Off The Beaten Path

A Tree At Kas Lake

To get some sense of where this picture was taken, you need to have some familiarity with India's geography.

If you drive about 200 km south-east-east into the subcontinent, from Bombay, you will climb up the Western Ghats onto the Deccan Plateau, and reach Poona (or, Pune as it is now called). Carry on for another 110 km, and you will reach a small town called Satara, which is where my parents lived and worked, for a few years, after my dad retired from the army.

About 20 km from Satara, up the hill, you will reach Kas Lake. The waters of Kas used to supply Satara with drinking water. I don't know if this is still the case, what with the way we have become increasingly careless with our environment.

However, 20 years ago, the waters of Kas were clean, and the place was unspoiled. It was a stunningly beautiful place, very small and totally uninhabited. I went up there with my sisters  one afternoon. It was, I believe, around the monsoon time. It was, as you can see from the picture, quite misty.

Somehow, it reminded me of school in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Kumaon range to be exact. I absolutely love the misty feel of the mountains. There is something that is so fresh, so serene, and so alive in these places.

And, it is quiet. So quiet that you can almost hear your soul speak to Nature. These are places where we can return to our true nature, back to our roots.....

The Beautiful Indian Skies

I miss the beautiful skies of India. The colour of the skies in India used to be a deep blue, with lots of beautiful white clouds. The clouds had wonderful, cumulous shapes. Clouds make a landscape come alive. Blue skies, with the sun shining through cumulous clouds bring life to a landscape. Indian landscapes have a spirituality all their own.

And, I miss them in more ways than one.

I took this picture during a family picnic to Panchgani. Panchgani is a small hill station near a small town called Satara, which is in the western state of Maharashtra in India. There are two main ways to approach Panchgani. One is from Poona, or Pune as it is now called. The other is from Satara. I've lived in both places, and both have their own charm.

Well, to be more accurate, they both had their own charm. I have'nt been back to Satara in an age, so I cannot comment on whether or not  it still retains it's old charm. Poona has lost much of it's old charm. It's now a traffic infested place and is, in my opinion, quite polluted.

When I go back to India, at least when I go back to the larger towns, I don't see as much of the beautiful clouds that I used to see. The clouds have lost much of their shape, and tend to have more of a formless, diffused shape. The colour of the sky, as a result, is more gray than blue.

I used to criticize the gray blue skies of Shanghai. I used to tell my friends of the beautiful blue skies we have in India. Until I returned to India after a three year gap, that is.

So I miss the beautiful skies of India, because increasingly they are hidden by a layer of pollution that tends to reduce the brilliance of the blue colour that I took for granted as a child. We need to pause once in a while, to look up at the sky, and to see how we are really  screwing up our  environment. 

And, I miss the beautiful skies of India, simply because I don't always have the time to go across to the smaller towns of India, to the villages, and to the mountains, where we can still see the beautiful Indian sky.

Beautiful Colours

What is a world without colour? What is a photograph without colour?

Black and white photography also does use colour. Two, three colours and many, many shades in between.

A world without colour is something that, for me, is very hard to imagine. What is the world of a person born blind? And, what is the world of a person who becomes blind?  These are things that we do take for granted. Honestly, I don't even want to imagine. For me, I am pretty happy that I do have the gift of sight, and that I can appreciate light, colour, form and shade.

I took this picture when I was in Qinghai province in Western China. That was one cold and blustery day in Qinghai province. Qinghai is stuningly beautiful. It's high up. The lake itself is 3,000 metres above sea level. The day I went, it was a cold, windy day in July. The temperature during the day was 8 degrees centigrade, and there was a cold wind blowing across the landscape. Sadly, my hard disk crashed, and I lost all but a few pictures. All my pictures over a two year period are gone. Forever, I think.

On the way, I passed this little hill, with these strips of cloth tied to, what I think, is a kind of prayer pole.I can only imagine that the colours would have been even brighter if I had bright sunshine that day. I believe that these flags are a relic of old Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Pagan religion is alive and well in China, which is good. I don't believe that you can stamp religion out of people. They either give it up on their own accord, or they stay with it.

Stamping out religion, and leaving behind nothing, not even ethical value systems, leads to empty materialism and anarchy. I think that this can be dangerous for society in the longer term.

Shivaji Rides On....Alone.

Shivaji lived between 1627 and 1680, and is one of the heroes of Indian history. He's pretty famous for his guerilla war tactics against Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal Emperors of India.

Most of us, as school kids were taught about his exploits, especially the more dramatic ones, but very little about his life actually. So, even though he is one of the great legends and heroes of Indian history, we don't know too much about the man. However, he's a hero, and that is what counts. That is all that really does count.

Of course, if you have a hero, you have to exploit the blighter. Else, what good is a hero? If you are in Maharashtra, which is Shivaji's home state, everything is Shivaji-this and Shivaji-that. So, the airports are named after him. Both, the national and international airports in Bombay, that is. Bombay VT (Bombay Victoria Terminus) Station is now called the Chattarapati Shivaji Station. Never mind the fact that the structure is colonial in style. And then, crossings (or chowks in Hindi) are called, quite often, Shivaji Chowks!!

Despite this, no one really knows about the man or his life story. The exploits are portrayed as the battle of the noble warrior against the evil muslim emperor. Which is a bit of a shame actually, as it does not attempt to portray history in an objective light. But, as they say, history is written by the victors, and seldom by the vanquished. And, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to sift fact from legend. But, as long as it serves the selfish purpose of some self-serving politician, what matter that history is distorted?

So, the picture...

Well, Shivaji was a great hero. No doubt about that. The picture is, to some extent, symbolic.  I tried to take a picture of a statue of Shivaji, riding against one of the many forts of the rulers.

The "Fort" is actually the Gateway of India, which was built to welcome Queen Victoria to India. And, is the point where the last of the ruling British Empire sailed out of India, leaving India a free nation.

So, in one sense, it is a picture of Shivaji riding on to liberate India and, to make us a free nation. '

But, you see, Shivaji rides alone. Heroes, to some extent, are always alone. They come, dazzle us with their deeds, and move on. Their names live on. We look up to them. We worship them. We need them.

We need heroes.

I am not sure if we always understand heroes. Which is why they ride on........ alone.

Me, the Agnostic

I don't remember if I started life as a believer or, as a non-believer. What I do remember are a few things. One, I could never sit patiently through a religious ceremony. And, why the music of God seemed so unearthly dull, pompous and, totally without life.

I also remember school. I was in a Catholic missionary school, and the Catholics in our school always seemed to be singled out for special - better - treatment.

These are some early impressions, but I did not think too deeply about them. Somewhere along the way, in my teens I became simultaneously atheistic, and deeply drawn to the mystical side of life. This was driven by reading a lot of books on the occult, and the entire series of books by Carlos Castaneda. I do know that many people have tried to debunk Castaneda. There will always be those of the establishment, who will try to debunk anything out of the ordinary. For my part, I could'nt give a toss about whether or not Castaneda actually experienced what he claimed to have experienced in his books. What was important for me was that there was, and is, enough ancient wisdom in the books to awaken something deep within me.

I have always, since then, been drawn to the world of wild landscapes. These places, like Inner Mongolia, for instance, open up my soul.

Somewhere in my thirties, which were in some ways, a decade in the wasteland, I went deep into religion and astrology. That's when i became deeply interested in religion, as I do believe that it is one of the major driving forces of mankind. Essentially, it is, in my view, an attempt to put order to the unknown. And, to bring some degree of certainty into it. I do like to read mythology, and religious texts.

And, in the recent times, I did read Richard Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion", which is a bloody intelligent book. I don't quite buy the idea of atheism. I think that I am still bound by my early training and coaching. But, I do buy his idea that much of religion is a complete sham. It's about money and greed and power, and not so much about trying to make people good.

To me, the concept of God is unknowable. To me, "God" resides in the universe, in the creation and beauty of the universe. In the small and big things. And therefore, I take the position of being an agnostic. This is not a middle path. It is a choice.

Agnosticism drives choices of how you choose to behave. And, I will return to this theme again.

Nandi Hills. Bangalore

I started my MBA in 1985. Way back in the dim and distant past, as it were. I think I am quoting Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull here. Oh well, never mind.

We had a long weekend once, and a few of us decided to go off to spend the night in Nandi Hills, about 60 km outside Bangalore. We did'nt know each other well but, we figured that a weekend of shared drunkenness in a location far away from our institute was something that the doctor ordered. So now, whenever you attend corporate team building events, you will realise where they originate from. Drunken evenings in MBA institutes!

So off we went, we band of merry travelers, only to find that we had missed the last bus out. We did think of returning to the institute but, our egos did not allow us. Resourceful fellows that we were, we discovered that there was a bus going to the foothill of Nandi Hills. We promptly bribed the driver to take us to the top. And, he did.

It was about 8pm when we reached, and dark. These were the dark ages, before neon had really hit the night street landscape. All hotels were booked. So, having tasted blood, we bribed a hotel manager to let us sleep the night in the dining hall of his hotel. Motel, actually, was more like it. Out came the booze, and that was it!

We had agreed that we would leave the hotel at 6 am the next morning, and boy were we woozy when we woke up. We had one wash basin to brush our teeth but, no place to go and shit. So, we filled our empty booze bottles with water, to wash our bums, and out we went into the garden to add natural fertilizer to the ground. I had to have had a pretty bad hangover, and was not looking where I sat, until I felt a little prick on my bum. I remember this one distinctly! I discovered that I was sitting on a cactus bush with long, sharp needles. This was awkward, and I had to really balance myself carefully to avoid getting a second prick!! Memories, as the song goes, are made of this!!

Nandi is a beautiful place. The rest of the day was, I remember, pretty uneventful. Except, I don't know how on earth I took pictures! You'll find more in the albums "Faces Through The Ages", and "Black & White Landscapes".

We did  celebrate our anniversary  trip the next year. But, more of that another time.

The Horizontal and The Vertical

Experimentation with different formats can be a lot of fun. But, in my personal opinion, not all landscapes or compositions work equally well in both the horizontal and vertical layouts.

This was one of the view that did.

Why? Why this one?

For one,  again in  my opinion,  it is because of the  simplicity of
                                                the composition. There are very few elements in  the landscapes. Two     trees, one tall and one short, sticking out of the ground and into the sky. And then, the clouds. I love clouds!

In both pictures, the horizon is very low, thereby exaggerating the sky and, increasing the effect of the clouds and creating the sense of space.

But, to me, in the first, the overall effect is to enhance the sense of wideness and, even though the horizon is low, it gives a sense of the vastness of the earth.

And in the second, you get the effect of reaching up, up, up into the heavens.

They give a sense of solitude. To me, these two pictures go well with The Rock of  Ages. There is a sense of peaceful eternity.  The world was here before  man, and will be here after we have blasted ourselves into oblivion.

And God knows we will. In the case of us humans, I wonder if Darwin's theory will have a role to play in our final oblivion! Will we die out due to disease? Or, bombing? Or, in greed, will we simply murder each other? Well, given the fact that the next World War, some say, will be fought over water, we may just do that.

The Earth and the Sky will smile patiently on....