Stones, Hearts, and Living....

My friend Deepak Amembal, when he visited Hampi in Karnataka State of India, must have been spoilt for choice when he looked through his camera viewfinder.  He could have kept the camera button pressed, and continuously clicked, and he still wouldn't have run out of these evocative rocks that represent an entire civilization in stone, on the banks of the Tungabhadra River.

So many rock structures, some amazingly balanced despite the ravages of erosive time, vestiges of a splendorous living city  teeming with art,commerce power and life. 

It just occurred to me that there must have been old people then too, and I wondered how the society then treated them.  I saw a very evocative image in these rocks clicked by Deepak, and I have a question.

Read on...

(photo by Deepak, white line imagination by me )

The old man,
ramrod straight,
bag in his right hand,
and his frail wife,
resting a while,
her head on his shoulder,
legs crossed;
a pause
under
the intense mid day sun,
thinking of
of their days alone,
and no one coming to see them,
The children
tunneling in
success and progress
to fill coffers
that
on any day,
win against the Joneses
and these two
waiting for a deliverance
and requiem in stone.

And then these too,
solid as they come,
together
a she sits looking up
head on his shoulder,
wordless against the sky
aeons under a burning son,
washed by the winds and rains;
they've seen the cities of gold
the celebrations
the plunder,
the artists and the city,
the stone hearted art.

Strangely,
they are not alone.
As folks
of all colors and persuasions,
come wandering by
to peer and look up at them,
click pictures,
paint and write stories.

What a pity,
in this day and age,
the old parents
have to turn to stone,
for someone to notice them....

A Crabby Life .....

My young friend, Sharvari Paranjape of Pune, just out of school /or about to, accompanies her photography crazy family, to all these wild life parks/reserves in the state  and also the various beaches of Kokan.

She has figured earlier on this blog with her amazing monkey pictures.

This  is a capture at the  Karde Beach in Kokan.

As per tradition, this blog always roots for the underdog, this time specifically under a rock.....originally in Marathi, then an afterthought in English.

दबा धरून बसलेले खेकडे
मागे गेले तर महागाई खाली चिरडणार,
पुढे गेलं तर भ्रष्टाचाराच्या लाटानखाली
गटांगळ्या खाणार ....
चौफेर लक्ष देत जगलं,
तरी हळू हळू पुढे जायचं,
कुणाच्यातरी पायाखाली
नाहीतर जाळ्यात न येण्याची पराकाष्ठा करायची ,
आणि सगळ्याना चुकवत
आयुष्याचा रस्ता सापडला
कि कोणीतरी येउन उचलाव,
आणि हात पाय तोडून
आगीच्या फोफाट्यात भाजावं,
वाह वाह म्हणाव .....
हे काय आयुष्य आहे ?

That crabby feeling.

Take a step back,
and get crushed
and squeezed
by the rocky costs of living.

Move ahead,
and get swallowed
in the tsunami of corruption
erupting in waves
around you.


And if,
by some tentative ingenuity,
and
wide eyed alertness
you avoid being trodden on
and
netted by danger,
there is always
that mercenary one
who picks you up,
cracks your limbs,
and throws you to broil
in the fire,
licking his lips,
in anticipation
of the meal.
 
Is that a life ?

Cell Lessons

 

Sometimes, something other than a photograph inspires you.  Particularly, if you are someone, who is continually amazed at the human body design, and how it has implicit messages for our society.

Our body is made up of millions of cells, each containing 23 pairs of chromosomes, all containing about three billion base pairs of DNA strings, that are kind of a "program" that decides how we live, our health, our diseases, our longevity etc etc. Cells are constantly dying and being replicated, and in order that all the Program instructions (DNA strings) get replicated without missing end stuff, all these strings have a buffer piece at the end, which saves the strings from being corrupted. This buffer zone stuff is called  a Telomere.  Not that the telomeres win all the time, but they work till their last breath, so to speak, and then the strings get corrupted, and we get some disease, because the DNA string is now something else.   The "program" malfunctions. 

The 1000 Genomes Project is a massive research into variations that are seen in human genes, and the BBC reports that 95% of these have bee identified and mapped , teaching us much about inherited and other diseases. 

There is a message in all this for how we function as a society. No one will do research on this, but we must learn. 

(photo courtesy BBC News)

Millions of bodies,
each
with millions of cells
and nuclei,
each
with 23 pairs of chromosomes,
and more millions of genes;
so many
behaving by rules ,
slight diversions
taken care of by telomeres
keeping the wild
methylating DNA strings
in check,
and our bodies
continue to work
with amazing checks and balances.

Then again,
we millions of people,
with millions of ambitions,
aspirations
and wishes,
with millions of rules,
security,
regulations,
laws,
facilities,
and sometimes
even family help,
are unable
to behave decently
individually
for the betterment of our society.

We learn nothing
from that which makes us....
:-(

Tendrils of the Courageous Type

My FB friend Arvind Khanna posted this wonderful photograph; something he posted as a member of the Delhi Photography Club, and shared with us.

Nature they say , reflects our lives, and possibly vice-versa.  And so we have , occasionally, brave entities, facing all kinds of dark forebodings by gutless superficial folks, as they delve deep into troubled places, and try to work on their own, seeking a solution......finally turning around and back , possibly to a better world; who knows ?

(photo by Arvind Khanna)

Life is easy
when you rest
on the efforts of others,
facing into a blue sky and sun,
waving at the
birds,
some flying by
checking you out,
some alighting as a breather
in an actual journey somewhere else.
They skim the surface,
and perhaps
you know who I talk about.

But the toughest thing
is to look inwards,
amidst the dark forebodings,
little yellow glimmers
and a confused
dark populace,
deep in the recesses,
and say,
"I will go in,
investigate the situation,
try to improve it all,
and only then emerge back up."
These folks
are the tough brave ones.
They don't
make them like that anymore....

Freedom to explore

Young photoblogger  Pankaja Date likes to go exploring amidst the green, more so on monsoon mornings.  She did so, on this Independence Day mid morning, and amongst butterflies, and caterpillars , also chanced upon a ladybug teetering at the edge of the leaf. 

As she mobilized to click it, an ant simply made its way importantly into the frame.

This was the result.  

Like they say, nature reflects what it sees around itself.....

(photo by Pankaja Date Photography)

In the
same undulating green,
two worlds
of the
haves and have-nots

separated by
a self defined line.

On one side,
prosperous black coated
red top-hatted types,
bursting at the seams,
blithely traipsing around,
the smooth life,
unaware that
blind ambition
and overconfidence
sometimes leads to a sheer fall.

And the hardy
have-nots,
of the uneven
unpredictable,
occasionally damaged
terrain,
with potholes ,
testing out the dangers
with their tentative feet,
trying to smell
which way the wind blows,
and what lies below.

A heavy blast
of a monsoon wind,
and the green terrain
sweeps itself
taking the citizenry along.

Do they fall,
do they hold on
to each other together,
or do they
hold on desperately
for their own dear life,
is a telling commentary
on the society
we call our own.....

Learning to Bystand.....:-(

My friend Magiceye, posted this photograph  of a crow getting the capital punishment, almost poked to death,  watched by the Crow society.   You may see it here  at 365project.org.

With rules of civil society being changed, abused, and implemented  with an eye on those in power , and the recent happenings in Guwahati and elsewhere, one just wondered if the crows were learning something......like the Bystander Effect.    

An ordinary life,
struggling for open skies,
food,
and avoiding
powerful swooping
eagle eyed spies.

Did he offend
a neighbor
with a bad Kaw Kaw ?

Was he found
making eyes
at a local girl crow ?

Or is it a she crow,
who decided to elope
with a he crow
she scavenged around with..?


They were both found
beneath
the bougainvillea branch
sharing a chapati,
he retrieved from a kind balcony.

They poked him
and molested her
to bits,
two leading powerful
gunda crows,
impervious to being photographed.

And the rest of them,
amazingly,
simply stood around,
supposedly stunned,
but gutless,
proving the Bystander effect.

The crows have learned a lot
from us.

Fence Sitting

I live in a place which is situated between a big lake and a hill. As it happens, there is planned imposing high-rise construction on one side of the Hill, close to the lake.

If you climb to the top of the hill, besides getting a panoramic view of the area, complete with wooded areas, the technological campus, and the water supply pipes for Mumbai swerving in the distance, you also get a view , on the other side of the hill, of some high rises far away in the distance , and , closer to the hill, of the unplanned , cheek by jowl, desperate development that has taken place in creative ways, so that those that make the city run, can get a place to stay....

The hill is part of the campus, and hence fenced in some parts. 

The daughter, who is a self taught photographer, and has her own photoblog, climbed the hill yesterday, and came up with , among several others, these two captures.

Some horizontal,
some vertical,
and
some entangled
and chain linked

Some come
scraping up
cheek by jowl
to the foot of the hill,
and some,
blindly, rush upwards
stiff in concrete
to
cock a snook
at the hill
from a distance.

The intermittent trees
watch
and wonder,
why the hill is fenced,
when the fences
are actually in the mind...

Wok a life !

Magiceye's Magic Camera  automatically clicks, or should I say, slurps, when faced with something delicious like Paneer, onion and capsicum in Soya Sauce.  Which he posted here.

Must be my old age, but instead of running to get a fork, thoughts about the life and times of the onions, capsicums and paneers in our society come to mind. 

(photo by Deepak Amembal Magiceye)

Why is it,
that
again and again,
when immersed
in the possibility of
augmenting resources,
Some
work themselves transparent,
Some
work so hard,
losing the young green,
till they darken and curl a bit,
but
Some,
hefty, rich ,
fair, proteinous
and densely powerful,
dig right in ,
marinate avariciously,
taking care
not to mess themselves up, 
and
yet absorb most
of the life sauce ?

Wok a life !
Wok a life !

 

A Haveli Remembers .....

Blogger friend, traveller, photographer  and storyteller and the only person I know who has been featured in the 2011 edition of Lonely Planet,     Anil P.,  recently did a lovely post entitled  Conversations , and backdrops in Jodhpur  , where he wondered about the juxtaposition of a person speaking on his cell phone,  vis-a-vis the old haveli, now locked and boarded up,  and at the base of which, the fellow decided to sit and continue his conversation.

To me, it bespoke the change in our society, a change from inclusive to exclusive.

As Anil P. said  (in reply to this poem posted as a comment there) , "  Imagine what it'd be like to not have Jharoka's to keep an eye on the street and the goings on.  Windows that overlook the street retain the oxygen that pumps into the street and beyond......"


(all photographs by Anil P)

Leaning in anticipation
out of the
jharoka,
eyes searching
through her
earthy red-yellow veil ,
she calls out
to her friend
passing by;
rushes down the steps,
out through
the big door,
stops at the threshold,
a huge smile
matched
with an outpouring of words.

A few more windows
have folks looking down
to see what
the commotion is all about.
Some indulgent,
some smirking,
and disapproving
this wild display....

They should have lived
in a time,
where
you never saw
who you were talking to,
the person
never noticed your delight....

AS
you sat down
at the base of it all,
leaned back,
they heard
a one sided conversation
devoid of
all the action.

No wonder
the doors and windows
prefer
to close their
eyes and minds....

Life and Times of a Cricket Ball

Dressed
in cherry red
and golden seams
in her prime,
she ,
slightly blinded
by the afternoon sun
emerges,
sedately
from the maternal box,
a Kanya-Daan,
by the man in the long coat.



Destined
to be,
maybe,
indulged initially,
rubbed
sometimes the wrong way,
that too
with some dirt;
sometimes,
spat on,
sometimes
twirled around
in place,
and
spun and
thrown around
by fellows
exhibiting style...


Hurting
at being
flung at
three wooden,
unmoving types,
out there on "bail",
untouched except
by
middled wooden "faces";

Sometimes
being
swept across the mud,
Sometimes
flicked here and there,
Sometimes
lofted high up
to fall
helplessly at the mercy
of the watchers,
and
Sometimes,
even being called
Doosra
although
a Pehla
by right;

Being thrashed
to the ropes
and stopped by
unrelenting chasers
and throwers,
as the public
madly applauds,
impervious
to her wounds
and her mind.

Sometimes,
late in the evening,
her tears
cover the ground,
but
the crazy
blinded folks
call it dew.....
and carry on.

The Game of Life
continues,
and she ages,
seams unraveling,
misshapen attitude,
and faded color.

A new box
in brought out,
with so many new ones
preening inside,
and eyed by fellows
in long coats,
and arms that speak,
she
gets relegated
to the "has beens"
as
a kind gent,
wipes her wounds,
takes a second look at her,
shakes his head,
and
drops her inside
the box.

Love -All, START !

Winner of the Blogadda "Is Indian Media Misusing its freedom?" contest.

Submitted for the Blogadda "Is Indian Media Misusing its Freedom?" contest.


Our media
is like a game
of Badminton;

You serve
events,
they observe;
sometimes
rushing to the Net,
sometimes
tossing a question
from way back there;
sometimes
a quiet drop
of a hint
at the net,
but mostly
they return
as good as
they get........






The court
is often slippery
with the sweat
of honest people,
but
all
that exaggerated sliding,
and exulting
on reaching,
stretching
their imagination
sometimes,
instead of
flesh and blood facts....

Sometimes
the referee
turns a blind eye
to
an actual touch,
something
stepped on,
beyond boundaries;
and
how can we
forget the
"lobbies"
on the side...

Sometimes
"in" is "out",
and other times,
outsiders
are in.....
Its
all a game
to them,
complete
with
shouting and yelling folks
on the side,
drowning
the earthy sound
of an innocent wood.....
an occasional clash
of partners
standing
on the same line...

It
really
boils down
something shuttling around
desperately
here and there,
like Saina would have said,
helped
by a racquet,
or is it racket ?

Misusing , did you say ?
Probably.
Responsible ?
Nah !
They're just
tossing around
the freedom
they've grabbed from us.....
and
Like most of us,
They've always played to win .....