A Photo From 1800's

On the pursuit of collecting, restoring and archiving antiques, found an old photo-perhaps the only one remaining of my great, great Grandfather-that makes it even more personal to me.

This is a photo of Rev. Devasahayam in his graduation robe and Thalappa (Indian head gear). A graduate in English Literature during 1800's, he was also a reverend in the old State of Travancore. Another treasured possession in my antique's archive is an English dictionary used by him-perhaps during his college days-a beauty of its own. 

Recently during one of my walks in the graveyard, I discovered his tomb as well-in MM Church, Trivandrum. These discoveries make you search for the person's life history-that is seldom recorded and that is very often distorted and twisted by hear-say accounts-yet is interesting.

Wish time travel was real and if I could travel time, I'd rather prefer travelling back than forward and meet some people I love-many I haven't even met-one such person I would love to hear stories from would be from this great, great grandfather of mine for all the exciting accounts of his life I have heard so far-some that ended a search for what I refer to as 'an interesting genetical coding' that like most other 'interesting' things, is proclaimed 'faulty' by most-that runs in our family-that all started with him. Hahaha! 

By the by, like his shoes-one more justification for my shoe fetish...           

Shots From Kanyakumari

Just another view from Kalakaad shot from my camera. The sound of music must be shot here. Some treasures are best hidden.

Country Roads Take Me Home

This is a Kanyakumari that many wouldn't have seen, captured through my cam's lenses. For many, the idea of Cape Comorin, is the tip of peninsular India and the trinity of seas that they come to see and get to see and are happy and content-so let them be. This perspective on the other hand, is one amongst the many hidden treasures that only the natives know of. Hidden to ensure that the impact of tourism-plastic dumping, spitting, urinating, shitting and behaving like it is a no-man's land-is avoided. Let this be a place a few can call their home nevertheless it becomes everyone's brothel. 

Snapshots From Kanyakumari

This is a picture (I) clicked somewhere in the middle of Kallakaad-a tiger reserve in Kanyakumari-Tirunelveli border. This photo was shot with an almost extinct-film roll-slr. Sometimes, slowing down is a luxury and at times worth it. 

And There She Lay

The sensuous one searches the core

for that love still untold.

Search she does underneath bridges

and between the ridges.

Overflowing, melting, sans holds

steps she takes quite bold.

Exploring within, stretching beyond pleasure and pain

heart drenched in tear and rain.

Drop by drop as the drops melt 

warmth from her sure is felt.

Rising above all with hope and despair

the search for remorseless love seems fair.

Tussled hair and classy flair

nothing more she has to bare.

Cries and moans ring the air

tossed and turned with lustful tear.

Beauty and the beast all within

for once together writhing.

Finale sure does she reach

with all boundaries breached.

 Still breathing in silky moist

no language can tell this twist.

An experience her very own

in complete surrender she had thrown.

Everything is for her to keep

pain and pleasure for her to reap.

With nothing to lose and nothing to gain

lay she drenched in rain.

Uncontained, unchained and unnamed

there lay bliss untamed.

Shivering, shuddering, spontaneous

everything felt percutaneous.

Squirming as she tries to hold back everything held within

she gave herself for this win.

(inspired by a poetry I read today, I wrote thus...)

The Bleeding Angel

With a truck load of things and more to add on her list, the pauper she idolizes. The life, the simplicity, the banquet she can make with the same utensil-the only one lying around, the peasant's daughter is worth all her admiration. From the city's gate, away from the glittering luminous strings waddling from concrete homes-the grave of the living dead... her eyes looms into the distant hollow that separates her from the faint light from the country side at the distance. Can't decide whether to hide or run, she stays. The little pot of boiling gruel tempts her far more than a buffet from the king. The soul burning faster than firewood, she boils over. She has every reason to be jealous of the peasant's daughter. Now, at the city gates, she sees the richness in poverty and poverty in richness and with tear-soaked cheeks like a tattered beggar by the roadside she stands. Far away from everything that seems meaningless, worthless and pointless, her eyes scan every mortal walking through the gates with dreams in their eyes. Measuring their dreams, she revisits her own and more ruthlessly naked she feels. Just a walk away, at the distance, her place-where her heart belongs-awaits her like a waiting mother for her prodigal child with open hands; yet she trembles to take that first step. The clanking of those old vessels hoisted atop a simple burning pyre of wood as it reaches a point of completion, like the drum roll to signal the end overbearingly hustles at the back of her head. She is no more in control of her thoughts and she sways like a serpent in pain now. She twitches and arches as the weight of her "possessions" behind the city gates overwhelms her as her soul moves like a drifting cloud-forward to where she belongs. An unknown stranger in her new-found land, a pain creeps in from somewhere as she moans in understanding that she is a stranger in her own land too. With nowhere to go, she melts... just another bleeding angel at the city gates.     

The Circle Of Life

Recently my F-I-L was upset over my B-I-L. Usually a man very reserved, he suddenly poured out his feelings with the repressed anger of an ageing man shadowed by the tenderness of an ignored father. I knew he was disappointed with the fact that his son hardly spends anytime to even recognize his presence around and this feeling of emptiness was making him feel more and more less wanted. This incident happened when he was watching me play with my 9-month-old. He said, "I used to take my son everywhere I could, spend as much time teaching him everything I could, get him as much as I could and I was a hero too once."  I looked at my kid, knew what future had in store for me too and I told him, "Today, the hero; tomorrow, the villain; then, the zero... I know its coming my way too." 


Often I have people asking me, "Will your son grow up to be like you?" and I wonder. With every reason to ponder, I realize that as I get pulled into the enigma of my child's presence-that innocence, that simplicity, that spontaneity-those 3 I am struggling to relearn, having lost it in the path of life that he is just stepping into, he is learning in the meantime from me-that necessity to be complex, the need to be manipulative and impossibly corrupted-those 3 I learnt encourse survive, that which I am fighting to unlearn. Now, who is growing up to be whom?! 


This is an interesting circle of life: 
Stage I: I am complex, manipulative and corrupted. He is innocent, simple and spontaneous. I want to be him and he needs to be me. We are full of mutual admiration.   
Stage II: We meet at crossroads. He calls it teenage and I call it mid-life-crisis. We have conflict of values. He is something I don't want to be and vice versa. We are each others villains who can't accept eachother's values, morale and everything that defines who we are and we bite eachother's very crux of existence. 
Stage III: I am fed up of fighting and call for truce. He is keeping himself busy with all the bruise. I am tired running the path of life and am moving slow. My thoughts are innocent, my living simple and deeds spontaneous-something I have been craving to be that my son was born with. In the meantime, what my son is busy chasing seems meaningless to me now and he is as much a zero to me as I am to him. We find eachother's existence worthless... yet, I love him.


Life ends for me thus as his begins... when he makes a home on his own and has a child of his own and sees the innocence, the simplicity and the spontaneity in that child of his and craves to be that. Yet again, once again... I will smile gently at this circle of life.  


By the by, in the pic is John Aariyar Fredjeev, my son.

Depth Of Field Illustrated

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.” 

― Mark Twain

 “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” 

― Dorothea Lange

“Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small.” 

― Corrie Ten Boom

By the by, these are photos clicked from my bedroom window

Mask Series VI

Shuttling back to the Mask Series I had started earlier, clicking masks I have stuck to the Mask Wall in my bedroom and coming through with a reflection that emerges with it, here is one more mask to the series... an Abandoned Mask. This is a mask I could not find a place in the wall to fit it in and hence lies around as dead as its natural self. Found lying for quite sometime now, it has started adding a character to the room and would be missed if I do dump it someday and thus lies once here and sometimes there. At times we too let a persona lie around though unused, though unusable, yet for some strange reason and for no reason, just let it lie around. Maybe it has a purpose to fulfill and I must borrow Shakespeare's  “O time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie” to wonder and leave the rest to ponder when the time doth come. 

Roadside Fight

This is a typical scene we get to see in our country... traffic, crowd and roadside fights. Whose mistake? No one knows; yet everyone will have their opinion. Mostly the decision of who is right and who must be wrong is decided even before a fair enquiry is made. The bigger the vehicle, the more probability of him/her driving it to be assumed, accused and condemned for making the mistake no matter how innocent s/he might be. Smaller vehicles are usually the victims to the onlookers eyes; one of the several benefits in driving one. This is one such situation I got a chance to click in Bangalore when a heated argument was going on.

Busy onlookers watching with an uninteresting interest emerging suddenly out of nowhere to play the role of concerned audience is something offered within seconds of any incident happening. No matter whose fight it is, there are always these kinds that gathers around like scavenging crows to pass their opinions at the drop of a hat. These are people who have seen more than they would have, heard more than they could have and talk more than they should have. They know everything! The lines they drop in may not be true at all yet as many other things said by strangers are presumed, this is yet another assumption made for roadside panchayats to render judgement at the earliest. Life moves on before the next traffic jam thus...

So What Are You Reading Now

This is how organized chaos looks like after clearing my bag revealing what I am reading right now. The rest I get in between reading is by shifting between genres rather than stop reading completely. Variety makes reading more diggable and maintains consistency. A notebook and pen in hand helps preserve interesting ideas, quotes and strong words I wish to remember intact and for later follow up nevertheless register thoughts emerging from those "Aha!" moments that will sure be gone just the way it came in-from nowhere... those thoughtless thoughts has a significant priority in this list for later gathering. Besides these reading, editing and constant (ab)use of my eyes has gifted me with some solid frames I cannot do without these days. At the end of the day, I do believe that a thinker's mind is like a magician's cap... only if you put something in earlier can you take something out later.    

Untitled

Clicked this a while ago in Tamil Nadu. As usual there is a story behind this... yet I would refrain from saying it this time. By the by, the plate does not contain milk and was not meant for the child. Now guess the hunger...

Toys Toys Toys

This is a picture of a one of my son's toys that I clicked lying in his play pen-a military jeep miniature with accessories and even bullet holes on the sides... (wish he doesn't see these and gets to see only the open top and four wheels.) These days its really hard to find toys without hints of violence; its as if children need an every day dose of violence in some form or the other and the world is out there to commercialize on this strange emerging factor-the need for violence. The other day I decided that I am never ever, ever never going to get toys resembling guns for my son... instead I should probably teach him to fire a real gun asap. Shooting a real gun develops a skill whereas playing with a toy gun, innocently pointing and shooting at every passerby and expecting them to pretend to get hurt and die, develops an attitude... an attitude I wish never seeps into him. Developing a skill is my duty and snapping a not-so-positive attitude, my responsibility and I really don't want to pamper him too much, over protect him and prevent his ability to survive eventually like many family-dominating women have, effiminating children and molding them into sissy-boys for the world to mock. Period. 

Who Decides How Good You Are

Why does anyone need someone to recommend how good another person is? I have seen people uninterestingly ask, "Are you religious? Which place of worship do you go to? Who is the priest there? Can you recite a verse? Can you say a prayer? Can you sing a song? Can you sing a song and dance along?... blah! blah! blah!" Very few are able to digest the fact that one can lead a spiritual life-far above anyone can ever imagine, have a personal relationship with the good one above and still manage to stay off the madenning crowd of religious fanatics and misleading clowns in cloaks and find liberty sans getting shut in conditional boxes and be threatened with guilt if anyone begs to differ. 
Can values be tested and marked? Can we say how honest a Man is? Today, institutions (both religious as well as academic) think they can. Probably an essay competition can be held on 'honesty' and the best essay may be handpicked by the priest/teacher and the bishop or headmaster who heads the institution may give a big trophy for the one who wrote it and the audience may be enthralled and applaud and may consider "that someone" who receives the trophy as the most honest in the crowd indeed... yet I ask, "What if no one knew that the whole essay was actually written with a stolen pen except he who wrote??? Would he who wrote the best still be considered honest by the rest?! Who would know except him how "honest" he really is?" 
Spirituality stands tall then, rising far above religion, by being good not for someone else or for others to see yet for oneself even when no one is watching. This being the difference of being good from within for oneself than to covet and pretend to be good for others on the outside. So how spiritual are we really to ourselves?! 

pic: this was a photograph I clicked in Bangalore of a temple priest getting ready to do something he thinks only he can do-get people married.

The Big City Moves

Sometimes I wonder how the big city manages to accommodate everyone who walk into it in search of the "promised land" and all its promises. This is a picture I clicked in Bangalore, where I am currently hanging out in the verge of completing the books that I had started. Every pitstop I make around here, I find a story that I can run for a few pages... mostly about agony, anxiety and above all, abandonment. I believe those are the curses that comes along with the other blessings of living in a city. Everyone checks for anyone's vulnerability and want to optimize on it. Be it an interview where they think that the people who have applied for a particular position can be asked anything just because they are assumed to be desperate for the position or be it an employee who is asked to let go his dignity and bend his back just because his boss thinks he is not worthy of anything humane or be it a compromised pay scale that he is called to work for just because someone in the management wants to show his higher authorities how good he is in bargaining... there is so much of hidden truth behind those whole lies. We do not need a foreigner to trip us any more; tripping is one thing we can do to our own fellow-beings, our countrymen, the one's we claim to be our own especially-remember our national game of Kabbadi-of who is the best at pulling each other's legs?! Despite all these games of survival, life moves on and like the traffic that shuffles like a deck of cards in the traffic signal. We stop, we get set and we go sans time to think... life is but a dream.   

Plastic Man

 

As the rest of the world was busy protecting the environment, criticizing the few they condemn as people without any concern for it while sitting in their air-conditioned/climate-controlled chambers blowing out their share of carbon emissions, this man in the picture clicked recently in the "Garden city" of Bangalore was found selling plastic bags during high noon. Interestingly stacking those plastic bags, he looks for customers-unbothered of the environmental implications. Afterall, he must be wondering... first they said, "save Earth, do not cut trees" and thus began the campaign to say "NO! to paper; use plastic instead" and we did so. Then came they with sudden enlightenment and said, "well, you see, err... plastic kills, say "NO! to plastic, use (bio-degradable) paper instead" and we agreed too. Now, when will they reach a conclusion or atleast us?! 

In the mean time lets leave this poor man alone who tries to scrape past all this, unscathed, as he tries to sell as much as he can in the scorching sun to get something to quench his thirst and maybe if luckier add a few morsels to it, have it and curse the good one above for this life on Earth, sleep and wake up for another day to kill the Earth just as much as the Earth awaits to kill him too-just another day.

A Rose By Any Other Name

 

Clicked this ordinary looking yellow flower in one of my friend's house and as always, consulted Dr. Ida George, an expert in botany for its name and was told that it is Bignonia (botanicalname). She mumbled that these days there are so many hybrids that flowers, as unique as they get, get uniquely unidentifiable as well. As usual, I wrote down the name sincerely lest I forget, so that I may not bother my mind from remembering a flower by some strange name later. To me, the ordinary-common-man, this is a bright-yellow-flower. Duh! Often the problem with us is that we tend to remember things we should forget and forget the things we should remember... I felt... as I remembered Shakespeare's Juliet who said, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose

      By any other name would smell as sweet."

3 Photographs Of Animals I Enjoyed

This is superfabulous. The meat and the need in the eyes. This is nature at its untamed best. 

"TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"  William Blake

                                                                                

I once had a dream and I woke up feeling invincible, confident and strong... in that dream, I was swimming underwater with mighty huge elephants, strong, sturdy and totally in comfort. Later, I saw this picture and felt, "Wow! now how cool is this to be one with the wild?!" 

This is black. The blackest black can get. A black panther, crisp, clear and loud. This is something you dare not mess with. Nature at its finest fury. Black at its finest glory. 

p.c: none of these photos are mine, (wish they were). classics I got online somehow, don't know how. Thanks to the eyes behind the lenses.

Blacksmith At The Doorstep

And slowly yet loud enough, he called out, "Katthi theetanuma, katthiii?" (Does anyone want to sharpen your knives?) the blacksmith at the doorstep

An uncommon sight yet so rustic to watch the knives especially those aruvaals (large knives famous in Tamil Nadu) send out those sparks as they twist and turn one after the other in his custom-made tools is a sight uncouthed... and as many uncouthed things go, a delight for me clicking off to my hearts content

He sharpened those knives we asked him to, he took a few new, shiny ones made at his pattrai (workshop) that were carefully tucked away in his bag of secret treasures, flashed them with pride and claimed that one particular one was his masterpiece and made a deal, followed by a bargain, deal sealed, he sipped a tea offered, brushed the sweat on his brow aside, smiled and trotted along as I stood there looking at all those sharpened knives, wondering, "Why this kolaveri dee?!" 

The Mask Series V

This is a mask with closed eyes and a pleasant, almost meditative rock-solid smile, tied to a rope, clicked off the 'Mask-wall' in my bedroom. I find this quite figurative as it seems to have that "tied up" feeling we all might have stuck to certain masks that we wear to a certain point of complacency. Time and space does draw upon us certain masks that we can't escape from. Its more for our own sanity that we wear certain masks lest we offend others. These are masks of toleration, adjustment, acceptance, peace, love, happiness, admiration... though we need not mean anything at all in the first place. Yet we wear them to keep our network and connections intact... don't we???

So much for nothing! hahaha! Life is fun...