8:17 churchgate slow from borivali. i plug in my earphones and play floyd’s division bell.

cluster one never ceases to amaze me. i picture myself sitting in an airport lounge, everything happening in slow motion, every step of the dolled up flight attendants synchronised to the piano…

it’s raining heavily outside, the rivers of rain running down the huge glass windows with the nose of a plane almost touching one of the glass sheets. i sit there watching this slow sensuous dance of everyday life, expecting a miracle or an accident, just something to break the overwhelming simplicity; the simplicity of the music that permeates into this scene and weaves through it like life itself.

every track on the album ignites vivid imagery. but most of all, it is high hopes that gets me; every single time! i remember seeing it on mtv for the first time some 14-15 years back and being totally amazed by the video – the massive balloons, the tall people, the big cycle wheel falling into a stream…it filled me with something i cannot put a finger on even now, after all those years. it was a mix of dread, longing, nostalgia, anger, a desperation borne out of defeat in trying to save something close to the heart. and the words so sublime, encompassing everything one might ever feel about a time and a place gone by.

the entire album lasted me till the exact moment i entered my office building gate. timed for the train journey and the walk from the station. helping me to ignore the honking, the noise, the shrieking women, the haze in the air and the empty eyes of people.

mornings are supposed to be harbingers of hope and positivity. if i didn’t have my music, i would probably have disappeared by now. all the hope and positivity i have comes from these songs. i have nowhere to direct all that hope but inside. because outside,

Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we’ve been so many times…

by the way, i have started working. again. left the earlier one. could not take the five hours cumulative travelling.

so yes. was doing what everyone else does at the workplace. looking up photographs and chatting with people clandestinely!

saw this photostream on flickr -
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1016508@N21/

it has been a long time since i came back from london. and as i tell leena almost every other day, not a single day has gone by since that i haven’t missed the goddamn city! and seeing this made me miss it all the more.

wearing six layers of clothes, muffler, gloves, woollen socks, trying to keep my eyes up against the cold wind blowing in my face, feeling the tips of my ears starting to die -

walking through fresh snow, feeling the water seep through the broken right shoe sole that made a squeaky noise on the pavement, trying to decode the intricate snowflake patterns on car windows and tops, tossing the few pounds coins around in my jeans pocket, exhaling very slowly just to watch the vapour swirl out from my dry mouth -

going out to buy coffee in the morning snow, scrunching up into a ball the snow gathered on a car park railing, tasting it, keeping it in the fridge, standing in the kitchen balcony at night listening to snow falling on leaves, ever ever so lightly, turning all lights off and listening to nusrat fateh ali khan’s night song, his voice filling my tiny room and going out and mixing with the snow and settling down on the grass and going into the earth and through all the mess and the wires and the tubes and reaching the core and spreading out like warmth, his voice filling me with longing, with a sweet pain that only he knows -

wanting to gather the snow from a car top and not gathering it in fear of the siren going off, sitting in ameya’s room in his blue blanket and talking about hitler and art and music and mithunda, watching prateeksha frolic in the snow, not wanting to go back, making patterns out of shoe prints, sitting in her room drinking coffee -

almost walking on the frozen serpentine, walking in hyde park for seven minutes, not wanting to get out of bed at five thirty in the evening, heating frozen fingers over the gas flame, seven friends eating from one plate -

never wanting the snow to melt, watching it trickle down the pavement outside francoise’s deli -

never wanting to leave -

had been to talmaki wadi in bombay central a few weeks back to help my friend aditya with his phd thesis.

talmaki wadi is a very old chawl, one of the few remaining historical places in the city. built as low cost accommodations, some areas in the south of the city are replete with these awesome wooden structures. they represent a simpler, more content life the city once had.

talmaki wadi is a concrete building dwarfed by recently built skyscrapers. the entire area has been going through a transformation that leaves the old timers dumbstruck. it is a poignant moment to see some old grandfather sitting in the balcony of his chawl room, wrinkly hand on the railing, white sadra hanging on loosely on his shoulders, looking out at the traffic and wondering where all the time and the people and the simplicity went.

here are a few pictures from my three days in a small room on the fourth floor of talmaki wadi.

the kitchen -

lunch – fried fish and fish in spicy gravy with lots of rice!

and as if all the architectural nostalgia was not not enough, aditya opened a cupboard and brought out these -

age old spools! aditya’s father and his gang have recorded almost 20 hours of rare classical and semi classical music on these tapes. but because of a broken spool player, they have been lying around for decades. we are hunting form someone who will repair the player for us. and once that is done, there will be another entry with us sitting and enjoying analog nostalgia!

rajgad. the fort of kings. the king of forts.

rajgad was the residence of shivaji for almost 25 years, before he saw raigad and decided to shift his base there. now raigad is the subject of another extended trek and a subsequent massive blog update! as for now, lets have a look at rajgad.

visited the fort from the 1st to the 4th of november. went with bhushan and shireen, with this trekker group called ’slipper hikers.’ now there’s a story how that name came about. the group has been trekking for the last thirty years! and it has been an unsaid rule (if i may say so) to make all the treks in those blue-strapped ‘hawaii’ rubber slippers!

we started on the night of the first. reached the base at bhor village at around five in the morning. had tea and poha and started walking. familiar sights, sounds and smells enveloped as soon as we left the village behind. rain turned the red earth into squishy clay, and the mountainside into a green that cannot be found in any colour palette.  the air got cooler, much fresher and breathable. surrounded by yellow and purple flowers, we made our way to the top slowly, taking in as much of the beauty around us as we could.

all pictures: nikon fm2. 28-80 nikon lens. kodak 400.

the yellow flowers reminded me of tweety. and as for my students, here’s a classic example of contrast colour scheme!

every turn we took showed us a different face of the fort. and egged us on the reach there.

we entered the fort through the chor darwaza which translates literally to ‘thief door.’ it is a very small entrance at a side of the fort wall generally used to sneak in undetected during times of attack. it was one of the trickiest paths of the treks.

the first thing one sees after entering through the chor darwaza is the saffron flag. everything that represents the valour of shivaji and the fight for swarajya flows through the flag.

our base was the padmavati temple, which is next to the padmavati lake. no lake pictures here!

after a halt for lunch, we started off towards suvela machi. the fort has three machis; fortifications along the length of the fort with observation towers.

got back to the temple from there. had dinner, sang songs with some excellent bongo playing by a group member, and slept.

next day to sanjivani machi and bale killa, the fort citadel.

started for sanjivani at around nine. and then the fog came! waves upon waves of white fluff riding the mountain ridge. it refused to leave for the entire day. and then it stuck around throughout the time we were on the fort! as the cliche goes, “we couldn’t see beyond five feet!”

if anyone ever asks me how does it feel to live in a cloud, i will have an answer! i have walked on a carpet of fog, breathed in the light, light fragrance of raindrenchedearthtreeswindoldtreebarkwetstone and everything the mountain offered!

the next image is one of the best i have taken. and i am proud of myself for it.

this is bala kaka. he is one of the founder members of the trekking group.

from there, we headed on the the nedhe. it is a hole in the face of the mountain caused by years of water and air erosion. it is wide enough for people to sit in it. sadly, because of the fog, we couldn’t get an idea of how high up we actually were. very few of us would have then gone up there and sat as if we were five feet off the ground!

this is the last frame from the colour film. from here on, its the ilford hp2 shank got for me from oslo.

the fog hung around, refusing to clear, forming little droplets in hair, on clothes…

the entrance to the bale killa.

it is said that the head of the mughal afzal khan is buried in the walls of the gate, to the left of where shireen is standing.  the walls bore no inscription saying so. probably because the marathas did not want to give afzal a place in written history for all the his atrocities.

bale killa has three water tanks. what has always surprised me is the excellent quality of the water so high up on most of the mountain forts i’ve been to. totally potable, no one would be able to guess the difference between that and bottled mineral water.

the above is a picture of flower stalks and wild grass swaying in the wind. four second exposure at 22.

this is the temple where we were living in for three days.

last day. we had lunch, gathered all our bags and stuff, filled our water bottles from one of the water tanks and started down. felt like staying for a few more days. . .

just to see how the fog comes up from nowhere, and in no time envelops every inch of you and everything around you. like some memory you can’t put a finger on, like a song that reminds you of something from the past that you never had and will never know…

i am sure i will meet that fog round some bend somewhere. and we will talk about the time when it refused to leave, clinging on to me like a memory.

“if a picture speaks a thousand words, and i shot a million, did i say too much?”

visited vasai fort after a very long time. mustv’e been more than four years.

i am personally going to knock senseless anyone doing this. there was a girl here who tried it on one of the huge doors (pics coming ahead). she threw away the chalk when i gave her one of my famous drill-through-skull glares.

found this guy all eaten up. this is for you, S.

this is one of the most beautiful structures there. it has an open terrace on top, with a flagpole in place. i had come here on a scout hike. we were made to walk all the way from the station to the fort, while our sirs went by waving merrily in a rickshaw.

there’s a temple right under the structure. standing in the archway, you can smell the incense floating up.

this is probably the only well maintained cathedral in the fort campus. they had locked it from the inside. last time i’d been there, the walls were being whitewashed. apparently, the ASI (Archeological Society of India) has undertaken the conservation work of the fort complex. not much work has happened since the last time i had visited though.

this reminded me of villas in spain or sicily. whitewashed walls, blocks of  steps, niches here and there…

left this place after almost three hours of languishing on the steps. there is an area perpetually shielded from the sun, cool and calm. ideal for a sit down lunch and a quick nap thereafter!

went ahead and took a turn i had never taken. we always used to visit the areas we knew well, had our sandwiches and chats and left for the beach. this time round, i went on. and found the sea side entrance of the fort!

these are the doors on which that stupid girl was trying to inscribe her love for eternity. S asked me why those doors are still there; the villagers could have easily chopped them down and taken them home. i think it probably is a bit of respect those people have for a structure that has protected them and is a part of their lives and histories.

that was the last pic of my roll.

i will definitely go there once again. might take vidya along for her dslr.

have started saving for my own. aiming for the 5d. next year december for my birthday. wish me luck

had been to the SGNP with vidya and sankoch, vidya with her nikon d40 and i with my fm10 and ilford HP2, courtesy shank.

saw this little thing sitting in the middle of the road. i tried to move it away but it seemed to enjoy the patch of sun.

we headed on ahead to gandhi tekdi. it is a memorial built in the name of the great mahatma. used to give a good view of the city. but with the trees growing all around the place, it was difficult. also, there’s not much ‘city’ left to see. blue tarpaulin and exposed brick slums is all one sees.

we interested ourselves in a few nature pics there.

on our way down, i decided to go down on the tracks of the mini train to take a picture of a tunnel…

…and a few scary looking roots.

love how this one came out! i didn’t want the flash to fire, but it did, giving me an unexpectedly good image

in the words of forrest gump, “well, that’s all i can say about that.”

had some good images which got screwed either by my camera or the lab. will find out about that soon.

remember ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind?’ that fantastic film with the orangebluepink haired kate and a very very good jim carrey. where they erased their memories of each other…

i read something in the paper the other day. title – BREAKING UP? TAKE A PILL TO ERASE THE MEMORIES. it’s a small article, hardly 80 cc in size. following is an excerpt -

A team at Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland could develop a memory-cleansing drug that has the ability to remove any recollection of unhappy or embarrassing incidents, like childhood teasing and upsetting memories of a failed love affair, from people’s minds, the Daily Mail reported.

now this is scary! this puts an entirely new light on films that we have seen in the past, and have watched wide-eyed as those technologies come true right in front of us. take Minority Report for example. the touch screen on which windows and files can be moved around. iphones!there are many other examples. but lets get back to the memory thing.

it would not be too long before people rush to labs to get their bad memories erased. the drug mentioned above, administered on animals, dissolved a barrier around the amygdala – the organ in the brain where mammals store their memories of fear. so what we are looking at in the near future, in the strictest orwellian sense, is an army of extremely happy people who will never remember a heartbreak or a humiliating ragging, who will forget that stepping on a sharp object causes pain; a remorseless people who will go on hurting others just for the fact that they wont remember it tomorrow.

the article ends thus -

Scientists worldwide have welcomed the prospect of such a drug to wipe out troubling memories.

brilliant.

now let me make a list of what i would like to forget! and if i see you, and i pass by without a recognising nod, you must have hurt me some time in the past.

today afternoon, shweta, my colleague at the college where i teach, shoved her fist in my direction out of nowhere! after the initial bewilderment and getting my startled senses back, i asked her what was that for. she gestured to a band she was wearing on her wrist. it looked like one of those cheapskate ‘live strong’ bands people wear, except that this one had a black rectangle attached to it. i went ahead to touch it, but immediately took my hand back as i saw a bit of steel glint from under the rubber casing.

“oh! am i going to get a shock? i’ve seen things like this before. forget it; i’m not touching it!”

“no no! go ahead. open it.”

and the thing turned out to be a usb drive! some of her friends had been to the kyooruis design yatra 2009, and the thingy was one of the freebies they got there.

after the discussion about the yatra was done, shweta said, “isn’t it sad that people don’t play pranks anymore?”

and to tell the truth, it hit me! real good. it is such a simple fact of life, isn’t it? why has playing pranks become so rare? no one does it much often. there are no more of those shocker rings, coloured water that disappears in seconds, making fart sounds when people sit, tripping friends by stepping on their footwear from behind…

i’ d been to mussoorie few years back as part of a himalayan trek. there was this fabulous shop where i bought a knife (which got stolen). the shop sold all sorts of magic kits for kids. everything! masks, scarves, boxes upon boxes of cheap plastic things which would make things disappear, many of those shocker rings and brooches that squirted water, all sorts of nonsense!

what happened? has everyone just grown up, leaving all silliness behind in the name of maturity? or have people started worrying too much about what others might think?

i remember times when friends used to empty toothpaste tubes on their unsuspecting, sleeping mates (me being one of the sleepers), schoolboy stuff like keeping compass boxes or tiffin boxes under someone who got up to answer a question, bringing cockroaches and grasshoppers in class to cause immediate and deliberate pandemonium, changing passwords of mail ids and watching them squirm in pain…all that for a few laughs at the cost of others. there was no malice in these pranks. we always made friends with the prankee once the laughs died out.

now, maybe they take things too seriously or personally, or they are too busy messing up their heads with those bloody reality shows to think of something better to do; something more devious, laced with a bit of madness.

i guess we have lost the madness. and with it has disappeared the innocence of writhing in laughter as we watched a friend wince, courtesy a minor shock deftly delivered by way of that ridiculous-looking ring.

i’m back! with long pending pictures, which my dear dost shashank developed and sent. these are from the last ilford 3200 i used. some are in london, some from when i came back and shot around the city.

let’s go, then!

was shooting around central with lubaina, a friend of leena’s. she was doing a project on london buildings and was shooting film. i accompanied as my film had been lying in the camera for quite some time, and i hadn’t actually shot anywhere beyond kingston for a long time.

lubaina.

the best thing about london is that almost all buildings have huge glass facades that reflect and distort everything around them.

that’s me trying street, a la shank!

one of the most hideous buildings i’ve seen. stavros, another of leena’s friends, calls it an elaborate architectural mistake. i do not remember the name of the monstrosity though.

back to bombay.

i’d been to dadar to shoot the ‘kabutar-khana’ which translated to english means ‘house of pigeons.’ it is a small fountain located right in the middle of an extremely busy and crowded traffic circle, near dadar station. always populated by hundreds of pigeons of all shapes, sizes and colour, kabutar-khana is also registered in public memory as the place where anupam kher’s character gets shot by nana patekar’s henchmen in the brilliant film ‘parinda,’ directed by vidhu vinod chopra.

one can see people feeding the birds all through the day, the evenings drawing parents with tots attached to their hips, clutching bird-feed in their little hands, parents letting their kids wander among the pigeons. it’s a pretty sight when a hundred wings flap together, rising in a ball of dust and feathers, to finally settle on the wires and temple-tops around the fountain. my friend bhushan would stay about a hundred meters away from kabutar-khana. he despises the birds, especially the sound of their feathers. before he got married, there were only two things bhushan was scared of – cockroaches and pigeons. now, there are three.

and for the final image -

the ultimate reality of bombay. life and death cavorting around in the filth, strange bedfellows as the cliche goes, limbs entangled in an intimate embrace.

contradiction.