Winter was on its way out, and the old leaves were making way for new little ones to spring up and take their place. The minute I saw these large leathery beautiful leaves on the pavement, I knew I had to pick them up. I didn’t know what I would do with them. But I brought them home anyway.
A few days later, they had dried out completely and their leathery texture was gone. But I wanted to keep them with me. We had clear wood varnish leftover from an earlier project of mine. So on Holi, I painted these leaves.Work in progress A few days back I assembled them and hung them near a window. Now I see them everyday, first thing in the morning, and just before I go to sleep. All tied up and hung
As some of you may know, I voluntarily provide design services for the Alumni Association of my alma mater, and last weekend, we organised a musical programme for the college reunion.
All of us had our tasklist – marketing, sponsorship, coordination with the other stakeholders, running around for prints… mine was the entire visual branding.
Having done branding, and much more, for an event in the past*, it didn’t appear to be that much work. The main challenge this time, though, was that I had to do it in addition to, and after my day job.
Initially a fun activity, designing all the collateral — the logo, poster, invitation card, backdrops and a souvenir mug — soon began looking more like a gigantic tortoise, moving painfully slowly, threatening to tuck itself inside a shell. With extremely short timelines, it was pretty much a sliding dive to the finish line.
On D-day too, there was a lot of activity. Registrations, sales counters, stage, back-stage, and audience management… all organizers had their stations.
My job was to stick around at the light and sound cubicle above the balcony of the auditorium.
It was déjà vu. In my previous event, too, I was stationed at the sound cubicle. It’s not a bad place to be, but it prevents one from interacting with new people. My regret the last time around was not having a picture of my post. This time, though, I made sure I corrected my mistake.
In the end, it wasn’t such a bad place to be, and in some ways turned out to be the best seat in the house. I had the freedom to click pictures, experiment with the camera’s settings, and listen to the entire performance — something my peers couldn’t.
I’m still not very comfortable with the camera, and in the poor light, it was very difficult to get a clean shot of this console. But it has a nice abstract feel to it, and seems apt for the entire event — the enormous effort involved before, and during the event made the past month and a half a complete blur.
The gadgets
* Event management can take its toll. Check out this incoherent aftermath of my past experience — and there’s a video too: Wimbledon Fever!
This week, I learnt a new word, thanks to the Weekly Photo Challenge.
Ephemeral: adjective
1. Lasting for a very short time.
It was a delicious cupcake. I wish I had taken a picture of it. But before the thought even occurred to me, I had gulped it down. Here are some crumbs, before the paper was hastily discarded!
We left Chennai on Christmas eve. After a short visit to Chidambaram and overnight at Vaitheeshwaran Koil, on Christmas morning we set off towards our destination — a small village named Komal.
I remember my grandmother mentioning Komal several times, but beyond the name, I knew nothing. To me, Komal sounded out of place. It was too north-Indian a name, to be a village in Tamil Nadu. In fact, for a long time, I thought it was in Myanmar!
We knew no-one in the village. The house was sold several years ago, and my father hadn’t been anywhere near Komal for forty years.
We had no address. Back then, my father told us, people never had addresses. Everyone knew everyone else in the village. Each house was identified by its occupants. How, then, were we to find that house? “I’ll know it when I see it. I’m told it hasn’t changed one bit,” said my father.
One of my father’s cousins gave us the name of a person who could help us locate the house, just in case.
“It is near a temple.”
We followed the highway leading towards Kumbakonam and asked for directions from locals. Our landmark was a temple. We found one. And another. And another. But my father could not recognise anything. “There should be a bridge, followed by a row of shops. I don’t understand. ”
My father asked a few local people about the person my uncle had mentioned. “No brahmins live on this street,” said one man with a glare. He pointed towards another street, and told us to ask there.
On the other street, we were told that only Iyengars lived there, no Iyers. They pointed towards the end of the street and told us that some of the residents had been living there for years. Perhaps they could help.
At the end of the street, we stopped outside an old looking house, that my father thought looked familiar. Unsure, he knocked on the door, and asked the residents if he could take a look. A few minutes later, he came out and told us that it was not the one.
We had been going around in circles for over an hour. The sun was beating down on us.
Dejected, and frustrated, we were planning to return to Chennai, when we saw an elderly gentleman. As a last-ditch effort, we asked him about our mysterious contact person. To our delight, he knew the person. “Oh! Yes, I know him! But he doesn’t live here. He lives in Komal. This is Therazendur.’*
Once we realised we were in the wrong village, it took us barely 10 minutes to reach the narrow entry to Komal.
“The bridge!” my father exclaimed. “I know this! We are here! Those are the shops. Take this turn. Right here. Wait! Stop!” No sooner had the car stopped, that my father sprang out of the car. He looked around the small roads, and then began walking at a fast pace.
There was an old man, walking alongside a cycle, on the side of the road. My father asked him about a house that had once belonged to an uncle of his. “Oh that person passed away many years ago,” replied the old man.
“Yes,” my father replied in an excited tone, glad that someone finally knew about the house. “That was my uncle. My father had bought it from him.”
The old man’s eyes widened. He took my grandfather’s name.**
“Yes! I am his youngest son! Can you take me to that house?”
My father’s steps quickened. His excitement was evident. The minute he laid his eyes on the house, my father pointed towards it and exclaimed, “It is just as we had left it!”
The old man introduced us to the occupants of the house. He must have become accustomed to members of my father’s family coming to see the old house, and graciously allowed us inside.
“This house was the only house in the entire village to have electricity, in those days!” My father was visibly proud. “There used to be a swing. A large swing. Is it still there?”
The owner smiled and said it was there. Everything was just the way it had been. The swing, the large stone grinder, even the light switches and fans!
“This house was purchased in 1940 when the war broke out, and my mother had to move with three of her children along with our grandparents and stay in a largish house. It was bought for Rs. 4000. It was in this house that I was born,” my aunt later told me.
Watching my father almost run around the house, I can only imagine how many memories must have come back to him. Every wall, every pillar, must have meant the world to him — a world very different, and in another time, from that of ours right now.
The owner told us that my uncle once casually asked if it were up for sale.
“So was it?”
“No! It’s been a very lucky house for me,” replied our smiling host.
The house
Kolam outside the Komal house
The porch
The courtyard
The corridor
A stone grinder can be seen on the right
* My grandfather was born in Therazendur. We had practically gone around the whole village a couple of times, and it is likely that we passed by one of the houses that may have once belonged to his family. But we will never know.
** That old man, we later found out, was a distant relative of my grandmother!
About the photographs: These photographs are of someone’s house. They graciously allowed us to enter their private space and I request these photographs not to be used elsewhere.
A bright neon orange origami gift by my mother's little student
This week the Daily Post asks us to post something orange. Strangely, there is very little orange surrounding me. Not even my repository of photos has a hint of orange. I turned away from the monitor, wondering what to do, when this neon orange paper flower caught my eye. So for the first time, I decided to shoot something new for the challenge.*
This flower was made by one of my mother’s little students. It was great fun to shoot this adorable gift.
Just as I was about to post, I read the fine print — it had to be gallery. Bummer! I told my mother I needed more images with orange. And one by one, she brought things for me to click. An Indian tri-color ribbon, a bangle, orange candies — which were also from her students. My mother encourages me in the sweetest ways possible 🙂
This morning, we visited the Mughal Gardens, and there too, she pointed at everything orange. To be honest though, we weren’t very impressed by this year’s flowers.**
And so, for today, I will stick to just one picture. Hope you like it 🙂
A bright neon orange origami gift by my mother’s little student
* Yeah, I cheat most of the time by picking shots I’ve clicked before, and most of the time my posts are drafts waiting to be posted. I just adapt each draft for each challenge!
** The Mughal Gardens are within the President’s Estate — the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The gardens are open for public, free of cost, for one month, every year. Maybe we have very high standards… we Delhi wallahs are spoilt rotten, I tell ya.
For several years, we’ve had a lemon tree in our balcony. I don’t quite remember when it was planted. My guess is that it’s been with us for over fifteen years.
One of the oldest plants in our balcony, it had spread its branches wide. It occupied a lot of space, but not our attention. Not for the right reasons anyway. And like a child seeking affection, it tried to make its presence evident. Every time we went near it to hang the clothes out to dry, it would scratch our hands with its thorns.
Apart from the scratches, the only time the lemon came into our conversations was when our neighbour’s lemon would bear fruit. In its entire lifetime, ours never bore fruits.
My dad brought some fertilizers on the recommendation of our green-thumbed neighbour. Those chemicals were apparently for making the tree bear fruit. But that didn’t work. And so we gave up.
Perhaps it would never flower. It wasn’t supposed to be in a flowerpot anyway. It belonged to the earth. And so we began contemplating getting rid of the tree.
But we couldn’t bring ourselves to uproot it.
We heard our own voices, and it sounded like disappointed parents thinking about throwing their child away. Thankfully, my father refused to throw it.
As if expressing joy at my father’s faith, the following year, the tree surprised us with two small flowers. But that was it. The flowers fell off without turning into fruits.
Last year, a towel got caught up in the thorns of the lemon. Nothing unusual, except this time, the cloth caused our lemon flowerpot to fall and break. We quickly transferred the plant to another flowerpot. But the damage had been done. A few days later, the leaves dried up. Two weeks later, the tree was gone.
For many months, the leafless frame of the tree stood in the flowerpot, showing no sign of coming back. My father refused to clear it out. It would return, he said.
But my mother and I had no such expectations. We’d pretty much begun ignoring the remains of the tree.
Until a few weeks back. Springing to life
The brown branches were beginning to wear a green coat, with tiny leaves peeping out from underneath the wooden blanket—after a long long winter’s slumber, the lemon was springing to life.
Whether or not it flowers again, it doesn’t matter. We’re just happy to have our lemon back.
The image featured in this post is my entry for this week’s Photo Challenge : Rule of Thirds. Check out more imagery at the Daily Post.
PS: I recently completed four years on WordPress 😀
I was desperate to get some rest, but sleep was the one thing that refused to come. Random thoughts and visions haunted me, interspersed with summons, as they were, directed towards me — by whom, I don’t know. I tossed and turned in the middle of the night, till I could take it no longer. And then I wrote this.
Resolutions
Read: Know and understand other people’s points of view. Interact often with fellow bloggers and chroniclers of the world.
Write: Share your world view. Even if it is going to be just you who reads it.
Draw: Complete the picture and fill it with colours of your choice.
Musings of an eccentric mind 