This post belongs to the original post titled ‘Letting Go‘
I pulled out the scrapbook from the bottom of the cupboard with the intention of scanning a few pages. The paper has yellowed, the edges of the paper are torn, and damp hands have removed some of the colour. But as I flipped through it with my mother, we fell in love with it all over again! So I decided to scan the whole book!
A part of me wanted to retouch it, but the better part of me (read lazy) thought it best to upload it untouched – yellow and torn. The scans don’t reveal how beautifully well preserved the actual photographs are, though the newspaper clippings reveal their age. Hope you enjoy!
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The images are the property of their respective owners. I apologise for being unable to mention the sources (I was just a 12 year old kid who didn’t really care about intellectual property). It is very very very old! Some that do come to my mind are – The Hindu (Newspaper supplements), Brochures from The Sanskriti Museum and India Habitat centre.
With this post, I have exhausted my all my reserves! I wrote this piece on the 21th of March in 2008. Since the festival of holi is just a couple of days away, I decided to finally publish this. Wishing you a very happy and safe holi 🙂
It is the 21st of March. Hardly three weeks are left for my exams and I feel like I always feel before any exam. I realise what the goal of my life is… do anything but study. I want to listen to loud music and scream my heart out. Go for long walks and just drown in the sights and sounds of the surroundings.
I was standing and staring at my books wondering how to execute the strategy I had so carefully devised to counter the enemy. The plan was simple really. All I had to do was study as much as possible, take down little notes here and there and then pray to God.
As I was going over this plan, I heard a squeal downstairs. It was followed by more screams of little girls. I looked out of my window. What I saw filled my heart with joy. I recalled some of my own memories of this colourful annual occasion.
Little girls were squealing – partly out of excitement and partly out of fear. They ran in circles while boys came charging with their buckets. The little girls prayed for mercy and then ran home accusing them of attacking from behind and screaming that they would take revenge.
Tomorrow is Holi – the festival of colours. It has been a while since I took part in any of the proceedings. After almost a decade, I had got an invitation to play with my school friends. Due to ill health I turned down the offer to join the get-together.
But as I looked through the clear glass, memories of my childhood flooded me. The festival of Holi has always filled me with fear. Year after year we would go outside, chase down each other and throw buckets of water over each other, try to dodge the water balloons and scream out of sheer excitement. We’d scream on being chased down, jump for joy on a hit, devise devious plans to counter the boys – yes, back then too it invariably was, as is today, a battle between the girls and boys. Kids from all blocks used to patrol the streets, those whom we had never even spoken to would jump out from nowhere and then the warfare would begin!
And then there were the snipers! I remember once I had the privilege of watching an expert in action. We were on the ninth floor. I was perhaps four years old and my brother around nine. I saw him load his water balloons with colourful ammunition and when an innocent civilian walked by, he would drop the bombs. I was instructed to hide as soon as the balloons were released. I prayed that I be allowed to know whether it was a hit or a miss. But the orders were clear. My brother said we’d know if it were a hit. And true to his prediction, there were screams downstairs! Success!
There is something about this festival that puts a smile on your face no matter what you do, how old you are, whether you are out there fighting, or just looking out of the window.
Now I sit here and wonder how to get back to reality. Something is missing. Yes. I know what it is. I can now study. All that was required was some loud music.
* * *
I couldn’t resist the temptation to use colours 🙂
The dust has finally settled – quite literally. Here are the sights (no sounds, since we’ve gone cracker-free) from this year’s Diwali.
Deepavali (Diwali) is a time when people celebrate. Reasons and ways of celebrating vary.
Lighting the stairs
But the lights are the main features of the festival. In the place where I live, the festivities begin only in the evening, whereas in the place where our ancestors lived, the festivities are over even before the day begins. Its complicated, and I’ll save that for another post.
Decorative Earthen Lamp
So while the whole society around us celebrates, we have nothing to do. A feeling of loneliness, and isolation, inevitably begins to creep in. Something I term festive blues (okay, there may be others who’ll claim to have termed it thus).
This year, to fight the festive blues, I decided watch our neighbours making a rangoli outside their house.
A Traditional Brass Peacock Lamp
Again, in the place I live in, rangolis are made only on very special occasions, and are a form of recreation. In the culture we belong to, new rangolis are made daily. So when we see people making a big deal about rangolis, I really can’t understand it.
Small Decorative Clay Lamp
Since our rangoli had been made early morning, there wasn’t much to do. So yet again, I picked up the very intimidating camera and captured some sights of this diwali.
* * * * * *
Fighting against darkness
If you intend visiting India during Diwali, it could either be the best, or the worst experience of your life. All the bazaars are flooded with the most beautiful lamps and idols and what not. All houses are decorated with lights – both electric as well as oil lamps/candles. And since The Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi, enters only clean houses, all houses are squeaky clean and colourful rangolis are drawn. Of course, all the shops are crowded and everything is expensive. So you have to have great bargaining skills. And if you don’t like crackers or loud noises, well, then nothing can protect you against them!
Pots of Flame
Cheers!
PS. The photos here are free for anyone wanting to use them for non-commercial purposes. A link would be appreciated 🙂
‘The Lamp Is Lit’ is a book authored by Ruskin Bond.
My brother and I attended an event, and it was a great experience. Writing about it, has, however, been rather challenging. This post is an attempt to write about the pleasant time we had, but I found myself hitting the backspace key more often that I would have liked. I hope this post conveys the message I intend it too!
A little over a year back, we attended a rugby 7’s match. It was during the Commonwealth Games. As far as I can remember, we had to buy tickets, wait in long queues, undergo heavy security checking, had to ‘deposit’ any coins we had, and were not allowed to carry video cameras. The ground was lush green, there were two giant screens, and there was excitement in the air. We managed to get good seats and saw international athletes play at close range. We had a wonderful experience.
Fast forward to this afternoon. We went for a rugby match.
The Venue : A Local Ground
Entry was free, there were no security checks, we could sit wherever we wanted, and after the match we could even enter the field.
About two years back, the ground was barren, slums lined its perimeter, and there were at least two large wild pigs. But today, the grass was green and the slums were out of sight (I’m sure there are still a few left, though I couldn’t see them). The ground had nets, goal posts and chalk markings. There was even a temporary stand for the audience. The local ground was no longer just a piece of land, it was a full fledged sports complex. The transformation wasn’t overnite. And it was a pleasant surprise.
Yes, that’s correct. It was a national event, with teams from all over the country participating! There were no journalists covering the event, no glamourous stars. There was one official photographer, who happened to be a player for the host team’s full rugby squad.
The experience of today’s match was quite different to the international match we witnessed last year. But the modest surrroundings and the low-profile nature of the event did not take anything away from the competition. The quality of the games was very high. The ambience was definitely not as noisy as a high profile international event, but there was good humour all around, and a small section of the crowd cheered the local team.
The presence of international players added some colour to the tournament (no pun intended), and the ‘local’ hero, Pierre stole the event as he danced with some of the kids at the end of the match.
As for me, I had the opportunity of standing in the middle of the ground after the match, as the players were moving off the field, towards their coach. It was the kind of view only a person wielding a camera, can have the privilege of experiencing in a professional match.
And it was the pleasure that I could experience today, standing next to my brother. Now where else can one get that!
Rugby is a minor sport in India. For a long time, it was only associated with a Hindi Cinema Actor (who was formerly the captain of the National Team). India currently ranks 75, out of 95 teams in the IRB World rankings.
The state of the sport in the country is best left for professionals to explain. From an ordinary person’s view though, I hope the tide is turning.
While I don’t have much knowledge about rugby, it seems that the sport is beginning to receive some attention. Although there wasn’t any media coverage, the event was sponsored by Harley-davidson motorcycles, United Colors of Benetton, Fox Traveller, and Kingfisher.
The tournament here made me curious enough to find out a little about rugby in India, and it felt good to know that sponsors are beginning to step forward, and the game is developing at the grass-roots level.
Another Deepavali (Diwali), another card! Also, a poster I made exactly a year ago… but forgot about!
Happy Deepavali!
I got the background wooden texture from here.
The lamp in the card is actually a sketch I made recently (after a break of 10 months, I finally picked up the pencil). I hope to post the sketch soon.
Celebrate a cracker-free Diwali
This is a poster I made last year. The background image (which I really liked so much, I just threw in a bunch of words to make it a poster) is by Anshu. I’d forgotten about it when I was uploading to the gallery (and it wasn’t very original either). This time around, I decided to upload it.
Wishing everyone a very Happy and Cracker-free Diwali 🙂
Cheers!
As little kids, we’re always told by our parents to study… Well, almost always. When I was small, my parents never really had much trouble with me as far as studying was concerned. But once every year, they had to tell me NOT to study!
Navratri is celebrated every year, sometime around October… Although it is celebrated at least twice a year, the one culminating in Dusshera is celebrated with the most enthusiasm. Navratri literally means nine nights. During this festival, various forms of Goddess Durga are worshipped.
Technically speaking, puja (religious ritual) is performed on each day of the festival. But I’ll fast forward to the ninth day. On the ninth day of this festival, we worship Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of learning and knowledge. In any field, there is always scope for learning. And knowledge can be gained in any form. So all those items from which we can gain knowledge and wisdom are collected and a dias is formed. An idol of the Goddess is placed atop this dias and a puja is conducted. In the north, a similar puja is performed on Vasant Panchami.
A special Rangoli (decorative design) is made, incense sticks are lit, special dishes are prepared and offered to the Goddess…
As little kids, we used to look forward to Navratri – a welcome break from school, special dishes, the festive atmosphere around the entire city. But we had a another reason to be excited…
On this very special ninth day of the puja, it was absolutely compulsory for us not to study! Yes that’s right! We were told not to study. Now which kid wouldn’t want that? 🙂
We wondered why, on the day the Goddess of learning is worshipped, we were told not to learn… Nevertheless, it was a very exciting thought… how nice it would be if we didn’t have to study…
But when the day actually arrived, with nothing to do – we weren’t allowed to read, or engage in any activity related to art or use musical instruments, we weren’t even allowed to work on the computer or watch tv – the day was extremely boring! To not learn, then seemed a terrible thing indeed…
It is said that the Goddess herself offers her blessings to everything that is placed in the dias, so we must not study and wait for the puja to conclude and then study. But more importantly, by not allowing us to do anything, it was a lesson in itself… Life would be incomplete, and worthless without knowledge…
On the tenth day, the puja was concluded. We were told to pick up our books soon after bath and told to read something new… It signified a fresh start… We were once again told to study with interest (pun intended)…
On this year’s Saraswati puja, my mother and I spent the whole day cleaning the house 🙂
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post… Thanks to some work… Hope to write about the experience soon, for now, here’s a greeting for the upcoming Festival Season
Its been a long time since I’ve paid a visit to the blog. In fact its been a long time since I’ve paid a visit to anybody over the past few months.
It’s the annual competition season and the Creative Minds Competition is around the corner. As usual everything had to be done at the very last moment and as the deadline for sending entries drew nearer, everything took a back seat.
When I say, everything, I mean everything including food and sleep! For the last week we slept a little more than a few hours and food refused to go down out throats as tension and pressure reached its peak. Looking back, I’m struggling to recall all that happened – everything seems blurry.
This project involved two people – myself and my friend Atul. In a way it was a shared dream. We took up the project more as a challenge to ourselves, to stretch ourselves, and to find out how much we could do. At first, we felt it was a small project, and the two of us would be enough. But as things started shaping up, the magnitude of our work multiplied. After initial reluctance, even we realised we needed at least one more person for the job.
Both of us knew who we wanted on the team, but as luck would have it, she was busy. We asked our mentor if there would be anyone who could do the job. Even we tried to look for that elusive third person, but in vain. Finally we decided that the two of us were enough. Everyone around us had doubts about our capability to pull off the project, perhaps even we had our fair share of doubts.
But we had to finish the project. After all, it was our idea, and now that it was out of the bag, we couldn’t let some one else pick it up. And above everything else, it was our reputation on the line. Last year, I had the misfortune of being a part of 2 projects of a similar scale. One that got completed, and one that didn’t. The one that was completed fell short of expectations (and I fervently thank my stars I didn’t play much of a part in it). The one in which I was involved more actively, couldn’t be completed. To be honest, no one could be blamed for the fiasco. The time period allotted for both the projects was simply too short.
We couldn’t afford to repeat last year’s mistakes.
Our deadline was the 30th of September, and somehow, we scraped out something. Its all over (at least officially), and it has been a very adventurous journey, filled with ups and downs, and last minute patches. I do not know when we started it (not the precise date anyway) but we had a rough storyline in the third week of June (my email puts it to 19 June).
Over the past 3 months we have learnt a lot. In many ways it was a crash course in project management, as well as time management. We realised how much effort professionals have to put in to produce quality results. As a lay person, it is easy to criticise what we see, but it is only when we try to achieve the same, we begin to appreciate what it takes to be there, and do it. At a student level, theoretically things seem simple and logical. But when it comes to doing things, especially with a deadline at hand, it is an entirely different ball game.
As I mentioned before, we managed to complete the project. But honestly, it was way below what we had expected. Perhaps we bit off more than we could chew, perhaps it was because it was our first attempt, perhaps we were one person short, maybe it was the lack of time, or perhaps a salad of everything, with a pinch of technical glitches (not according to taste)!
So after all that’s said and done, we’ve mutually decided not to share our adventure till we can safely make it public without embarrassment. Now that there is no deadline hanging over us, it is hard to tell when that time will come, but I sure hope its sooner rather than later.
For now, we’re enjoying a little break (spent the past 2 days sleeping :P)
Since the festival season has already begun, I decided to share something I made last year. It is a Diwali card I made for display. I had presented it to our mentor but Atul managed to pull out a photograph he took of it. So here it is…
Long long ago, when I didn’t have a blog page, I just recorded the random thoughts that came to my mind in separate files on the computer. I wrote this little journal entry on the 22nd day of the month of May in the year 2010. It is in relation to the video about the monuments around Kotla Mubarakpur.
I was working on a short film about the little known monuments around kotla mubarakpur. The narration had been finalised and all that was required was to go for the photo shoot.One of the monuments that was to be covered was that of the Tomb of Mubarak Shah.
I had done a little research about how to get there. And all that I could find were a few photographs, and the location on the satellite image of the area. I could not find any information about the occupant of the tomb, except his name.
A week ago, I had gone hunting for the monument with a friend of mine. I feared going there all alone, knowing that it was a medieval village, and there were very narrow gullies. We asked for directions from some locals, and after a long time, finally managed to locate it. An elderly gentlemen, who gave us the precise direction to the tomb, asked us rather suspiciously why we wanted to go there. We just replied that we wanted to see it. It was rather awkward.
When we reached the tomb, we found it fenced up and locked. We were expecting it. Entry to the tomb was sealed. The village buildings were barely a few feet from the monument. The monument cut a rather sorry picture. It belonged to one of the rulers of Delhi during the fifteenth century. And it was languishing in the middle of some obscure village, with even the locals not bothered about it.
Today, I had to go there again, with my brother, for the actual shoot. We left early in the morning, in order to avoid the scorching summer sun. I felt rather lazy and was beginning to regret the idea.
But we had set out, and the work had to be done. I traced back my steps and to my relief, we managed to reach the monument without asking any one for directions. A horrible stench and open drains greeted us. My brother pulled out his camera and began taking some shots at a very close range.
Anyone with a rather fancy camera is bound to attract attention. And some shop keepers were leaning out of their windows. After a while, a few men surrounded my brother and began questioning him. He answered them in his usual calm and friendly manner. We had come there to see the monument, and were clicking photographs for personal reasons.
His answers seemed to be sufficient for them to relax around him. For, a few seconds later, a middle aged gentleman passed by and told me that it was the tomb of Mubarak Shah and said that we could enter it through the gate on the other side. We reached the gate and I climbed up the ramp in front of the locked gate. I looked at my brother and told him we could enter it. He joined me, and then we realised that it was locked.
Gates Unlocked (Photo by R. Karthik)
By this time, a lot of eyes were fixed on us. And just as we were turning back, a youth walked up carrying a set of keys. He opened the lock on the outer fence and entered the tomb. An observer shouted light-heartedly, “yeh yahaan ka maalik hai!” (He is the owner of this building).
He asked us to take off our shoes and we entered the tomb’s premises. It was then we realised, that we were probably the only outsiders to have set foot in this tomb. A very special privilege indeed. The caretaker then allowed us to enter the main burial area.
When we entered, we were awestruck. There were six tombs inside the tomb – not just one. They were covered with half burnt incense sticks and sweets. There was a broken street lamp fitted on to one of the walls lighting up the interiors. The inscriptions on the walls were well preserved and it was rather peaceful being inside. We took as many photographs as we could and exited the gate, thanking the care taker for his generosity.
As we were leaving, a local called out to the caretaker. “Upar bhi le jaao inhe” (take them upstairs as well).
My brother asked the caretaker, if there was a way to go upstairs as well. We had been around the circumference of the tomb and not noticed any staircase.
Once again the care taker unlocked the gate and ushered us inside. He told us not to take off our shoes and we followed him to another gate. It led to a hidden staircase to the roof. The stone staircase was steep, dark, narrow, and smelling of rotting flesh. With difficulty, we climbed up and reached the terrace. The main gumbad was surrounded by many chattris. I stood there chatting with one of the locals, sharing whatever little knowledge I had about the monument as well as the surrounding tombs, while my brother went around the terrace.
Once we had exited the premises, we spoke to some more locals who were still very suspicious. They told us how officials from ASI would just come there, give some false promises, and leave. The locals had taken it upon themselves to protect the monument.
It was amazing how, just a week ago, I had formed a rather negative opinion about the tomb – how it was lying completely neglected. And today, I had a completely different perspective. Some hospitable locals had granted us access to the monument that few could get. They had taken care of the monument that no one had bothered about.
We left the village and the stench behind us, still unable to believe our luck.
Back home, I edited my script for the film. To the concluding lines, I added, “Though these monuments are over 500 years old, there are no wide-eyed tourists gazing in awe at their magnificence. They might have suffered the ignorance of officials, but they have stood the test of time and survived with a little help from the locals of this enigmatic city called Delhi”
The video that I had been working on, had a roller-coaster of a journey and after almost a whole year, I am relieved to say that I’ve finally managed to complete it! The video has been uploaded to youtube:
For this post, I owe a close friend of mine for sharing this video. It’s so beautiful, and even before it had reached half way, I had goose pimples (that’s what they are called right?) all over. Just wanted to share it with anyone who’s interested.
Last week my brother asked me to make an e-card, if it can be called one, for the festival of Holi. He told me he wanted a splash of colours and gave a small reference image to work with. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, so I took a short cut! I downloaded a few paint spatter brushes and applied them randomly, and viola! It was done!
Now since the bulk of the work was done using brushes, it’s only fair that I should give credit to the sources of the brushes. There’s one called Bombay_Wisps and one that’s called benblogged(splatter). So a big thank you to them for putting out stuff so that other’s can use them :).
On my brother’s suggestion, I decided to upload it here. I admit, its late. But anyway, here’s wishing everyone a great Holi 🙂
Musings of an eccentric mind 