it pains...

It pains me…but my pain does’nt help her…saw her at the slums near the wai temple. When my camera saw this cute child it yearned to get her in frame…it is true that looking from the viewfinder I didn’t notice the wounds on her face…perhaps I was more engrossed to make a picture….I noticed them while post-processing….and I was sad….sad over my meaningless pain for her….just 20 bucks…I cud have bought a soframycin tube….which wud have helped reduce at least her physical pain….sitting at my computer I cud only wonder how this cute, delicate thing bore all this without a sign of it in her expressions…with a load half her weight on her lap….no sign of complain…. I really felt depressed about it…. There again I missed a chance to help myself….

(Wai is situated on the banks of river Krishna, which has some very picturesque and serene locations. It’s a historical town in satara district of maharashtra, around 90 km from pune. It is also a popular shooting location for hindi movies. Its has two main temple complexes and ghats. The Ganpati temple on the ghats and the menavali temple ghats, which is so serene….)

This cutie is perhaps a construction labourer’s child at wai….those bricks were her toys…she was engrossed playing with them when she suddenly saw me zooming at her….amused…she stood straight looking at me…with a question…..

This group was preparing for a pose at the wai temple…..perhaps listening to the instructions before the shoot….just when few of them saw my camera aiming at them….. and they forgot about the instructions and those lovely things just filled my frame with loads of expressions….thank you cuties…

there is nothing beyond you...

If life is a gamble, she is a clear winner……no doubts….anyone can make it from her face. The innocence, contentment, energy, smile and the blush on her face told that she was very much into life. Even the clothes she was wearing were synchronized to it… And that’s the thing which attracted me towards her. She was washing clothes at the banks of river indrayani at dehu near pune…we were on our way back from a shoot at bhandara when I asked my friend to turn towards indrayani ghat at dehu….in fact I was looking for some good portraits…it was a typical ghat scene, few people taking bath, some washing clothes and others just lazing around in sun….. I had a quick look around and finally my eyes zoomed in to this lady…..she was in her sixties….washing clothes at the river bank very meticulously…it had a method….her wrinkles were a testimony to her hard life… I watched her for some time but she spotted us only when she was finished with her work…..we asked her to pose for us…and she just blushed….then she smilingly agreed to it and adjusted her (saree) clothes so that she looks better….she was so cute in her sixties…. a very happy and content face and when I asked her to grant us a smile on camera….that was fabulous…. I could see in her eyes that she was in love with her life……I don’t know how many shots I took….but neither my camera nor I had enough….

She reminded of those so many people I knew in my life….who despite having all the comforts and goodies of life, were unreasonably unhappy with their lives…..who never enjoyed what they had but always looked at things they did not have…..ever yearning for more….the ‘more’… which was just not quantifiable by any mathematics of life……….

She also reminded me of those innumerable articles published, of how in recent times the senior citizens are ‘living a second life’ after retirement….how they are enjoying the overseas holidays, amusement parks, shopping malls and branded cloths and accessories….without knowing that what they are after is……just a state of mind….nothing is beyond you….

purest form of God...

Today is children’s day…..but for me every single day is theirs…..they are one of the purest forms of God….. talking and playing with them is as sacred as interacting with God…..they are the real stress busters in today’s world…..imagine a world without children…..at least I cannot imagine…

Many years back…it was a cold winter night of January ….my elder son was perhaps 5 or 6 then….after having dinner we were all talking in the cozy warmth of blankets…on the street, a lone vegetable vendor was trying to sell his vegetables ‘aloud’….naming all the veggies he had….on that calm and cold night his voice seemed too interrupting into the hearts….suddenly I saw tears rolling down my son’s cheeks…..what happened…!!! We could not comprehend his tears…..suddenly what has happened to him….we asked him…whats the matter…...with all those tears…he said….it is such a cold night…nobody is on the streets….in such weather who will buy his vegetables….and nobody will buy then he will not be able to earn…..then how will he live…..he said, can we buy some vegetables from him…???....only God could be so concerned…..today that small child is a student at IIM…..God bless children…..

come anyway.....i won't miss it...

Greatest pleasures are in the simplest things……. Proved…..at least to me….and what about you ??? Have you seen grass….one may exclaim…what a stupid question…and when I tell how beautiful the grass is…. one may become sure of my stupidity…and decide to avoid me next time…. There is a reason to it… many of us are so much wrapped in the ‘synthetics’ of life that they can hardly see those simple pleasures …they are more happy faking them-selves….but the grass is just one freeware among the n number of those free and simple pleasures….

Has one ever felt the smile on one’s child’s face (if you have one)….the happiness one derived out of that free to air smile…. I am sure one must have…...do they feel the same ecstasy on a street child’s smile…which is so similar to one’s own child’s smile and its equally free too…. I doubt, many of them not….probably they have zoomed in their world to a narrow tunnel…zoom out, I say, and savor the simple things scattered around….

Let me share a story ….

The other day I was loafing around the phoenix mill compound at lower parel in Mumbai with one of my friends….we shopped…some real, some window…it was hot, so we stopped at an ice cream vendor outside the mall…. As we were enjoying our ice cream, an apparently poor lady (she looked a labor) in her thirties stopped at the ice cream vending trolley…she had a few months old infant tucked to her lap and a five year old boy holding her hand….she bought an ice candy stick and handed it to her son and paid the vendor…the feelings on the boys face clearly expressed that the mother has made his day….she too perhaps wanted to savor the luxury…so they kept licking it turn by turn…the child seemed too generous to share it with her mother….the infant in her lap was watching her mother and brother curiously…the mother sensed it and got him the taste of his (perhaps) first ice candy…the infant was so happy licking her fingers….as it was shared by them, soon only the stick was left…the boy didn’t seem fully satisfied….and kept licking the stick….and perhaps not happy that his mother shared too much of it…by the time we too had finished our ice creams…at that point something struck my friend…and he asked me…shall I buy him an ice cream….oh…definitely…that will be the greatest thing of the day, I said…. He asked the child…do you want more, he smiled and nodded…his mother perhaps could’nt say anything….my friend bought him an ice cream….. the child was more than happy….his eyes thanked my friend….my friend was more happy than the child…I could see it…and we were off from there soon with all our shopping….but the boy’s ice cream weighed heavier than all those shopped bagfuls worth a few thousand rupees….

Its more than two years….I still cherish that evening….and try not to miss any chance to savor such simple pleasures ever….come anyway……

thats horrible...

That’s horrible….at least for me…just a few months from now I may not be able to enjoy such sunset from this place, my terrace, which is in fourth floor. After shooting the sunset, while post processing this picture I looked at the sun at 100% and was horrified to see the girders of a newly erected building piercing the fireball. Pune is such a lovely city….the people…the climate….the landscape…but how long it could be as lovely ….I know the city for over two years and watched its landscape worsen slowly.…I know its not pune alone which is facing the burnt of the development heat….its the cost of going higher we all are paying….but for that very better future, one cannot and should not watch the “movement” silently….these high rises could definitely be better planned so as to keep the landscape of the city least disturbed….few years from now I may or may not be here….but I will always be concerned for this beautiful city….the dozens of coming up concrete structures at the foothills may be a “heaven” on earth for a few….but why the entire city should pay for them….seriously start thinking…..and one need not necessarily be a nature lover for that ....
(click the picture for bigger view)

i killed her 35 years ago....

Its more than 35 years but I still remember every frame of that ghastly evening….I must be around 11 or 12 then…..I cried incessantly for more than an hour… till the night zoomed in around me…. I didn’t take food that night….I remember…..it was dead of the night….and I was awake….still shocked….how could it happen…. How could I be so accurate….I never intended it….but….it happened….I was not at all ready to believe it…. It was such a nice playful evening as ever….I was playing with my friends in that private garden of one of them….hitting rubber ball at one another….I was always a good sport…..as the evening matured, the game was coming to an end, when I saw a bird sitting far away (it was a bulbul perhaps), it was around 12 to 15 feet away…and I playfully took a small stone and flew it towards the bird….and to my utter disbelief in a fraction of a second the bird fell on the ground like a lump…. I ran towards the bird….and there it was lying dead….. I was aghast….what happened…. I seemed confused….and within minutes I realized what I had done… taking the bird in my palm I cried and cried and finally graved it in that very garden where it was chirping a few minutes before….

Last evening when I was enjoying a sunset…. I shot this bulbul (off course with a camera)….the bird too seemed in a very pensive mood….watching the fireball go down….and watching the bird in such a gloom was no less than a sentence for me….once again I felt like crying for the bird I killed 35 years ago…..

history fascinates me...

Abandoned places always create memories…you are bound to turn nostalgic once you walk into it…it’s an amazing world…you are thrilled, to touch a centuries old structure…as you move down deep into the stairs of timeline, you gradually start losing yourself…to the stories told and read to you in your childhood…and once you are soaked in completely, you start feeling those stories of kings and queens act by act, just in front of your eyes…that’s the reason history fascinates me…
I shot this picture inside one of the structures of orcha fort. The fort located in Madhya Pradesh (India) around 16 km from Jhansi (UP). Monuments of Orchha narrate stories of war and peace and of love and destruction. Situated on the banks of the river Betwa, it was the capital of the Bundelkhand region. Orchha was founded in the 16th century by the Bundela Rajput chief Rudra Pratap.

a chance to dream...

The sun is the same world over….but sunsets are not. They are as different as their impact on us, everytime. Yes, its tranquility affects me in a new way, always. I have seen sun setting behind beaches and mountains, buildings and streets, fields and trees and my terrace…and it has never been the same…. Whenever I watch a sunset, I feel this belongs to me…it wonders me….behind the whole riot of clouds and colors…..a sun with such innumerable hues within…..I am at peace….and while I see such sunsets….I am certain many of us had wasted one of the happiest moments of their lives by just missing that opportunity. But I, for sure, feel for those who see a sunset and not watch it… what a pity….he had lost a chance to dream…..its just not possible to watch a sunset and not dream.....

(all sunsets shot in pune)

"If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."

G K Chesterton

"Once i saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors and then retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper"

Adriaan Kortlandt

i'm nothing...i know...

Whenever I am in the lap of nature I feel fascinated like a small child….who has just entered a “mela” (a big fair with all those grand swings and giant wheels to enjoy), I enjoy the vastness and the expanse of sky, rivers, unending green stretches, mountains and everything there…I am overwhelmed by its beauty…...and there I know myself…slowly….the meaning of my existence…the more I give myself a thought…the more I seem small…like a mismatched patch in that entire surrounding…yes….i am too tiny a creature for this nature…however big I may have an ego….it all deflates there….in fact, you become a child….i feel, this mother nature loves me…and that’s why I am….i am there in her lap…and I shall do nothing to stop this flow of love….for I know…if ever she holds back my share…or if at all she gets hurt and is furious…I would be swayed to nowhere like a dust….i am nothing…I know…

(This is kass plateau near satara, around 125 km from pune, India)
(click the picture to look at those small creatures…)

wish i were a piece of rock...

This is kass plateau near satara, around 125 km from pune, india.we had been there for a shoot last week. It has vast beds of tiny wildflowers…they bloom while the monsoons are saying a bye…and are there for a few days, till they could feed from the moisture seeped in… visiting this plateau was an amazing experience…so much nature….in my reach….a very selfish feeling creeped into my mind…ahh…if I could possess it… a typical human thought…how foolish of me…why could’nt I understand…its all for me…a gift for all of us from God…seeing those flower beds our entire team went berserk…everybody wanted to have the maximum share…the flowers were so tiny that many of us (unknowingly) crushed a few flowers under their feet (just in enthu.)when one of our teammate warned us of what we were doing…he said, friends let the others who are late also enjoy this…I liked his concern….often we forget this…that’s why I say we are too selfish at heart(may be this too unknowingly)….any we shot for hours…and nobody seemed tired of it…wonder where from comes this energy…yeah…that’s nature…do you see that rock in that picture….i wish I were a piece of rock….

(for more pictures visit www.flickr.com/photos/sunder_iyer)

God is a verb...

I am always fascinated by the different trajectories of human life…two different roads…same destination …one has never seen the world (he was blind) ….the other has all the blessings of God….i saw them both at orcha temple,…both ‘rambhakt’…dedicating their lives for lord Rama….off course in their own ways…God is not noun, it’s a verb….agreed…..

(orcha is a small historical town in madhya pradesh at the border of uttar pradesh near the historical city of jhansi, orcha is the only place where Rama is worshipped as a king and not as a God)

travelling beyond life...

She opted this life by choice or by compulsion…..this was the first thought which came to my mind when I saw her at the banks of river ganges in bithoor (near kanpur,india). She was one of the ‘sadhvis’ preparing for their meals, after a bath in that sacred river….must be around 80 years…..and the first thing which struck me on seeing her was her hair…..if she could stand straight, it would cross her knees…at her youth…it would have been a point of envy for many…. but she did’nt care a damn for those ‘once beautiful’ hair now…that was evident by their disarrangement….by this age she must have lost interest, I suppose…..but she has not given up, that was very much clear to me by simple observations….she looked so vibrant in her discussions with her fellow ‘sadhus’, doing all the chores herself….i kept wondering about her past…she would have been a beautiful lady…..with long black hair and a radiance on her face….she must have had a content family life….must have kids too….where are they now …does she remember them??? Or does her family feels for her??? If she had no family ever, did she travel so long all alone ???,,,,the more I thought , the more she fascinated me….i felt like wishing her all the best in life….but then…I felt too small for it….you know many of us die as early as twenty and get buried at eighty….here she was….eighty….still ‘struggling’ but strong…..refusing to stop….

a short break...

its all in mind...

I met him at bithoor, (near kanpur,Uttar Pradesh,India) a sleepy historical village with centuries old ruins scattered all over the place. He was having his meals on the banks of river ganges…with a polythene bag beside him…that bag was enough for all the worldly things he needed…It was a couple of years back…but still the contentment on that baba’s (sadhu) face haunts me…how was he so content with just a bagful of things to hold on to this world…I watched him for some time….and not for a moment the feeling on his face went different…he had something which most of us did not have…I felt like searching his bag….while I knew it had just two eating vessels and a dhoti (a long piece of white cloth to cover the body)…still my curiosity remained….when he saw me looking at him he just smiled…as if telling me….its all in mind my son…..

wish, i am lost....

one more from devbhumi...i often wonder...most of the precious things i wish...are absolutely free...its not only me, i suppose....simple things make everyone most happy...yet...............
life itself is so simple, the only thing is, we know it too late...those tall mystical deodar jungles... i lose a part of myself to them, everytime...

a dream home....

we (me & my wife) were on our way to pithoragarh, a beautiful place in the hill state of uttaranchal, india when i saw this frame, i asked the driver of the cab to halt, it was absolute paradise...far below i could see the huts....and as usual i slipped into my dream world...questions started flowing...who lived there(huts) ??? what they did for a living??? how they felt living there??? what was their routine..etc..etc...i wish i cud be one of them...away from those tall, tiring buildings...but....coins have two sides...i knew....i cud only capture its beauty in my camera, in the deep layers of my ever restless mind....and move forward....
the two pictures below are also of the same trip....the picture "i'm not a painter" is one of my favourites....

thats my way.....

i'm not a painter