A prayer, a faith, a surrender: Sarnath

Random Pix

A kid jumps about on a rainy afternoon in Hyderabad
An old woman blesses her son after a holy dip in Shipra

A tribal little girl in her finery somewhere in Madhya Pradesh

The Holy man and his Cow in Ujjain

A bunch of girls going home from work in Madhya Pradesh, India

A girl muses as she waits for her friend in a village fair in Madhya Pradesh, India

A horse cart traverses the length of the Burhanpur fort in Madhya Pradesh

Pilgrims soak in the winter sun at Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India

A Muslim girl watches the world go by in Bhairongarh, Madhya Pradesh

Pilgrims dry their clothes after a holy dip in Shipra River in Ujjain

A man studies the Quran in a lane next to Ujjain Mahakaal temple

Kids look for pebbles and shells in River Narmada, India

Late summer sunlight streaming through a tree

A little girl smiles as she watches her brother play a game at a fair in India.

A fisherman awaits his colleague to come ashore in Andhra Pradesh

A Hindu wedding in progress

A fisherman gazes into the water to spot fish in River Narmada

Boys on a deserted beach carry shells in a bag in Andhra Pradesh

A tribal girl smiles into the camera in Hyderabad, India

Cotton Chronicles

White gold is what the farmers call it as cotton ranks among the most lucrative of the cash crops. Indian cotton is popular internationally, making its way into the cool, smooth folds of branded shirts and yet has left tears and blood for many small farmers in Andhra Pradesh. Dogged by genetically modified seeds, fertilizers, treacherous monsoons and impossible debt, farmers lost their money, hopes and even lives to the white fluffy masses.

For the marginal farmers beleaguered by crop failures, cotton, which fetches a much bigger minimum support price from the Government, seems like a cloud nine descending straight to the earth and the area of cultivation has gone up drastically over the years, now ranging between 1.2-1.4 million hectares.

Wiki says cotton has been grown in India for more than three thousand years, and it is referred to in the Rig-veda, written in 1500BC. The pictures are taken outside a ginning mill in Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. Ginning is the process of separating the fibre from the seeds and then it is sent to a spinning mill to be turned into yarn.

Thousands of tractors and carts bring loads of cotton to the ginning mills and are unloaded at the weighbridge and is bought by millers and the Cotton Corporation of India, the government agency to buy the raw cotton.

Cart wheels trundle on the gravelly and hilly roads of the Adilabad as the farmers patiently await first for their cattle to take them to the destination and then to line up among hundreds like themselves for the miller to accept the load.

Exploitation is the name of the game as the carts are made to wait for days so that the farmer tires himself out and would sell without asking for a remunerative price. Children often accompany their fathers on the trip and small groups find their own forms of entertainment as they recline on the carts.

Transitory Dreams

Sleep, sleep..Go to sleep... Soon you'll be on your journey...

Mirabilis : "The Journey"

Transit Passengers at Amsterdam Airport

On work-bound train to New York

At Penn Station

Resprout!

Salad days, "when I was green in judgment;"
Sensible days, ideals tucked into the backmost pocket
of my purse and discretion the better part
Scarlet days when my blood boiled over
To paint my sky crimson and carroty
And then days when I was saintly
When it was all self-pity and righteous piety
My Sinner days, decidedly the happiest
When all lines were grey and delicious
corners darkly mysterious
My blue days, when copious tears drenched seas
And sunshine days when my nerves tingled in silent music

Take away my salad days and the scarlet ones
The blue days and the yellow ones
Give me a clean slate
Give me sheets of emptiness with no edges
Whiteness where I can redefine my hues

Take away the memories of days sensible and sinful
Erase my footprints until the last one moment
Give me a bare canvas, a blank window

So that I can begin again with no ado
And engrave a better story for tomorrow
If...there is a tomorrow

Stranger in My Mirror

Thank You Note

Picture this photographer. A photographer who not only goes click click with his camera but also clicks with his subjects like they have known each other always.
Knowing colleagues closely rarely throws up anything more than typical, predictable encounters. Finding a chance to work with someone non-temperamental, perceptive, receptive and professional is a pleasure that is surpassed by few things in working life.
My honour to meet Harsha – one such professional. He does not complain about heat or hunger or lack of sleep. Or miles to walk or bumpy, sweaty rides across rough terrain. Not crowded trains or shabby hotel rooms. He sits patiently through long-winded interviews, boring presentations and issues that are virtually greek and latin to him. He impassively yet kindly responds to weirdos of all hues and shapes, enthusiastically shoots the remotely interesting ones and passionately absorbs the beautiful ones.
A walk on a winding hill road, lined by cashew trees; A ride in a sarkari jeep through mountains, steamy one moment and lustrous the other as a gentle shower picks out the rocks among the satiny trees; An evening spent watching sun-kissed Godavari and languid fishing boats delving idly into the waters; fragrance of jasmines colouring the breeze from the river and attuned by chatter of women, gossiping without sting. Midnight chat on a train, congested with snoring men and bawling babies, as it chugs through the bridge on the river; Eating a spicy snack on the riverbank - a chunk from childhood nostalgia - a burnt breakfast in a ramshackle café in a small town, a bus ride on a straight-line highway, squeezing into low huts, spreading into sprawling forests – the journey is made up of many vintage snapshots and Harsha shares it and makes it even more memorable.
His subjects are as charmed by him as he is curious of their context. They pose for him - - bare-bottomed kids, toothless grandmothers, synthetically made-up sex workers, innocent villagers, strait-jacketed officials, young men and women - as he orders them to and he gives them solemn advice.
Attentive companion, sensitive friend. Intelligent researcher, interesting conversationalist. A worthy opponent in quibbles. Someone who sieves through every moment of life, without missing the details. Open to ideas, adamant on functionalities. Firm on principles, malleable to situations.
Working in tandem with a thorough professional is a pleasure that is rarely surpassed in working life. Thank you, Harsha, for agreeing to be on that trip.

Lost Warrior

The fight seems so important. Each syllable aimed and flung like a bullet, the words are intended to wound. The tone is poison sprayed over the opponent. Winning an argument is of paramount importance and vanquishing the other, life’s sole purpose. Small fights, big fights, issueless ones, righteous ones – fights seem the essence. Life is dialectic and conflict the essential.
But as the barb strikes the mark, I flinch. The blood that oozes out is my own. The expression of defeat on that face hits me in the solar plexus and I am crushed in victory. I win the battle every time. I am strong, invincible. Yet, I lose.
In the last few months, I lost people close to me. Some to death. Some to time and then some more to anger. And all that remains at the end of the day is the fights that I had with them. Harsh words uttered and crystallized. Angry whiplashes. Nasty shots.
I won every time. But none of the moments spent in happiness remains. When I run my tongue on the rim of my memory, all I taste is bitterness. And there is no way I can undo my victories.
I am a warrior who never learnt the rules of war. My battles are with my people, my homegrown plants, my little dreams, my ill-defined, ill-found loves. And against myself.
I am a warrior who never learnt the rules of revenge. I lash out with all might at my foes, writhing in waking nightmares and sleeping agonies. And, when I wake up, the scars are all on me. I am a restless fighter. And an eternal loser.

Into the Storm

You walk the streets. Aimlessly but in the garb of purposeful busyness. Your eyes dart from light to shadows, never meeting other eyes. You never look back but your eyeballs shoot back into your head to gaze fearfully backwards, to check if someone is following. You cross squares, turn corners but your flights always end in circles, reaching where you started. And when you walk back in, pain pounces on you from where it has been hiding.

Your sleep fights sleeplessness but always loses. You cry, laugh. Hit out at everything that moves. And those that don’t budge. You cover your ears, shut eyes. Your desperation slides down your throat as white drops of inducers.

I run but abruptly turn back and ram straight into my pain. It is a red light that sucks me in. It pricks, pierces. It is a high-pitched scream inside my head, a drill down each of my teeth. It is a needle that stitches my pores close together so that my breath is trapped writhing inside me. And I hit back. I strike out until the clouds of pain disperse. I plunge into the whirlpool, I fly into the turbulence. I catch pain and terrify it into flight. I bleed but exhale through a zillion free pores.

I fight pain, you suppress it. Your blood runs cold, I simmer in maniacal challenge. You wear blinds over your eyes, in monotones. I crush tragedies under my feet, into multi-coloured pieces of transparent glass.

I am battle-scarred but proud to be alive. You are pure as a petal but stink of escapism. Who is the loser?

Not to Human Scale!

Can a mere blog-writer comment on one of the most momentous events of human history? An event that left a mammoth blot on a nation, smaller than a mole on the world map?
What must she have thought in those very last moments? That this is it? Or that she was gonna be ok? That she will fight those kafirs, those who broke the very tenets of the religion they profess to protect by aiming at a woman? Of her kids? Of her dead father? Of all the dreams she had for herself and her country? Of the vengeance she must have felt for her detractors? Or her isolation in a world full of manipulators? Or of the Heavens above?
Whodunit? Whocares? It’s not going to bring her back. The woman who was destined to die violently among faceless crowds, but on her soil, the soil that she kissed in gratification when she finally came home. Gutsy, spirited, brave, hardened, vociferous, feminine, regal, sophisticated, earthy, shrewd, lonely, homesick – a hundred words spring to mind.
Politician, leader, prime minister, campaigner, dreamer, manipulator, conspirator, woman, wife, daughter, mother – whatever she was, she is a persona who slowly descended into my consciousness through the million frames seen and words heard and read about her. So much so that when I saw her in person in New Delhi years back, all I could do was stare. So much so that the purported pic of her in a short skirt circulated in recent times offended me.

For the journo in me, she is a name often uttered, analysed and thought about. For the people-watcher in me, she was a suave woman of the world. For the human being in me, a skeletal shell that lost some parts of her flesh and life blood every time she lost a parent, a brother; when she lost precious years of her eventful life in an uneventful prison and the power that came to her as an inheritance of turmoil. And, now her life for a cause that seems like seeking Eden in a desert.

Benazir Bhutto was just one of her kind. Like Rajiv Gandhi, whose beautiful face was smashed into an unrecognizable void, they chose to hit her handsome face. So that, nothing of her remains. Not even the shell. How mean can they get!

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

..And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's