All posts filed under: Delhi

Lost In Yellow: Visual Notes of Evenings Spent Wandering Along River Yamuna and Old Delhi

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Much like Lost in Translation I had been wandering, walking for a Research Project in Delhi; One of the great historic cities of the world and spans some 10 centuries of its past. Understanding, observing Delhi is both exciting and challenging. Delhi has had a rich urban past, and what is particularly interesting is the fact that at different points of time several different sites were chosen by various powers/dynasties to found new settlements or cities. Most of them are in ruins but what is important to learn about it is that all even today are accessible. One of them is yesteryears Shahjahanabad, today’s Old Delhi. Shahjahanabad has been subsumed under the gigantic sprawl of metropolitan Delhi. Yet it has an identity that is distinct from any other. Popularly known as Chandni Chowk or Old Delhi, its name conjures up romantic narrow streets named after almost every thing on earth; maze like with a variety of street food and exotic markets. But my exploration is not completely about Delhi, its heritage or food but it …

A Celebration for the Sun: A Brief History of Chhath in Paintings and Images

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I had not decided to celebrate today. But nature pulled me in. For last few months I had been parallel-y working on a project in New Delhi. Rather it is my expression on Climate Change living in a region which in itself is an extension of extremism in most ways. For one it is making our lives vulnerable to diseases here, viruses, climate catastrophes in terms of pollution and per square population density, in the National Capital Region. Working on a project such as this has taken my breath, my life in a way that I sometimes remunerate myself a quote that Andrei Tarkovsky used to say on ‘Cinema requiring sacrificing of yourself. That You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. In all ways, i have proved him right, without making much progress. On a whim last night I and team decided to visit the Yamuna river early morning as mist has started to settle over the flowing water. We walked till noon to film the …

Making of a Capital : A Short Travel Poem and a Photo Essay

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And now we move to the rhythm of this restlessnessOn these streets many people dead they drive with recklessness 8% growth has some people flex with lexusesIn South ex shop for Rolexes and diamond necklaces Land developers come down hard build power nexusesThey build more malls and shopping complexcesses State militia vacate villages – next exodusSo you can cash checks of sensex indexes. Many narrators refer to Delhi as be-dil(heartless). They say the city is cruel, treacherous, ungrateful, selfish and a whore. Prior to the Muslim rule, Delhi’s most popular name was Yoginipur, City of Yoginis. Jain texts and Prakrita literature mentioned the city as Yoginipur. Yoginis are lesser goddesses; some texts say they numbered 12 while others put the figure at 64. Yogmaya, the presiding deity of Yoginopur, reigned over all the Yoginis. : ँ : Excerpts and Images from an Ongoing Project on Delhi Thank you. If today is the first time you have arrived on The Road to Nara, you are heartily welcome ~ Namaste : ँ : I will take this opportunity to …

Home and the World : Walking around New Delhi and Old in January ’22

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Even though every day, slowly months and years seem to pass as fast as they arrive; January is special because first so much celebration already happens even before it arrives that half of it leaves while many still living hungover or in the previous year. Yet for me it was bringing some change that i could experientially notice, and drastic at that. Father had a near death experience so much that one night sleeping outside Hospital, in the boot of a car made me succumb to the emotions of not having a father anymore. Those five hospital days were special in a strange and new kind of way. Father eventually came back strongly, and is on his way to retain good health. But still something changed in me. Probably the essence of time. How so much is often so little. Hence January had to be celebrated, in the only few way i can. Working, walking, writing better. Ever since the seed of working on Delhi’s past and present has yielded, i had been moving around …

FINDING Brahma Kamal: The Divine Flower Seat of Brahma: On a Rainy Night from Delhi to Chamoli- II

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While studying culture and ancient practises in the Higher Himalayas. Continuing from Pandava Forest and the Brahma Kamal : The Nights of Change in the Himalayas : ँ : Who would have known that a journey which merely started in documenting the culture of the mountains will end in a never-ending quest of finding the way to my own being. May be this is what Living in general teaches us. Like Googly in Cricket. Guruji and I came back to his home. It was cold and only a bulb far was filling the mountain home with some light. He stood for a while without speaking, almost waiting for the words to arrive. That mountain Narayan, that slope lead the last Pandava to Heaven, with a dog. We were seeing it together, in the dark. The tip of it shining, because moon was raining that night. And that is where you will find the Lotus of Brahma; a whole valley of flowers up there surrounds the divine flower; because they too revere it. They want to …

Yogmaya : The Sacred Power that witnessed New Delhi – १

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It was sudden. A day of change. Something shifted. Paradigm. Light. Its been months that I had known where to look yet It took time to find. Because it had already found me. It was in my hands and sooner I became it. In my search for the permanent, in this land which once was ruled by the snakes. Forest. In the name itself, energy resides. I reached Yogmaya. After months, without telling even my own self. The moment that child arrived I packed my bag, took my documents, opened the door and started walking towards her. As if she called on the eve of her birth night. It was five thousand and sixty eight hundred years ago. 5068.  From today starts Nine days of Worshipping the mother. How will you do it?I will take the help of Fire.    When she calls, the time subsides. Last evening, I was brimming with energy. I passed through the mausoleum and Mehrauli felt like a foreign country. It had been long I thought i was looking, rather …

How i found my Will? And sooner my health. The Kushti world of Ancient Indian Wrestling: A Photographic Essay -II

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It was a week later, since that night of inner churning, when I met Sangram Singh again, and for the first time at his one room flat in Delhi. And most interestingly, he was already drinking, since sunrise. His whole house smelled of tobacco. Lights not brighter than the ones we sat under, in his auto. The green wall behind him wore a Hanuman calendar of the previous year. His eyes swollen, pointed, looking towards me, followed my gaze from the wall to the glass that was kept at the low table beside his bed, rum still left in it. “It’s not good for a wrestler, you know”. He picked up the glass and emptied it in one gulp. When I was young even the smell of this bothered me, but now it’s my nectar. It is this, which makes me feel alive. But Narayan, you look different today, Sangram suddenly getting aware of my presence. You seem all ready? He said looking at my camera. You wanted to see the wrestling place, right? I …

How I found my self ? And sooner my strength- I

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In the silence of the night, the only sound that started coming was of the rain drops dropping, infrequently from the leaves above. Soaking in as soon as they fell on the road I was walking. The darkness had intruded beyond the trees standing like guards on either side. Their canopies meeting above making a roof, even making the drizzle feel like a poem sailing through the air. Till then I had my phone in my hand. My priced possession, I had bought after two months of work at my first job as a photojournalist. As i neared an approaching lamppost that once looked far, my shadow stretching behind me. Without any sound or intuition a hand caught me by my neck from behind. For a second I really thought it must be somebody known, a friend’s prank yet still unlikely. Within another second I got a strong hit on my back. Falling flat on my chest on the wet road. And realized that I was being hit nowhere but only on my face, a …