Dialogue

Sangeeta G. June 28, 08

Lazy person’s photography, contd.

Knight’s Armour                                                     Sangeeta G. June 22,’08

(A glass bowl and its Reflection on the glass table).

My lazy-person’s-photography continues. Every weekend I hope to hit the road with my camera slung casually over my shoulder, swinging into position if my expert photographer’s eye catches a subject. And every weekend, this remains a glittering dream. Come sunday, I cannot summon the energy to step out even into the street below, leave alone scale the city.  Then begins a wasted morning, toying with the camera and hunting around the house, for a ray of interesting light somewhere, some texture that might look good in a picture, some forgotten fold or corner or curve or line that might hide a sparkling subject. Crawling under the couch, peeping in the loft, rummaging through the kitchen, I’ll be looking for anything that might save the day, yet another day of appeasing my soul without having to venture out. My pretend-photography is quickly running out of subjects in the home. Not many surfaces left to be framed and clicked, I think.  I hope. Then may be I will be forced to take on real photography, clicking among the throbbing and thriving life there.

My Tethys sea

 Tethys                                                                     Sangeeta G. June 14, 08

(Light reflected on bed side lamp shade)

The colours of violence burnt into their eyes, baying for the blood of innocents, the stink of their own unconsciouness in their nostrils, when the mobs came down on my parents’ car on 12th June in North Bengal, whom were they doing the greatest injustice? Not to the life they were threatening to trample. Not to the warm blood of innocent travellers they were thristing to see in the mud.  They were doing the greatest injustice to death. They always do. War, murder, bloodshed, violence. Anything that gives life’s greatest adventure, its dark and quiet consort, a dreadfully scarred face, has to partake in injustice. 

After everyone of the group returned to safety, my father recounted, “I do not know who was more scared. Us, of death, or them, of life”.  They had slimy, beastly fear written all over the sickly white of their eyes. Even before they raised the first iron rod and dagger against the group on that terrible day, they had lost. To life, to death. And to every shred of thing they never understood, in between.   

Diane Charlemagne with DJ Moby. (Thank you S.)

What do you say after listening to such a song. Nothing Of course.  What can you say when such a voice is still sweeping over you after the applauds are over. Diane Charlemagne not only has a soulful voice and boundless passion that reaches you deep, her lyrics have the same power. She also often herself brings out their inner melody and sets the music. She has sung for the legendary R&B band, 52nd Street (Tell me how it feels) in the 80s, then with Howie B (Candy Mountain, Psyko Funk) among many others but her real breakthrough came in the nineties with the songs and lyrics on the album ’Timeless’. Diane has found her rhythm in gospel and soul as much as in house and garage. Here, she is singing to the musical genius of NY DJ, Moby. Listening to her, one can feel the  energy that can blow away genre boundaries with a mere breath.

Light years

I was locked in my dark room as the year’s first downpour lashed at the city lights outside. I was brooding like the incense smouldering away in a corner. My thoughts were going no where. So I looked for something to do. 50 exposure seconds later, I came away with this. And found I had left my thoughts light years behind me. I stepped out into the storm.

Suitors’ place

She. When she first stepped into my room, her eyes were burning like a huntress’. Luckily, her gaze flitted from one dust powdered object to the other in the room, sizing everything up, save me. Perhaps I too looked like a grey furniture that she thought she would never need.  ‘The Room looks good enough’, she said to no one in particular and whipped out through the door.

Two days later, oversized suitcases, trunks, and what was that, a bed roll? grew like boulders all over the room. I felt sad for the bed capsized under piles of boxes and bags. All hers. Curled as far away as i could in one corner of the bed, I cooked my feelings behind a Tehelka. Almost hoping the general poison of its articles would make me turn green and scary. Anything to stop her from stepping all over my carpeted privacy. But her feet was digging into the miles of dust and carpet to find what she had come looking for – a home.

Over the next several months I discovered, she not only had a meat eater’s taste for my inner space. But also had the power to drag the whole Sale at Andheri Market into our room.  But I began to love those clothes she bought even though they had the style factor of a door knob. When she began to hop in and out of them for me to see how they looked on her. Not how she looked in them.  Maybe that is when the change began to happen. Now I missed her if she stayed away on nights. With her non stop chatter on how she stole bargains or quitened colleagues, she changed my equation with silence. Which had never felt so clumsy or useless as now.

To cut a long story short, we will whizz through some snap shots   – She, fiercely arranging the room, hair piled on top, with a single strand wicking the sweat off her glistening shoulder. She, crouched over her long limbs in concentration to paint her toes, that time when I took the snap above. She yacking away on the phone, lying on her baby paunch I could feel was there but never see. Her stay whizzes into one bright perfumed blur till suddenly it was her time to go.

Once more, all the cupboards and drawers and the cavernous box below the bed opened up. They frothed at the mouth with clothes. And shoes. And plastic. Junk. Beads. Colourful lengths of  dupattas that strangled my rising thoughts.

Away she went, after shoving the whole room into her suitcase. Empty wardrobes and cupboards were left staring into space. I started looking for things to stuff their shadowy holes again. And kept turning away from the burning eyes of silence.

 

 

Rainbow catcher

Change of guard

Meter fast hai! (On crossing 31 years)