Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe... flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.

And a girl should say:
It must be wonderful to live and grow old.
Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -

And a young man should think: By Jove
my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!

~ D H Lawrence ~

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd...

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Folks in a town that was quite remote heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

Lusty and clear from the goatherd's throat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

O ho lay dee odl lee o, o ho lay dee odl ay

O ho lay dee odl lee o, lay dee odl lee o lay

A prince on the bridge of a castle moat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

Men on a road with a load to tote heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Men in the midst of a table d'hote heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

Men drinking beer with the foam afloat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

One little girl in a pale pink coat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

She yodeled back to the lonely goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Soon her Mama with a gleaming gloat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo

What a duet for a girl and goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Ummm (ummm)...

Odl lay ee (odl lay ee)

Odl lay hee hee (odl lay hee hee)

Odl lay ee ...

One little girl in a pale pink coat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hoo hoo

She yodeled back to the lonely goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Soon her Mama with a gleaming gloat heard

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hmm hmm

What a duet for a girl and goatherd

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Happy are they lay dee olay dee lee o ...

Soon the duet will become a trio

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Odl lay ee, old lay ee

Odl lay hee hee, odl lay ee

Odl lay odl lay, odl lay odl lee, odl lay odl lee

Odl lay odl lay odl lay

Expecting rain, the profile of a day, Wears its soul like a hat....

No words, just a swirl of colours, and as always a little poem, not wholly apposite, but sort of mandatory!

While the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.

Eyes like a lake
Where a storm-wind roams
Caught me from under
The rim of a hat.
I thought of a mid-sea wreck
and bruised fingers clinging
to a broken state-room door.

~ Carl Sandburg ~

Surely joy is the condition of life.

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Khalil Gibran.

People flicker around me

Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality!
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top;
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows
—the shaved blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face;
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul,
the handsome detested or despised face;
The sacred faces of infants,
the illuminated face of the mother of many children;

The face of an amour, the face of veneration;
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;
A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper;
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and faces!
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

~ Walt Whitman ~

My camera taught me how to *see*...

I have always been observant. I am curious. I am interested in people, in things, in events unfolding all around me. I am one of the few people I know who can honestly claim that they do not have the capacity to be bored. The one thing that fascinates me most is the play of human emotions.

A lot of people say that in taking photographs, we often miss the beauty of the moment. I disagree. My camera has taught me to see. I always wanted to be an artist, but lacked the necessary impulses, the skills, even the diligence required, but my camera gifted me the impulse to keep looking. It taught me to live in The Moment, to witness, to cultivate what the Geeta calls the "sakshi bhava", that attitude which requires you to be present, yet not present in the midst of an action unfolding. However, I hesitate to photograph people because I do not wish to make them objects of humour or pity, or as though they are not worth much, just to prove a point. I cannot use them as props.

As I wander around Shimla, I am hugely tickled by the sight of that thing tourists do: of converting experience into a souvenir through their cameras. As Susan Sontag says, "travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs"! The camera relieves some of the burden of memories. Photographs can be clicked, stored away and taken out some later date to be exclaimed over accompanied by "Do you remember such-and-such...?", like coffins being exhumed and opened. Like cynical God, the camera records in order to forget. Photographs help us to go back in the past to take possession of a space that was ours temporarily.





Clicking photographs also appeases the anxiety which people develop when they are in an alien place. They can take pictures: they have something to do! I have learnt to be more respectful, less leery of "tourist traps". These "traps" stop the tourist from climbing over the fence of some of Shimla's (or indeed Rome's or London's) prettiest places to take pictures of people in their natural habitat!


I have posted a set of photographs of people taking photographs. My intention is not to poke fun at them. Indeed, I feel a genuine affection for them, for do we not belong to a brotherhood which is trying to capture a neat slice of time, choosy, chancy and temperamental as that may be?!

Faces.

Not so long ago, a friend and I were discussing the joys of blogging, when, unexpectedly, this friend turned on me and accused me of making my blog on Shimla ''isolationist''. He said that I had, with the exception of perhaps one picture and one post, never really shown what was - to him - the most interesting aspect of Shimla: its people.

I am not certain that this was not a conscious decision on my part to exclude the wonderful denizens of my adopted home-town. A large part of my Shimla experience has been defined by the people who inhabit it - their warmth, their lack of prejudice in welcoming a relative stranger to their midst and the simplicity which marks the human interface here, has added a richness to my life which my other adopted home-town Bombay could never do.
That said, I must also rush to add that I have a natural aversion for the ''human zoo'' approach: of photography which becomes a sort of "'ethnological exposition'' emphasising their difference from all other human beings due to a difference in race, or clothing or culture or something like that.
It was this dilemma that has stopped me from taking and posting photographs of people in Shimla, and nothing else.
My ideas on this are still in a state of flux. Let us see if this quandary will find resolution.
Meanwhile....
Children are a fascinating species. Observing them is a thoroughly enjoyable activity, principally because they haven't yet learned to wear masks or haven't yet developed facades or pretensions which will 'protect' them from the world. For me, the greatest quality of childhood is the sense of wonder with which it looks at everything around. dewdrops are miracles, butterflies are adventures to be chased, flowers are to be smelled and left behind in a jiffy...
So, placed below are two pictures I took recently. I hope they will speak to you as they did to me. I would love to hear your reactions....