All posts filed under: Enjoy the Paintings

But Love, and Other Poems

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Just for a moment,sit down and be with yourself. Close your eyes and thinkhow short is our life on earth.   Is it worth fighting at all?internally or externally! In this short life span where time takes us on roller coasters,would you like to be happy or ? Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.Shoot the Mango! Because its summers. Because medical science has made such tremendous Progress,said Huxley, that there is hardly a healthy human left. Aren’t we all going to die, all of us,that alone should make us love, but it hasn’t. People are strange; But Lovebecause that would mean total Acceptance Of yourself.along with all your weaknesses and Strengths. But Love,because hard things must be told simply. But Love,because the mind must be taught, to keep out of it.  Else the mind will involve the Fate.and the Fate, it is known controls only the weak. But Love,because it is the spirit of the strong. and it is the strong who mould the Providence they want. : ँ : Thank you. If today is the first time …

Namaste to the Sun: An Ancient Yogic Way to Glow from Within

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I had gone to my old Yoga school on a long walk. Not to meet anyone but to eat fruits. From an elderly woman who has been sitting outside Yoga centre ever since, with a fruit basket. “Mango aren’t yet sweet, I was about to tell her”, when she introduced me to a police man sitting beside, telling him that I am a Yoga Teacher. I finished my fruit Salad. About to leave when he requested me to come near and asked in a hushed voice, what to do when your face is darkening? Quiet. I wanted to hear more. It is my wife, she is also gaining a lot of weight. She isn’t old. 47 Years. What to do? Hearing these two queries took my intuition and understanding towards the Source; The Sun. And Since the Origin of Yoga is centered around and incipiently with worshipping the Sun, I started with telling him about how human civilisation and life actually started around Fire, and fire worship in form of the Sun on Earth, i …

The Last Journey to Ganga and Scenes from my Ancestral Village : A Photographic Essay

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Visiting Grand Parents used to be the only time when the Joy of having many umbrellas multiplied the possibilities of games, laughter and Humour. But one day without any knock, or warning grandmother died an exceptionally unusual death. All those years the perception that I carried of association, I could never feel it again towards my birth home, my birth courtyard, after grandmother was gone. No sense of belonging. My village had started to look congested. May be that was why parents must have left it. In 1982. On the mud terrace of our ancestral home, fragrance of cow-dung cakes still brings to my mind the nostalgia of my grandmother cleaning the courtyard every morning. Even before the sun would rise; while telling me with love to keep sleeping. Upla* are still used for cooking and cleaning. And just last week were also used for lighting the pyre of my uncle. Father’s eldest brother. Death of a family pillar changes a lot of dimension. For one It brings overwhelming, repulsive, abominable silence in homes. I …

The Curse of A Tale: And Why each mother should make her child first, a storyteller?

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Sound is important. Anyone who takes on a story takes on the responsibility of passing it on. A.K Ramanujan, an Indian Poet and Folklorist wrote in the preface to his book Folktales from India, “Stories and words not only have weight; they also have wills and rages, and they can take different shapes and exact revenge against a person who doesn’t tell them and release them into the world. They are there before any particular teller tells them; stories hate it when they are not passed on to others, for they can come into being again and again only in that act of translation. If you know a tale, any tale; you owe it not only to others but to the tale itself to tell it; otherwise it suffocates. Traditions have to be kept in good repair, transmitted, or else, beware, such tales seem to say, things will happen to you. You can’t hoard them.” He then tells of a Kondh tribal who possessed four stories which he was too lazy to repeat. One night, …

Have a Little Faith: 5 things to Achieve by the Year end.

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I am writing. I have been writing. And even though I was away from Road to Nara, I kept writing on paper. I kept remembering everyone here. And it is now after thirty days of thirst, i finally opened this dying computer. How have you been? How is everyone doing? Please do tell me. Say it out loud. I will be very happy to read from each one of my co-traveller here. It is true that once the rhythm breaks, whoever you might be and whatever you do, life presides over. Life consumes even that time which once was someone’s. Like mine was for the Road to Nara. I tried to write on the 16th of this month and then on 26th but it took my might to break this monotony. Truth be told that there is no going far away from here. I missed writing here. I missed sharing here. Because words are as important as the ones reading them. Because these days, these months, this year is very important. And i would like …

THE ORIGIN : Thank you all my co-travellers. The Foundation of a Happy Life- Last Post of 2021

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I have been talking to myself ever since I remember. And having a photographic memory I remember myself well; doing, playing, observing being as young as 1 year old, i remember a lot of things. And this listening, seeing, ultra observing of actions, reactions, relating, co-relating, correcting them, learning from what didn’t go right, or what did, the tone and sounds in a language, feelings; I am always well aware of each happening, every vibration that I receive or give. It is pure grace, a blessing. Namaste. Another blessing had been this blog, Road to Nara : My travels as a Yogi and the family that it has provided me. Each and every soul of you. To tell you, It has saved me from something, I do not know what but very important something. I even did not know till now that I could sustain writing, or that I can write this much. Road to Nara became my road to come back to myself, so many memories I have lived in my lifetime, so many …

A Diwali wish

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Diwali is a festival of light, because each one of us is that light. For this is about our inner evolution and so we spread awareness to uplift the human spirit. Today as the world goes through a transition, it is all the more important and needed to create festivity around us, to rejoice in the wisdom and knowledge that our spirit is eternal and invincible. Invincible is what we must remember. Hence, on this day I wish that your each moment, each action, each cell brings light and joy that we always feel is our true right. A very happy Diwali to everyone, and especially you, my family here on this collective journey on the Road to Nara. : ँ : Cover Image : Nainsukh, women with lanterns and fireworks celebrating Diwali. ca 1760 – 1763. Guller, India. If today is the first time you have arrived on The Road to Nara, you are heartily welcome ~ Namaste And I will take this opportunity to introduce you to About me and importantly; As a Traveller, my lessons from …

Truth, Evil and the Sun

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When we reached Gopeshwar that night, Gana seemed speechless. But Neel looked at him with satisfaction giving an expression like then he has seen. We sat around fire, while waiting for the food to arrive. Open your ears said Neel and he began speaking like reciting an over practised hymn. The men in the east, he said, are trees; those in the south are flocks of animals; those in the west are wild plants. And those in the north like ourselves, who cried out while they ate other men, were the waters. When the collective sound started filling the air, he started explaining about eating. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence bringing misery and torment will one day be carried out by those who inflict it. Pouring milk into the fire- every morning, every evening- …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Happy Birthday Incredible India

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Your place is not only on the map but also in the heart Freedom and power brings responsibility. That responsibility rests upon each one of us. Before the birth of freedom we endured all the pain of labour, even divided with heavy hearts; that echoing memory of division. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that must be directed. The future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today, one more time. The service of India, of Bharat means the service of the millions who suffer. It means not only ending poverty but ignorance, unawareness, diseases and above all, inequality of opportunities, understanding the importance of this ancient land, this oldest active and growing civilization. And so we have to labour and to work and work hard to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for …

The Lovers Of Aurangabad

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Where are the lovers? The ones who roamed and flew kisses at each passing nightingale; that one who promised me the movies and photographs on the Valentines. I haven’t seen none and I don’t think one would come, instead i called him last night, in my sleep. His year began with a cold shower last valentines morning, of course it was February, of course it was cold. For many years he dismissed the day of love by saying saint valentines’s mother was a pagan and did not believe in Christ herself, rather was in love with a tree outside her home. So he, my boyfriend decided to love a tree that stood outside their home. You know trees have gender right! Also because his mother would rebel of even thinking about going outside, once she was walking on a street, and just when she reached at the centre of a four way crossing, she yelled out loud saying I detest this urban theatre,  Every one is a clone of the other. Look a likes, inside …