Author: Narayan Kaudinya

HYPNIC PICNIC : 5 elements Wind and Water published in Rare Journal

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The journalist had been following my journey here on the Road to Nara and later found herself ecstatic on seeing some images that i had made few years ago following the sea along the expansive South-Western coast of India. I was then documenting it for a long term project on the journey of five elements and various shapes and forms they take. HYPNIC PICNIC was this month’s theme, magic as she asked me for images that carried in them a life in between and the journey. Along with me came a few other artists, as many as the fingers are in both hands, two from India and few from far away countries. Working, carrying their experience of the world in their fields of expression; illustration, sketches, graphics, Paintings and images. In them i found few very interesting people doing the things they have been doing in their lives like Stilleke, he is a curator and was invited here to talk about the future of festivals and even more so in the years leading to this …

The Noise of Silence

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What is it that changes the day from that moment onwards? What happens in that moment? How often does that moment come? In the times of fear, silence becomes a tool, different for different people, acting differently in different times of the day, or is it any similar with the animals too? Early in the morning when sun had yet not arrived, i had already made two rounds of a square park. On the third round, i saw a squirrel coming down a tree, abnormally slow but consistent, through a lane filled with fallen, dried leaves she had come closer as if she wasn’t conscious of any person standing in her way. For a moment it pressed me to stop and only look at her because for that long a while I could not see where her head was, as there was no skin on it. It was nothing less than exorcism for my eyes in brahma mahurat, of how was she even moving like that i was wondering when at a point closest to …

Two Lies

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It was the second time I heard something similar within a week. Something, that instantly felt important and something, that stayed with me. Was Mother signalling?  Ram Chandra worked with wood. He could create anything from it. He was born in the village i was born, may be two decades earlier. When he spoke, and he spoke freely about all things and loud. His face had taken such a shape that it felt looking at him he could never lie, but strangely loud suited him. Even his left eye which was unlike the other, kept his innocence intact. Once i brought some water for him to drink. He kept looking at it like saying something to it and started telling me a story personal to him or was it a guilt sailing for long. My work takes me to a lot of places, and I am good at what I work. Once someone called me at his residence and there was something sudden that I didn’t like about the household. The women of the family …

My Soul Journal and Expecting Times to Dip in the Rivers of the World

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From time to time, a dip in the river changes your perception about that river you just became with. She starts knowing you and you her. To start with, first of all she calms you down. Slowly changing your inner nature. And gradually of the outside. It may even happen that hundreds of dips later over the years you may start earning some qualities of that river. Your temperature of the body gets strengthened and so does your smile. And if you are open as you naturally should be, like a child; your ever expanding nature will carry you then to the places that can only be created behind your closed eyes. Sailing along patterns of current, looking at forms, colours, patterns, walls, speculating other dimensions in the dark, to the sounds of birds and leaves, of burning dead trees and water ripples, hearing bodies visually and later, very slowly language. Sometimes a small reaction changes the whole tail of events. Sometimes the start itself is the end. But the dip is important. Because that …

When Krishna calls. A dream life of an Australian Photographer from Paris : Travels in Vrindavan

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“O Krishna, the stillness of the divine union, which you describe, is beyond my comprehension. How can the mind which is so restless, attain lasting peace. Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, powerful, violent. To tame the mind is like to tame the wind.” – Srimad Bhagvad Gita  I was in my early teens when on my grandmother’s fierce insistence, parents took us on a tour to Mathura and Vrindavan. Krishna had supposedly entered my grandmother’s dream. She lost her sleep, and waited for that day when she would touch the earth of Krishna’s birth. And encircling the epical, ancient, holy Govardhana hill,  गोवर्धन पर्वत on her bare feet. The sun was setting in the land of braj as we arrived, the winds started blowing, grandmother’s eyes went backwards; her body calmed, voice started mumbling the words known to every wall and each monkey sitting on them, as they could  be heard from myriad mouths. Narrow lanes of brick, tall walls wearing Mughal attires turning holy, as the time turned blue like romance, the colour of Krishna, Yamuna …

Born to Run

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The first half of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography makes some things abundantly clear: He had no natural ability to play the guitar. In fact, after his first lessons, he quit, unable to play a note. He had no singing talent. Every group he was part of needed a lead singer, and it wasn’t him. And just about everyone dismissed him. Audiences walked out, his first agent simply stopped returning his calls and bandmates gave up and moved on. Yet today, we know him and not that agent. Talent is overrated. Skill is acquirable. Showing up is important and something almost every creative leader has in common. In business, in the arts, in society. Consistently shipping the work, despite the world’s reaction, despite the nascent nature of our skill, despite the doubts. Community is essential. The people we surround ourself with can reinforce our story, raise the bar and egg us on. Because, the community becomes an integral part of our story of success. But first, we have to commit to the journey. Working in the creative …

Technique, and how must, can we learn one ?

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Its amazing by how much we can get done simply by trying. Whether its writing, finishing a complex film, or building a better environment to educate children at school. Because when we show up and do our best, we can make things happen. But then, sometimes or many, our internal horsepower becomes insufficient. Many a times it snowballs into sitting idle, waiting for inspiration to arrive or simply the right time. Bhuvneshwari Devi is sitting at home with a black Wayfarer on. Her blood became so impure that it started affecting her eyes. Having no savings, or funds to go to a doctor, she turned to the roots, to an old technique; drinking turmeric and neem i.e Azadirachta indica powder with lukewarm water every morning on an empty stomach. Also read : A Traveller’s lessons from ten years on the ँ Road But for many others, as we seek to make bigger impact. we discover that powering our way through obstacles many a time becomes too difficult. And so comes handy the technique, a route that …

5 Ancient Secrets of Yogic Wellness – III

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A long time friend and astrologer, who works as an Engineer in California has cautioned that the next 10-15 years is going to be very tumultuous for the world. Many regional fights, wars, cyber, economic and military are going to take place in different parts of the world. Ever-since his predictions came out to be true to each word he spoke on Trump, i am more aware and taking his predictions seriously. He said that the world is going to see an unprecedented, rapid change in the next decade and half.  And today in 2021, as the world cautiously tries to stand up again from the pandemic, it might need more than just the ideas for wellness. It needs ideals and it needs ancient wisdom to lead us through this complex maze that our whole world becomes such that it never succumbs to any inner or outer infections.  There is no doubt that we have to bring our wandering mind back to breath, and take responsibility for our body, like we do with our tastes. Our …

The cost of Life?-II

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“Conserve”, because No, nature does not need us instead we need nature to stay relevant as life on earth.” By the end of 2020, the year had dented many a egos; almost all brands; Fashion, went out of fashion. Food, nobody trusted nobody’s hand. People afraid to touch, and our homes turned into new day Jails. Even as i write this, humans throughout the globe are still afraid, vulnerable to come out of homes, economies hanging, and many a countres are going into yet another Lockdown. All this while, in last one year, few things got cleared and were prayed for. We found ourselves back to an age where nothing more than the most required was needed. Nature took her stand. She wanted to breathe or rather more crudely wanted us to show her version of mirror, where only; AirWaterFoodShelterA relaxed and a calm mindA healthy body, were required. Everything else is a want, she said. These are your true needs. : ँ : There are many systems on our planet. Many various cycles, quietly …

A brief history of life on Earth and the origin of Yoga-I

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It has been many centuries since humans have stopped moving from one place to another. Almost the majority of people today grow up in long settled societies. This new year 2021 AD, has arrived with a sense of responsibility in me to become a change what i feel should change. This ongoing virus is being lived on many levels together. Pandemics had happened before but it became unreal because we lived with it even though we didn’t contact it, in real circumstances and digitally there after all the more. What went wrong? What is it that we as people are overseeing what is coming? Whom have we been fooling? But before we go the factors i wanted to know and learn with you all, this mystery of Who actually we all are, all of us? And How did we became what we have become? Lets start from the start   Earth started a very long time ago. To figure out exactly how long, lets just figure out how much a billion is? A billion is …

Conversations in a Dream

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Never stand and drink water, eat food or smoke.  Some one very important from the other world entered in my psychic system last night. The beautiful aspect of it all was that i behaved as well as I should have in real life, with utmost respect.  As I had to go up to his room using a lift, I pressed one bell, but it turned out to be of somebody’s home. A lady came, like a tortoise she put her neck out of the door and kept looking for a long time in the other direction. Finally when she found me as she turned her neck slowly like a mechanical toy, her eyes started blinking faster than our heartbeats. But what i found amusing was, in her eyes she had put enormous amount of kajal, the same one that my mother puts in my eyes every night. I knew it because it was leaving a smell of mustard. There’s a lot to be said for tradition, for stability and for the foundation that the status …

Moon, Woman, and the Essence Of a Long Life

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Today is Mahashivaratri. This day and night has become the most important 24 hours of this life that I am living. I am in Kumbh as I write this. Or the ‘Mahakumbh’ as I must state. Since Makar Sankranti these days were probably the most auspicious 45 days of 2025 that had a celestial connection and are stated to have come back after 144 years. Taking a dip in the sangam in these times are said to be no less than moksha on earth. And To be here on Mahashivaratri cannot just be my planning. It has to be a blessing. I am here with Maharaji whom I am meeting after five years. He flew from France only to be here for Mahakumbh. And this time, this phase with him has brought me back towards understanding the essence of life’s elements as a Yogi again. As someone who has been accumulating all the learnings and secrets of the ancient life. Even though soon ancient will be studied as the period that was before internet, but …

The motorcycle, Dalai Lama and the Meal – I

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Few years ago, I was travelling with once upon a time a beautiful friend. And like all great friendships do, we were growing up becoming something together. And during this long period of growth had found our confidence, our speech, as we took travelling to many a distant lands and one land far; discovering treasures together that helped us earning our eyes, my outer nature and his inner, we learnt together and kept going.   The sun had set again. And unlike last night that had just blown in; we should have found something, somewhere to rest, to eat by now. But here we were still riding, and had been riding our motorcycles for last two, twelve-hour days, while living through one gruelling moonless, freezing night in between, that started late yesterday noon, when we were stopped, stunned to see a river that had come on the road. We parked and got down. One spring had broken loose. Pulling in all mud, the boulders, rocks, with an intimidating noise, and the force of the coldest water …

Food and the World on a new Yogi’s mind

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It was time. The sun had arrived when he decided going to bed again. After last night chocolate truffle, the cough had soared. The times are odd. Eversince electricity arrived people were seen forgetting the Sun. Breathe in breathe out. In the new cities, statisticians were collecting some data. It was seen that children of non-meat eating parents were picking pizzas of a particular shop called fat lulu in their dreams because they were the only ones where vegetarian was written. Stretch. For many months, the voice inside had been asking him to leave dairy, and when it is the best time to be a cow in India. He thought, milk like few other well marketed products have been projected as a necessity to humanity. So he started writing alternatives, to the unmarked ones and whenever any untested eatable came to his mind. Moon and Sun. While riding back home along the river one evening, Nara saw a beggar sitting upright. It was strange, beggars like him, more so with a summer shirt and half …

Tomorrow comes Daily

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Slowly slowly as good days passed, hardest ones arrived. Three deaths and earning a bagful of silence later, we started sleeping again, or may be not. But mind does not change as of yet. Because Ruts don’t dig themselves. Most of the time, we’re in a rut because that’s precisely where we put ourselves. Out of many, some actions become habits, and habits get repeated because they feel safe. The easiest way to make things more interesting is to simply stop repeating your habitual behavior. And that often comes from reacting to triggers. Remove the triggers and you can alter the habits. Tiny changes. Different ways to keep score. Tomorrow comes daily. But we don’t have to take the same route to get there.

Life is only breath. Every other thing a distraction.

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The night before was dedicated to red Hibiscus flowers. They ended inside the fire place while praying for the solar chord, our right nostril, symbolising river Ganga; and in yogic texts known as pingala. It was also mauni amavasya, i.e the quiet moonless night, as advised for centuries, this day must be observed in silence. Women who could not restrain themselves from speaking, fasted in exchange for words. And the ones who spoke nothing from mouths were seen talking cautiously from eyes. There was nothing satvic about the day even though I tried to make it. And above all It ended without a moral, not that it had to. But without a story as if either it wasn’t needed or we weren’t important. In the evening the walk became unending. It didn’t feel long but the sun had set. We went around the circular home to find more wood but instead found two calves loving like statues. Somehow they got excited and started running like jumping deers. The once desired magic when attained, when passed over, …

One Time at a Rural School In India: A Photographic Essay For Bharti Airtel Schools in Rural India

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It was a time of purity. I wasn’t affected by socially suited media still. I loved being away and explored possibilities, more than even my liking to reading. I had only recently started thinking about teaching as i had left my job as a researcher then, at a publishing house and of course without any extensive hope, I wanted to travel. Good friends are the keys to the future doors. Juin called me one day at her office, and introduced me to her lady boss, in another publishing house. I went prepared and had an absolutely beautiful experience meeting her. She shared her travel stories and laughed well at mine. I could feel she loved hearing few things about what i had planned and while doing so she put forth an idea that she had been thinking. Her organisation had been providing free education and meals to primary school children in some north Indian states and had no documentation of it. She wanted someone to travel to these remote villages and document children studying in …

Learning from Mahatma, knowing Gandhi

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There were many things i never liked about my school. And the foremost was that it unintentionally took my freedom away or so i think. I was never introduced to any ancient Indian texts, neither I learnt anything about Yoga or even Sanskrit till i was 13. A child like me who only wanted to see and know of the world was made to sit and learn answers to the question for examinations after every three months more like a parrot. So much so my unlearning started before i could wake up my interest for higher learning. And soon it started effecting my results in higher classes or that is what i think of it now probably because i couldn’t pursue anything apart from five subjects at school. I feel liberated at the thought that I am not in school. And more so there is no more need to answer questions about Gandhi’s contribution to India’s freedom struggle. School history curriculum was also one reason i did not take Modern History of India as my …

When a wedding found me travelling in Mumbai

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It was then my first visit to Mumbai. And hence everything i was laying my eyes on went deeper than only seeing. I was hearing, more. Walking more. A place that promises light to your dreams ever since you earned consciousness, a place known for many a rags to riches story. Famous or infamous for world’s second largest Film Industry. I was there looking at every action, motion, observing how people move, react, are. Yet, I hadn’t been able to go out much then in Mumbai. One thing that i had loved walking in mumbai were the dairy shops where you would get Chai from the fresh milk. So one day while having malai/cream chai at a milk dairy I had started having a liking for, only because there was a beautiful big peepal tree I could sit under. And secondly. unlike in north India where there is milk a plenty but there is no way you can sit and enjoy different variations of milk in a dairy shop. Mumbai seemed to be bathing in …

The Play of Tendencies

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There are many layers under our skin. Cells that live with us and leave us without even letting us know, doing their work quietly. Taking all the time of their own in becoming and unbecoming, as they slowly settle into a tendency. We become our tendencies. Repetition of gestures become life long habits. As simple as acquiring the taste of sugar. For some, Coffee in the morning is a habit. Like buying bottled(plastic) water, but it wasn’t used to be. Making a habit is a lot easier than breaking one (ask a smoker), you can live on old habits for a while, but the future seemingly depends on finding and building some new ones with (and for) your people. Or your family. Or yourself. As soon as something useless starts becoming a norm for the body; this mind should be taught a lesson. Every becoming habit should be tested in its phase of tendency. One must shock it, confront it. We should oppose ourselves, resist our actions, question and be strict with ourselves. Because, undoubtedly …

In Life’s darkness. Mother is light.

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In these ongoing paralysing times of helplessness, while doing nothing; close your eyes. Think of water, a river. And if possible become it. Shiva was eyes wide open in all directions. Yet the destructive eye had to open, and took him inwards. Ujjain arrived in the morning. We went to pataloka to touch the equator in dim light and later ate potato spice. Darkness is the birth place of all creations. A child becomes in the dark. The lights glows the most in the dark. It is not that the darkness is wrong. It’s a part of life, a backdrop for the stars at night, the space between what you know. Darkness has a way of reminding you of the light. ExistING side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. And Mangla, the beautiful brown cow here in the village is pregnant. One big similarity, between a cow and a human mother is that both take nine months for their child to come out playing in the wild. Also one of many reasons, the oldest living civilisation …

A Journal of Animal Stories In The Last Ancient Fair Of Nepal

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“There is no other no other culture on earth that worships a woman as a goddess. And has gone to lengths, to make her happy, satisfy her with whatever means a man could imagine. Honouring her, doing little things, like this fair to keep her happy, may be to create another excuse to celebrate, however irrational it may be. Because you see, someone told me on this journey, that if in a family, a woman is happy everything will be favourable. Our goddess needs to happy, at any cost possible” GADHIMAI FAIR : A Journey through the culture of Nepal A sparrow woke us up. After travelling for three days overland, from Delhi to Kathmandu; changing buses including sharing a seat for seven hours with a goat. Through the night, travelling in a time travel bus I was transported from a civil society to a town living thirty years back. A town darkened by the moonless night, wearing a layer of fog only dissected by the headlight of a second world war Mercedes truck. Few …

Being the Light

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People in general have been generous with us through the years. A doctor who took the time to understand our pain. A server who didn’t hesitate and brought to us what we needed before we even knew we needed it. A client who gave us a project at just the right time. Gifts create connection and possibility, but not all gifts have monetary value. In fact, some of the most important gifts involve time, effort and care instead. Money was invented long after humans arrived on the scene, and commerce, as we have seen- cannot solve all problems. In this moment when we are disconnected and afraid, uncertain of the future, not only of us but of humanity altogether, the answer might not be a freebie. That might simply push us further apart. The answer might be showing and standing up to do the difficult work of smiling, connecting, of caring, of telling the other, I am and of extending ourselves where it’s not expected.

SINGSONG : Finding the King With a Golden Voice of Cambodia – A Photographic Film

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In December 2018, I rented a bicycle and started recording songs of the people I would meet in my travels around in Cambodia. Through the sound filled in my ears I slowly started seeing. But few days later I realised listening, sitting in a room that all the songs that people sang were of the same singer. Sinn Sisamouth, the father with the golden voice of Cambodia. I started researching on this singer and soon learnt that Sinn Sisamouth was the most revered singer of Cambodia and South-east Asia then. He had gone missing under mysterious circumstances and was most likely killed in 1976 by the Khmer Rouge regime. And his songs were banned for the next four years to come. Khmer rouge was in power from 1975-79. It is estimated that the brutal regime claimed the lives of more than 1.9 million people. That was around 28 percent of the total population of Cambodia, eliminated. The regime tried to control and take the country back to the Middle ages, forcing millions of people from …