeeling. I went there for the first time, captaining a group of fellow students, when I was twelve, in 1948. I would have been using a borrowed box camera.

I must have wanted the fountain to be the picture's focus, but now when I look at it, I see a lot of life, at the edges of the frame, and a woman in Tibetan dress walking briskly past. I wonder why I was apparently standing just behind a rickshaw, so that it frames the rest of the picture. I surely would not have chosen that composition intentionally. The Art Deco store behind the fountain has a sign reading "PRA..A..CO.", with panels beside the open doorway which presumably contain details of the goods to be found within.  The protruding shop front on the right has signs reading "VISIONS" and "CIGARETTES". Everything else is a mystery.


In the light of the fact that this picture is old, and was taken when I was very young, the absence of great composition and photographic skill may please be overlooked.
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Bhashwati wrote:

Guzre waqt ki saral si tasveer.

That tibetan lady looks most elegant.

I am surprised film songs were never shot around that fountain!

The Veiled Beauty of the Quotidian

Buried

buried

in the innards of earth

more than a million years ago

to turn into

coal, gas, diamond

volcanic exudate

or

something else

or

who knows

even perish

Burmese Pagoda, Eden Gardens, Calcutta

(1951)

Inbetween

(1968)

once, youth

here and gone

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Anonymous wrote:

my thoughts on Inbetween:

The pile of bricks that your subjects are placed against is what lies "inbetween" the 2 stages of life that they represent.

Rickety, uneven, collapsible life coordinates, a perennial threat and yet the only support available.... all along their journey from youth to old age. 

Brick by brick they have put together the feeble infrastructure of their existence with no other purpose than to exist.

An ancient cliche, c'est la vie

It also strikes me that despite their emaciated forms, particularly of the younger man, they must be in possession of strong spines. Had that not been so they would have been under that very unstable structure and not beside it! 

And then i see, in between the two sections of that apology of a wall, a strip of green, episodic goodness and wellness that must make an appearance in the bleakest of life journeys and sustain them.   

Seeds

Lead Me to the Water

Beyond the Shadows of the Distant Sky

where human greed and impurity

where air

does not contain the scum and filth

that man's neglect and indifference

spread and pollute

there, there beyond the shadows

of the distant sky

is the dwelling of the innermost core

of my mind and body

my being

my existence