Woke up early today and spent the morning sitting in a coffee shop taking candid pictures of people on the sidewalks. It's a joy capturing emotions and moments.








Then took a stroll down the Mirror Lake to be a part of an idyllic sunday morning in the park and a beautiful small wedding by the lakeside.

Funny, to have posted my previous post and then be here traveling towards the pacific ocean.Reason told me to save money and stay at home and apply for more jobs. Heart tells me to go back to India for a year and utilize my remaining time in the United States to see more of this beautiful country.

I am following my heart. And loving it.

Drove from Providence ,Utah to Bend ,Oregon for about twelve hours yesterday. The landscape throughout the drive was pretty much high desert , open spaces and distant mountains.

Sue and I are staying at the Sundance Ranch at the bunkhouse. The entire bunkhouse was deserted last night and will be so for two more days as there was a terrible flu around which made about 25 people very sick. We are two very brave (or like Sue says, Stupid) women who are too stubborn to change our plans.Plus I have immense faith in my immune system.

Here is a view of yesterday's beautiful sunset at the ranch.



Isn't this just the prettiest sunset?

We were told that there was a wildfire around the west of Bend.It was slightly smokey amd the air smelt like campfire mixed with pines. When it was dark, the moon was so yellow that it was almost red. I battled the fear of rattlesnakes in the dark and went outside to shoot the moon.




This morning , we woke up early at 8 am and walked around downtown and visited art galleries.Here are some pictures of Bend.Until tomorrow.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. —Mark Twain

In my room, the plastic trash bag is caught amidst the whirl of the fan and makes crackling sounds.I lie here in my bed..clothes strewn all over me ,unpacked suitcases on the floor, trying to wrap my head around everything life has been in the past few months. Wondering at how I feel so stable and volatile at the same time.

Isn't it amazing how many twists and turns life takes? You might be wearing your most comfortable hat,walking down a known lane with a spring in your step...so sure of your next turn right around the corner to your left and suddenly- whooooooosh! Just as you blink,the familiar lanes disappear and you are presented with a wildly dense amazonian forest of experiences called 'Life'. You feel so unequipped and disoriented- Will the forest be safe? Will you reach the other end? Will there be demons and wild beasts? Which direction will it take you? Will you even reach safely on the other side?


I am scared.And also excited.It frightens as well as exhilarates me.

Sometimes, the Unknown is a good thing.I think.

I feel poetic

When a bit of sunshine hits ye,

After passing of a cloud,

When a fit of laughter gits ye

And ye'r spine is feeling' proud,

Don't forget to up and fling it

At a soul that's feeling blue,

For the minit that ye sling it

It's a boomerang to you.

"The Boomerang" by Capt. Jack Crawford.

I dreamt last night

I am someplace magical, I'm sure, because the moon is yellow and looms large into the horizon which seemed much closer than it usually does during the day's awakenings.I am walking across a cobbled path, lined with leafless trees,leading me to the moon. I have a digital camera in my hands (which I've wanted for so long).It's a Nikon D70S.I know for sure because I am holding it in my hands ever so lovingly.

I stop because I want to shoot the moon and I am able to take one shot , and the camera clicks and whirls. I am happy. I want to take more shots but suddenly the moon becomes smaller and shoots up the sky almost like a shooting star only aiming towards the velvet sky.

Suddenly,it's day and I run across a group of scrawny children playing in sand.I start taking pictures of two girls holding hands and swirling round and round in circles. Through my viewfinder,I find a pair of dark intense eyes staring at me. She is not smiling. I want to take pictures because her face has such intensity. Yet, she stares and won't let me. Someone whispers into my ears and tells me that I cannot expect her to let me take pictures of her specially when I've just arrived.

I nod.

And open my eyes.

[Image taken on 1st January, 2010 at 1 am during the partial lunar eclipse as seen in Ranchi, India)

Sometimes Logan is just the prettiest place in the whole world. It's been raining since last night and a most beautiful sparrow sat on my window sill a few minutes ago to shake off the rain.

I wish I has batteries in my camera to take a picture but it flew off before I could get around to it. Such is life.

Oh, did I tell you by the way, I finally moved out of my old place for the summer. Moving is exciting and unsettling at the same time. I've moved four times already in the past 2 years so I've been feeling pretty much nomadic and I know I will be moving again in the next 3 months. Hence, I have not been particularly ecstatic about it.

However, I've already started to warm up to my new place. Here's a view from my window:


There is a small stream running hidden among those trees , so if I just cross the street, and scamper a bit , I reach the pebbly stream. I plan to make full use of the the stream during warm summer afternoons with a blanket, a flask of iced tea, a bag of cucumber and tomato sandwiches and a nice book. Bliss.

If I climb over the the hill past the stream ,I am welcomed with this view:


Plus, I also found a nice little cozy grocery store a block away from my house which sells everything you might need. In a place of gigantic and impersonal retails such as walmart, K-mart and other such marts, it was indeed very refreshing to enter a small wooden store with windchimes and a friendly cashier who told me the store has existed since the 1940s.

Life is, indeed, good.

My sunflower makes pretty patterns with the fluffs of cotton against the sky.




I want to float on the edge of these feather like clouds

across oceans and forests and fields of green grass

I would wave to yellow sunflowers waiting on windowsills

and fly kisses to the world below in hushed ,playful little whiffs of wind.

I would hope someone catches them in the wisps of their hair ,

or in the twirl of a new born leaf as it winks at the sun.

[Post script : Just realized the cloud actually looks like it's flipping me off. Hmmmph!]

Scribbled in my diary, I found the following quote-

"I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of the complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of the complexity"- Olive W. Holmes

Nothing could have made a better closing argument to the struggle going on in my mind since the past few days. Hence, I have decided to move back to India once I graduate.

Which, by the way, happens in another 5 days and it's gonna be LEGEN-waitforit-DARY!!

Since, I had been busy with the thesis, presentations and last minute panic attacks , I haven't had the time to go out and take any pictures but I did came across the works of an incredible photographer, Ayash Basu, who has done some great wildlife photography.

Still, a picture of the Mormon Temple at Logan,Utah against an orange sunset.

I cannot get enough of these two

In These Arms from banjo bandstand on Vimeo.

Even as a little child, my sister had the most expressive, beautiful eyes.
When she was angry with someone, her tiny little fists would clench tightly by her sides as she glared in defiance at whoever dared enough to arouse that anger.Her eyes would burn with unshed tears and she would stare unblinking with such defiance and chagrin that you would be compelled you picked her tiny frame into your arms. The clenched fists would unfold then and encircle themselves tightly around your neck and she would give in to bawling at the top of her voice.

Fiery one, she was.

And still is. As you can see. Thank God, I'm not compelled to pick her in my arms any more when she does that. Now, I just take pictures.

Sitting in on a rainy saturday afternoon by the window sill , doing lunch.


Song of the day: "Rain is falling chama cham cham..ladki ne aankh maari gir gaye hum.
Tan tana tan..tanan tanan "

Ammu

Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorcee-hood. Even her walk changed from a safe-mother walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims.
What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her .An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her, and eventually led her to love by night the man her children loved by day. To use by night the boat that her children used by day. The boat that Estha sat on and Rahel found.
--
Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn’t.


Arundhati Roy, God of small things.

I think I'm ready to order some warm yellow sunshine now.


And while we're at it, can I also have chirpy birds, green grass and blue sky with a little sprinkling of white clouds on the side??


I wouldn't really mind a white sailing boat, a dappled blue-green lake and a tanned sailor in a blue-white uniform with crinkly smiling eyes as well.

Thank you, and could you also let me have the remaining packed nicely in a take away parcel too? For memories sake.

The hands that rocks the cradles, rule the world

Happy International Women's day, ladies!

While surfing the internet, I came across this lovely post by Mellisa McEwan on female farmers across the world.

It's striking to realize the extent to which women contribute in providing for their families in a developing nation while still remaining an inconspicuous minority. A study in the Indian himalayas estimated that a pair of bullocks work 1064 h, a man 1212 h and a woman 3864 h in one year in a 1 ha farm! That's more than three times a man's work!

Most of the hard work put by these women involves transporting heavy loads on their heads for long distances, sifting grains and maintaining the fields while bending low in the scorching sun for hours at length. Yet, these women end up being low status laborers with a much low payroll than their male-counterparts due to gender biases.
In addition , these women also effectively take care of their young ones while they do their work from sun-up to sun-down.
Often,you will find these incredible women bending over the fields with their sickles, their babies tied tightly to their backs with a "chadar".When the baby cries ,she will walk to the nearest shade of a tree and nurse her baby to sleep and then resume her work with unwavering determination. At sunset, she will go back home and cook for the entire family and feed everyone first before she sits down to eat herself.

It's a great thing the world is quickly realizing that real development begins first with the upliftment of women. The Grameen Bank is one such perfect model of the power of rural women. A woman is more likely to grab any chance given to her to raise herself out of poverty and when she does that, she also brings her children and future generations along with her.

Here are some pictures I took while I was in India. Power to you,ladies!



Women waiting at a construction site (Location: Ranchi Overbridge,India)



Women sifting grain at harvest time ( Location: Unknown village where our car broke down,Ranchi,India)



Woman cutting grass in the fields (Location: Unknown village where our car broke down,Ranchi,India)



Woman separating grain from hay (Location: Village Hutar, near Khunti Ranchi,India

Just Lounging

The weekend went by swiftly working on my thesis and having finally sent the latest modules to my advisor this afternoon, I felt like I needed a break from everything academic. Call me a nerd of the first degree ,if you will , but the first place I could think of where I could relax and unwind was the library.
Yes, that's what the graduate school does to you ....sad ,but true! And I embrace this nerdiness shamelessly with arms wide open!!
So holding a steaming cup of coffee, I headed towards the "New Books Reading Lounge" and settled down with these two books which currently hold the top positions in my reading list-



As I read these inspiring stories of ordinary men and women who dared to dream to change the world and who were not afraid to be idealists, I felt comforted somehow. If they could do it and do it so well, then perhaps it was not such an awful decision in my part to leave a cushy (albeit terribly boring) software job and travel half way round the globe to get a green degree and face a terrifyingly unknown future .

Lonesome

And sometimes, when the mornings are quite and I can hear the lonesome bird chirp on the branches of the pear tree by the window. I look outside and slide the glass isolating me from the rest of the universe. The cold February air sends goosebumps in my arms and tingles my upturned nose.

Lonesome as the little bird chirping out my window,
I start humming a tune of my own.

A friend once pointed out to me, that we both had very different ways of artistic expression.While he always tries to hide the obvious and in the process add more mystery and depth to the photograph, mine are more curious in expression and try to unveil the mystery and the thought behind the subject.

To be true, I admit, I am a little bit like that in real life as well. Curiouser and Curiouser!

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

Maybe that's why I love doing portraits so much. People fascinate me. The thrill of being able to capture a fleeting thought or an expression in a face is incomparable. Somehow, its so raw and simple and true.

Its the truth which I go after.



I caught this man standing at the intersection of busy road in Ranchi,India. My brother had gone to buy some vegetables and I had been fiddling with the camera. What was interesting to me was the expression in this man's face.He looked miles away..deep into his own world, unaware of his surroundings or the loud honks or the people bustling about around him. He looked neither sad nor happy. He just was.

Chak de India

There is no other place for photographic inspiration as India. Going back to India after one and a half years made me fall in love with my country all over again. I realized that my love was not out of compulsion but also by choice.Something like how you always love your family even though you have had no choice in who your family is , as compared to the love of your friends and lovers who you love by choice.

India is deep and its complicated. Sometimes she will revolt you , and sometimes she will fascinate you. Every street that you turn to, she will show you an aspect of herself that will leave you spellbound. You might get enraged or you might sober down.

And she will never, never ever- leave you wanting.I promise.