India Is Great

Mera Bharat Mahan....
Celebrating 61 years of Independence.
(Back of a truck on the way to Shimla)

As Jug Suriya wrote in his recent Jugular Vein column

"India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamor of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions and the silence of empty solitudes.

India is space; space to include the pilgrim and the politician, the poet and the revolutionary, the street urchin and the merchant prince, Ahimsa and nuclear might, 3,000 years and the 21st century.

India is the express highway thundering with traffic and the slip road beside it with the sign 'For camels, elephants and bullock carts'.
India is mega dams and factories, call centres and shopping malls, and the voices raised in protest against all these and more.

India is a colour TV, garlanded with marigolds and a picture of Lakshmi on top, playing MTV while grandmother counts the beads of her mala and grandchildren dream of US green cards.

India is the roar and tumult of democracy and the forgotten face of a forgotten neta on an election poster stuck on the crumbling mud wall of a village deserted by all but the ghost of hunger.

India is the faceless anonymity of cities where neighbors don't know the names of neighbours and it is the 'Ram, Ram' of timeless greeting exchanged by strangers who pass each other on a lonely path.

India is the smell of incense and ancient stone, of parched earth when the first drops of rain fall, of the dust and sweat of rattletrap buses, of the sweet, milky tea served in an earthen bowl by a 'chai , chaiwala !' on the whistle-stop railway stations of night.

India is the crowded bazaar where two dozen languages and half a dozen faiths negotiate the day-to-day transactions of buying and selling, and haggling and cheating, and quarreling, and, above all, always above all, living together.

India is much more than a million mutinies now; it is a billion-plus narratives of itself, waiting to be told. Not just once upon a time, but once upon a future"...


India is all that and more to learn and experience

Alone in the Superunknown

Well, it's always been my nature to take chances

My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances
Where the current is strong and the monkey dances

Unmarked Helicopters

Ask the wind that blows
Which one will be the next to go?

I Will Follow You Into The Dark

In the evening
The horizon lights up
Swirls of pink and orange
Fading to blue and purple

There was really something very beautiful about this particular sunset over the Ganga in Varanasi.(where you normally tend to get golden or pale bronzed sunsets)

The title is inspired by a song by Death Cab to Cutie.. and specially in Varanasi having just seen the Burning Ghats it described my state of mind very aptly

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

The Dream of White Orchids

The Dream of White Orchids, originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

Orchid Perfumes rise
As incense Wafted
By the Wings of Butterflies
- Basho

.

Afterglow

Afterglow, originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

In the wake of the vanquished sun
The golden Afterglow

The Haunting.

I'm haunted by the Ghost of Memories from a time long past.

Watching the rain always induces a kind of nostalgia for me.. Sometimes when I sit watching the rain coming down through an open door or window (car window in this case) I can drift so far away from the present.. and the curtain of rain acts like a screen replaying images of faint, half forgotten memories of times past.

Haunted in the Rain., originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

I often delve into the spoken and unspoken language we use to create closeness or to distance ourselves from others.
What subtle agreements are made in the exchange of energy between two people?
We all nurture ideas about ourselves, others and the world in which we live.
We believe in the truth that these ideas hold for us.
Do these truths exist anywhere except in our own imagined reality?