Month: June 2023

A Memory of the Most Beautiful Woman : A Photographic Recollection of Three Days Living in a Rural Rajasthani Home

Dhapodi ji became a shepherd once she learnt that she would not be able to give Ambaram any children. Limping, I saw her whole life in that moment as she slowly walked away from us, with his cattle family. She took the responsibility of walking seventy goats and four cows to greener pastures. She used to take them all together for grazing, in rain, in dusty, deadly heat of Rajasthan daily, finding newer fields and branches to eat from all day to come back as the sun sat and help his husband’s second wife in cooking. Yes, second wife! Ambaram married again, in search for a boy to continue his lineage. Instead the new couple got five beautiful talkative girls, each a year apart. They went to every temple and sage to pray and ask for their blessing- leaving the older wife- Dhapodi and children back home. It became an irony that on the day Ambaram and Dhapodi got married- twenty years later, a boy arrived from the younger wife. As i Sit on the …

3rd Road To Nara Anniversary and An Announcement

On 15th June 2020, right in the middle of the biggest lockdown India saw; that morning I was walking on an empty street finding a fruit vendor instead ended up meeting an old man sitting alone in a park. It was a time of not doing anything. May be living was the best doing we were doing. As I heard him intently talking about all the people he met in life, I thought to myself- share now Nara. I had always been writing but in diaries or for money. Three years ago on this day something changed. Some minute thing when I decided to start ‘Road to Nara’- this blog and strangely this period of my life has been the best of Mango times- ethereally sweet yet with just a hint of tanginess. With years behind me as a Teacher, a Travel Journalist and a practicing Yogi; Road to Nara came at a time when I still remembered my past- thanks to the Image memory in me while times were forcing me to look towards …

How an Old Man Taught Me to Reach the Tower of the Eternal Bliss, the Mystery of Fire And of the Universe On the Banks of Ganga?

I had a quick two-day tour to Haridwar with parents. A meeting with a Guru was arranged and they were excited about it. I, as was the deal had only one plan; to walk as far and as close to the mother river Ganga, as much she allows. 4 a.m. When we reached Parents took to the ashram and I to the mother river. But this time without impressions. Past months have seen a difference in the way I am doing things and one thing that I am particularly peaceful about is leaving the camera first and then leaving this want, to make the most beautiful, meaningful looking photographs. I am not. I am not doing it. I am letting the days pass by without making any digital memory out of it. I feel no desire anymore to keep making memories. As of now I imagine I have done my quota of “always looking like a crow” to do something all the time. I am walking without me institutionally looking to make images or even …