Many many happy returns of the day? Maybe not!

Thus, Bejoy Babu enters into the thirtieth year of his  great struggle for existence against the elements of this planet last week. Like his very first year, he did it again in a hospital room. Talk about the ironies of life. Back then, he had a young and energetic father, who had sat hours on end admiring the red little thingy in a white wrapper (am hoping he did, most newly promoted fathers do, don't they? At least Ross Gellar of Friends did when Ben was born!). And now, 29 years later, his father was lying down weak, with tubes attached to his body, while he sat hours on end looking at him. Not admiring, but worried when his father will become alright, he will be able to go back, whether his leaves would affect his job, how the great plans of a first birthday together with his wife was spoilt etc etc. Oh 'cmon, there's no use being pretentious about it. Nobody enjoys this particular disposition. He didn't do it either, and he managed to kill time with 2 activities.

1. Looking at the nurses.

They were all kinds. Young ones, old ones, the haughty kinds and the hottie kinds, ones more slender than the needles they beheld, and the ones so plump, it makes one wonder whether they dont get any coscience attack when they say. "Uncle, your BP is shooting up, you gotta reduce your weight!"

So he looked at all of them, and didn't have any reservations about it. As many of you would agree, this is one thing the male species enjoy about being in a hospital. Aren't there numerous great tales of men who turned into pussydolls in the presence of these loving caring always-smiling clad-in-white angelic creatures, hopelessly fell headlong in love with them and never wanted to leave the hospital? - One affliction turned into another. 

But his case was a little different.

Wasn't he morally obliged not to look? Yeah that 12 letter word of ridicule you just uttered was audible enough. But wait, there's more to the story. He was morally obliged not to look, starting the day he decided that he had found the match of his life, but that never really made him stop looking. It wouldnt be fair to call him fickle minded, for he had made an attempt to avert his gaze during the initial days of his romance. The profound question that had hunted him down was "What the hell am I looking for now, am I not supposed to be loyal to my girl?" But then later, he understood one more truth about life. A man cannot help looking. But something had changed about the way he looked now. While he was single, the look was at its purest, most natual form, which even contained ingredients of a small chance of attainability. ("Yeah you're Angelina Jolie, I know, but what the heck, look at me, am single!"). Now, that he was married and had pledged his loyalty to someone special, the look was different.

He particularly enjoyed to feel the air of tension, the restraint that was written all over their faces, while he looked at some of them. They would be undergoing a great deal of consternation internally, trying to concentrate on the syringe and the vein, while being aware of the fact that someone was staring at them. Two of the most conflicting aspects of their womanhood would be drawn for battle against each other, knowing that whoever wins ultimately, they themselves would fail. They would not even dare to steal an occasional cold stare back in defense, for it would be betrayal against all that they tried to represent. He enjoyed thinking about all these a great deal while looking at them, drawing a kind of  sadistic pleasure. P had told him the same day - "Dey podey ketti kazhinjaalum vaay nokkam" (Its okay to stare at women even if you're married). But it was never the same!

The things mentioned above were purely his fantasies, and they could be factually very wrong, the women readers be advised. But nevertheless, why shun from saying the truth, being concerned of propriety!

2. Reading about the Mediterranean

"The pillars of Hercules" is undoubtedly the best book he has read in more than 6 months, and by the way its shaping up, likely to become one of the best ever. Don't be misled by the numbers, because the list of books he read in the past 6 months is not particularly deep, running into a whole of 2 books! The other being "The Last Mughal". While the former could be termed as un-put-downable, the latter was very, err... put-downable. And hence the 6 months. But it would be blasphemy to call the book bad, its a fine book indeed. Only that he found it hard to read. 

Maybe he'll talk about the book himself sometime later in the blog. But, in a nutshell, thats how he marked the beginning of his 30th year here.  Yeah, there were other things too. But I dont think anybody would be particularly interested as he was, on how a flock of cranes spent half an hour circling the same locality trying to figure out which tree to spend the night on. 

But considering all the previous birthdays were uselessly spent cutting cakes and drinking wine, this was quite a feat, wouldn't you agree?

The nomads

I have lost the knack of waking up to the alarm. I cant believe I used to wake up at 5:45 every day, and go for a jog. The pox had rattled everything. Now all I can do when I hear the alarm is: turn it off (even snooze aint an option!) or even better: not hear it at all, so that I can throw a tantrum when I wake up finally, some time when the sun has reached directly above the head. So last Saturday, I set the alarm at 5:40, as I was supposed to meet some friends at Madiwala at sharp 6:15 AM. And so, it was riding the bike at spine-numbing chill winds at 100 kmph, and jumping the traffic lights (its no harm when you are the only person on all the four sides of the junction, right? And besides, obeying rules is my principle, but its no use being a fool about it) Finally I met them at madiwala by 6:40. Turned out that they waited for a long 2 minutes or so. Afterall, we're all running on IST(Indian Stretchable Time)!!!

We proceeded to our destination, which was in front of the Yeshwantpur railway station. Despite the way it sounds, yeshwantpur is not in UP, its right in namma Bengaluru. Though the effort involved in reaching there can be considered somewhat equivalent! We reached there by sharp 7, and was glad to see some people already present at the meeting point. Together, we proceeded to the 'Rajasthani settlement' of nomads near Dasarahalli, which was our shooting location for this weekend. As it turned out, the Rajasthani settlement was not Rajasthani in its entirety. There were people from almost all parts of the country. The illusion of them being Rajasthani was created due to the presence of camels, in large numbers.

Some more people came in, and after all the customary hand-shakes, ogling at expensive equipment and introductions with the newly-met, we trickled down into the slums. A girl who I was meeting for the first time seemed a bit surprised that I was married. "You look too young to be married", she remarked. I would have pondered more into the meaning of the statement, its possible rammifications, its potentital etc etc (as I had done several times in the past and failed miserably) had it been a different situation, but, I just brushed it aside with a smile. One of the things you pick up, as you learn to live as a married man!

The dwellers were just about waking up and going about their morning chores. Their initial reaction was surprise, bordering on hostility, as they saw this large group advance towards them with big fat black ugly looking equipment in their hands. But later, we split into small groups and tried to befriend them, explaining to them that we're from a photography college, and we were doing this as part of our project etc etc. That little innocuous lie has worked well since a long time back. In fact, its not entirely a lie too..

But all were not as friendly either. One elderly woman was not at all amused when I tried to take her picture, and she even tried to pick up a stone! That as the first time in my adult life I was being threatened to be pelted! I fled the scene immediately! I don't completely understand their apprehension towards being photographed. Of course, my own reaction would not be very different either(not the stone-throwing part) if a total stranger tried to click my picture, but that would be upon concerns of compsomising my privacy. Whereas, for these people, its something else, as I have come to experience. They really loathe us for what we have, and they do not. They think we want to make more and more money by just photographing them, and publishing it somewhere. They feel extremely miserable in their situation, and that feeling is exacerbated when they see these people wearing neat and expensive clothes, talking in langauges they cant talk, and having money to squander on expensive toys! And they feel we're completely unable to empathize with them. They are human beings, and they hate being treated as objects. But as we speak to them, and show genuine concern for them, they turn friendly immediately.

In contrast, children were really enthused to see us and flocked around us. As some of us began showing the pictures in our LCDs, the children grew in numbers, all of them chanting, "Uncle, ek photo! Uncle mera/meri bhi ek" While were zeroing in on some interesting subjects, and was just about focusing, a group of children would come and stand right in fron of the camera, grinning. It was annoying and amusing at the same time!

I talked to a thin, friendly looking young man. He could not have been more than thirty. He was from MP. It was now close to a year since they left their homes. And about 3 months since they came to Bangalore. They generally look for work, sell stuff, offer camel rides etc. They stay in one place for about 3-4 months and then move on. Some people visit their homes in between, but mostly it will be another year or so before they see their homes again. He said to me, "Its nice to see all the things you are doing, but will it benefit us in any way? We are really poor, and if you can do something for us, we'd be really grateful." Just that I didn't know what that something could be! Is 'this' something? Or do I need to do more? Of course I can do more if I wanted to...

I met the school-teacher too. The 'school' was nothing more than a slightly bigger shanty, with a blackboard, and the children sat on the floor. Only that there were no children. It was funded by the government, he said, but the real issue was getting the children to come. He had to go to literally each and every tent and pull them along. Even the parents were least interested in educating the children. He seemed really excited when I told him I was working with computers. To him, it was a world far beyond his reach. Maybe he can help some of the chidren reach there, someday..

They offered us camel-rides around the place for Rs.50. I did not feel like doing that. Somehow, it felt humiliating. Reminded me of elephant safaris in national parks and stuff.

No, it was wrong. Very very wrong!


See the pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazystrokes/sets/72157603421425757/

waking up...

I guess I have been quiet for a while.

I knew that nations won’t go to war if I stopped writing. Heck, I thought no one cared. But what happened last week challenged all such notions of mine. I was asked 3 times, in a span of 48 hours, why I had stopped posting. And considering the fact that everyone suddenly got concerned after a span of almost 2 years, I have reasons to believe that the blog had started turning in its grave. Yes, I had decided to burry it. Now I need to dig it up, and create some magic, like Dr. Frankenstein did. And one of the three people who asked the question, happened my own dear wife, so I couldn’t just push it away. Hmm, well, you see, quite a few things happened in my life during this period. (We’ll talk about that, hold on…) So seeing this sudden spur of interest in my long-lost habit of blogging, I went back to the blog, and read it. It made me smile, several times. And then, I was convinced, I should resume writing.

So let me write about what I did last Sunday.

One of the best things that have happened to me after coming to Bangalore is BWS. BWS or Bangalore Weekend Shoots is a bunch of loonies like me, who want to make a life out of photography, (“A life”, not “a living”, there’s a considerable difference between the two, as you would notice) who consider their cameras and lenses as the most important possessions of their lives. (Contentious topic, I know… my reasoning is that you can’t consider your life-partner as something you possess!) So these guys, they get together on weekends, and shoot pictures as groups. Streets, markets, festivals, parks.. pretty much anything under the sun. So this weekend, I and a couple of guys from BWS went to a place called Shettihalli. This place has the ruins of an old church. I was out of action for nearly 4 months, so I thought, OK, come let’s shoot some church ruins and crank me up again!!! As it went, it ended up being much more than just a church-shoot.

We started early in the morning, by around 4:30, and my dear ikon was put to duty once again. She behaved impeccably during the entire trip, as usual. :) We managed to do Bangalore-Darshan for about 3 times before getting on the highway. For the un-informed, Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you are not dead sure of your route. Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you were chatting your way to bliss with your co-passengers in the car while unknowingly passing that free left turn. Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if there is a huge bus on your left side waiting to turn right, while you want to turn left. And Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you find cops on the other side of the signal. We finally found our way out of the city, and were soon on the highway. I had to put all my driving skills to test while passing the huge trucks that ruled the road at that time of the day. Once we took the turn at Nelamangala to enter the NH48 which leads to Mangalore, driving was was back being enjoyable.

Before reaching Shettihalli, we stopped at two places, once near Kunigal, and again near Hassan. Okay, that doesn't make any sense, I know, so let me rephrase. Once near an old brick factory, which apparently belonged to a Mallu (wow!) and again, near a field were a man was tilling with two oxen. I was struck by the fact that how friendly the people were. After living in Bangalore, I somehow had developed this misconception that Kannadigas are not a friendly bunch of people. But as it turned out, they are much much more friendly and hospitable than my own state folks. Just so happens that Bangalore is..well, you know...depressing topic, let's leave it!

We took the turn from the Mangalore highway approaching Hassan, and suddenly, enchanting sceneries began to appear on both sides of the road. We were denied many an opportunity to shoot because of the intermittent drizzle. We kept going, fighting the deep urge to stop and jump out of the car despite the threatening rains, mentally noting down the places where we wanted to stop on our way back. We reached the church finally by around ten o clock, and all my weariness of driving so far gave way suddenly.

I dont want to try to elaborate the beauty of the place in words and ruin everything, just look at the pictures! (link provided in the end)

Weather kept playing cat and mouse game with us, and every ten minutes or so saw us running towards the shade, tucking our equipment inside our shirts. Well, if you can really call roofless walls as 'shade'! After a while, the sun peeped out for a few minutes, giving us the opportunity to click under blue skies as well. We decided to call it quits by about 1 o clock and as we were walking back, we spotted a group of women involved in planting paddy saplings. And how could we not!!! It turned out that we spent more than an hour with them, and as we stood up to leave, a small group of women and children came with food for the working women. And they asked us to have food with them. Though I was expecting it seeing the nature of people so far, I wasn't expecting them to be as persistent as they were. We tried refusing initially, but finally gave in for 2 reasons, One, they were extremely friendly and hospitable, and the offer was not just formality, they really wanted us to have food with them. And two, we were extremely hungry and none of us had any idea were the nearest restaurant was! You dont think much further when you have 'extremely' in both of the reasons! The food turned out to be good, and we collected addresses from them and left, promising to send them pictures by mail! I am sure they will be waiting for that!

And the weird thing about the entire episode was, none of us spoke very good Kannada, and they didn’t speak anything other than Kannada. At the risk of sounding platitudinous, let me surmise - When human beings connect, language is hardly a barrier.

And here are all the pictures for you:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazystrokes/sets/72157605948634238/