Moonday

Not quite, but close. It was a day when a couple of my friends noticed the magnificence rising up over the Eastern horizon in the evening.

Yesterday was full moon. I noticed it when I walked out to meet Jay and his friends for dinner. The air was clear and the moon looked spectacular. Yet, it is today that I’m thinking about how it looked and why it matters how it looks.

Looking out into the night sky and being at awe, even in the most polluted cities around the world, must be one of the last consistent worldwide sources of grounding and inspiration at the same time.

To me, it usually sparks to joy of photography, which in my case is pretty amateur. Twice or thrice every year, I set up my astronomy binoculars and try to take an image of the magnified moon using my smart camera.

It has move up from there, hasn’t it? A proper telescope and a DSLR. I can dream at least.

In other forms of creativity, no drawing/sketching today. Maybe I’ll work on a song after I finish this.

Meanwhile, I am caught in the middle of three literary narratives. Peter Watt’s Blindsight is the most gripping one, followed by Hanya Yanigahara’s To Paradise and James S. A. Corey’s Tiamat’s Wrath. And I already have my eyes on a bunch of others, including Midnight’s Children and Victory City by Salman Rushdie.

Photographic marvel

One of my friends from Bangalore, Cop Shiva, a cop by profession and a photographer by passion, is taking part in a contest organized by Nikon. Here’s his entry.

I love it. If you like this photograph, please vote for Cop Shiva at this link.

If you want to get in touch with Cop Shiva, this is his FaceBook page.

Incredible !rony

First it was 9/11 in 2001. Then it was 7/11 in 2006. Then it was 26/11 in 2008. I can't remember the others. Sooner than you know, THEY start propagating messages saying that people should show spunk and walk around as if nothing has changed. This is branded as the resilience of the city/nation. THEY claim that the terrorists have not managed to do anything. And THEY say that we have won.

Bullshit!

Are you kidding us? Not in India at least. THEY have so much of security everywhere these days. Near important buildings, in railway stations, at malls - everywhere there are security men/women with loaded guns behind sacks of sand. And trust me, these barricades et al. don't exactly fit in well with the 'Incredible !ndia' theme! For heaven's sake, it doesn't feel like a free country anymore.

Two days with Danny have taught me how unreasonable these apparent security upgrades are. A terrorist can still walk in to a station with a gun under his jacket and shoot at people. However, a well-meaning photographer who wants to show the face of modern developing India, or 'Incredible !ndia' is denied access to photograph good things about our country.

The explanations are the same everywhere. Photographs can be used to plan more attacks. Give me a break! No terrorist or an accomplice would walk around sporting a Canon with a gigantic lens and take pictures of buildings and 'key-security areas' in broad daylight. Terrorists aren't that stupid. That's why they achieved all this mass hysteria in the first place.

The truth is that THEY and we have fallen into the trap set for us. The terrorists have succeeded not in wiping democracy off from the face of planet and not by instilling religious fanaticism in our lives. They have managed to drain out, little by little, the fun and freedom that we have. THEY are playing into the terrorists hands by ushering in all these restrictions!

Doesn't anybody feel like protesting? Don't we want our freedom back. From the terrorist and THEM?

Danny Lehmann visit - Day 2

Today, Danny I went up further North to the suburbs. We first hung around Bandra and then at the Bandra Kurla complex. We had our lunch at the McDonald’s at the Linking Road in Bandra. On our way out of the restaurant, we asked a couple of ladies clad in churidar if they would be willing to pose next to Ronald McDonald for some photos. They agreed and we took a few pictures. We tried to ask a burkha-clad woman if she would be willing to do the same, but she refused.

Then we went to the Bandra Kurla complex where Danny tried to take pictures of some of the buildings. Eventually, we were shooed away by the security. We tried to explain to them using a letter that Danny’s company had sent out which clearly stated that Danny was on a photographic project trying to capture India’s economic boom. But the security people, albeit with politeness, flatly refused any photography due to security reasons.

Then we went to Dharavi and hung out there for quite a while. I actually wanted Danny to take a picture of a skyscraper in the background with the Dharavi slums in front. But we couldn’t find any decent location for the same. Then we headed back downtown where Danny wanted to capture the Prince of Wales Museum and the Gandhi Statue in Fort in evening light. He was able to take some good photos.

At sunset, with the tripod in hand, we went to capture the Gateway of India and the Taj hotel. The evening was beautiful and he was able to capture a few good snaps of both of the famous landmarks. After that, like the routine on Sunday, we ended up the the pub at Marine Plaza Hotel, where we watched the ending of a wonderful World Cup cricket match over beer and burgers.
I must reiterate how comfortable I felt with Danny through the whole two days of our travel around Mumbai. And I got to know a lot more about Vinokur’s dark secrets through Danny! ;-) Yeah, we ended up bitching about Vinokur for sometime. What do you expect when two close friends meet, eh? We parted after a bear hug, hoping that we would get another chance to enjoy some more time together!

Danny Lehmann visit - Day 1

Something quite incredible happened today. A truly extraordinary circle of life was completed! I met Vinokur’s best friend Danny Lehmann, a master photographer and a wonderful human being, and hung out with him all through the afternoon and evening. I still remember Vinokur introducing me and Danny to each other three years ago on Skype. Little did we know that such a thing would happen! That’s the mystery of life.


Danny was in Mumbai as part of a photographic assignment to India. He's trying to capture images that symbolize the rise of India as a financial and information technology superpower. He had already been to Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur and had captured the some iconic images from there. Vinokur had let me known that Danny was in India but I hadn’t a clue that he was visiting Mumbai until yesterday when Vinokur asked me if I could help Danny by finding some guide/friend kinda person who would help Danny get around the city taking photos.

Even though I asked around, I wasn’t able to find anyone to accompany Danny. For starters, I arranged for Danny to visit the Bandra-Worli sealink and take pictures of it through my contacts. Then, I promised him that I would meet him Sunday afternoon and take him around town to see if he could find some interesting things to catch on camera. I had rehearsal in the morning and I rushed down to Churchgate on my way to the Trident where Danny was staying.

It was incredible to run into him at the lobby where he was waiting for me. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening when we exchanged greetings. We felt an instant connect – through our common, dear friend Vinokur – and felt comfortable with each other immediately. We went up to his room, looked at the map, and planned our outing for the night. We rented a cab and went to the BSE (which was cordoned off for photography), Girgaum Chowpatty, Haji Ali, Phoenix Mills, and Atria mall (both malls were off-limits for photographers too).

Danny finally ended up choosing Girgaum Chowpatty as the location for shooting some prolonged-exposure shots of the skyline just after sunset. After he set the tripod up and his adjusted his camera to take pictures, we had a 15-strong crowd of locals as audience. One young man, who seemed to be extremely interested in photography, almost acted like a bouncer for us shooing off random people from straying across the camera’s field and around the tripod.

After Danny’s got his share of pics, we went back to the room and deposited the camera and the tripod, freshened ourselves up and headed out for a dinner at a pub at the Marine Plaza hotel. I can’t quite remember the name of the pub, but the ambiance was excellent. We had draft beer and a hamburger each. The conversation was brilliant and funny and ranged from Libya to photography to women.

My next date with Danny seems to be on Tuesday afternoon because I couldn’t get leave from work on Monday and I have to work half-day on Tuesday. Hoping for another masterclass in human company and photography!

My relationship with photography

I have had a crazy up-and-down relationship with photography. In my childhood and adolescence, I was never familiar with the concept of photography because my family never had a camera. In medical college, I was averse to being photographed. I don't quite know the reason but I wanted myself to be out of every photo that was taken during holiday tours. Maybe it was the fact that I had protruberant teeth and was scared of looking at myself in a photograph.

Then came the era of digital cameras. Some of my friends had a camera that they allowed me to play with. I realized how much fun it was to compose frames and soon learnt that I was good at it. This made me long for a digital camera. Around the time that my folks allowed me to buy one, I lost Chuck’s camera. I had to buy him one for his marriage and I used up my allowance for the same.

For the next five years, my interest in composing photographs stayed put, and yet I couldn’t afford a proper camera. The first camera that I ever owned came in the form of an early camera-phone model from Nokia. I started clicking pictures for documentation—primarily x-rays and MRI scans of patients for making presentations.

Then, I fell in love with Vinokur, an expert photographer. He tried to motivate my photography by gifting me a very good digital camera. This is the first good camera that I have owned. I started taking pictures with it. Vinokur and I would spend hours online and going through the pictures, commenting on them, editing them, and finally posting them on forums like Facebook.

During this period, however, the commenting and editing process started to become tiresome as I didn’t quite understand the reason behind some photos being adjudged as ‘bad’ or ‘good’. Vinokur tried to help me out by showing me examples of photography by the greats which I couldn’t grasp. Soon, our ‘photography sessions’ started becoming annoying and irritating, especially to me. I guess he must have felt disappointed and annoyed too.

Since then, I fear taking the camera. Every time I click a picture, there is a hell lot of ‘baggage’ attached to that frame—about its quality, its cleverness, and its negativities. Taking pictures and editing have become a pain for me. Hence, I have stashed away my camera. I don’t even take pictures using my mobile camera anymore. Why initiate something painful when you have the choice to not?

The Floating Doll

The smile. Innocence puppetified?

The eyes. Shallowness immortalized?
The dimples. Too dramatized?
Thin arms. Too thin and rarefied?

The scene, all the dirt is justified
The act. Can it be classified?
The drain. All guts clarified?
The pain. Not one's satisfied!

And now, its allegorified
Is she me, demagnified?
Am I her, dissatisfied?
This life. Am I too qualified?

I'm afloat, perhaps unjustified
For reasons well publicized
Due to pills well advertised
I hope it's all justified.