All posts filed under: On Photography

11 Greatest Indian Circus Photographs of the 20th Century

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I have been a Photographer in this lifetime. And I feel I have been a photographer first than being anything else later. And one thing that a photographer does for a lot many hours is only seeing. And if seeing gets him closer to nature, he then starts studying seeing, observing, reading and doing everything else when not taking photographs. Photography carries a rich history and we can imagine that now when we have got all the equipments and technology by our side where we can just delete an image right after taking it. This could not be even imagined 30 years ago. And through that period came courageous, motivated people who took up camera to pen their observations. If this post is being read by anyone who is born after 2000, you may feel at home and open yourself up to take some time out to study some of the most brilliant minds who took up image making, who made images when no one was watching. Their documentation changed the ways of seeing. Their …

10 Indian Movies that Visitors Must Watch before Travelling to India

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India is a Land of Storytellers. Here, since time immemorial, stories through various ways have been the real medium of remembering, praying and even worshipping their beings. Be it the legends from the Vedas, The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Bhagvad Gita, the Puranas, folktales- they have been floating in various lores and forms throughout the length and breadth of this vast country. Here, the greatest of kings, the demons, the Yogis and the Saints have all been still living only through the stories of valour, sacrifice, the fiercest of battles and the tapas of Yogis that have inspired and motivated the people of this land to not just dream and wait for magic to happen but get up and dedicate oneself to one’s duties and work towards goals with unwavering focus and without attachment. Here, in the land of India i.e. Bharat– One who tells the best stories rules the hearts of Indian People. Since we are amongst the oldest Storytellers in the history of the Mankind, I thought to open this post as a conversation …

What Do You Know About the Best Ever Movie the Number One Film on IMDB?

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My dear Co-travellers, Road To Nara has been my Laboratory for sharing my life experiences as a a Writer, as a Documentarian and as an Educator for sometime now. And ever since I started writing here I have tried to bring in my understandings from any walk of life that spoke to me ever. Be it my Travels, from my School, My Yogic or the Spiritual way of being, my experiences with nature, The Himalayas and many a times about the Art world, Primarily Sharing from the lives of Writers and Photographers. Also Read: Children of War and a Photographic Journey into the Parallel Universe And all my co-travellers here, who visit this space, many a ones whose views I cherish who bring their own world to make this space a little more chirpier and happier. This Special Edition goes out to each one of you with whom I have ever interacted. This week, I am sharing about a film that shaped something unexplainable in me, that I think gave me a perspective on how …

Children Of War and A Look Into the Parallel Universe

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Once in many years comes a project that brings your life’s reality to a halt. Probably bringing a comma or a complete stop for sometime. Even though it isn’t a big deal to be trained in the visual medium today as everyone’s eyes roll over social media like clouds moving above us, most of the times everything passes as our heads are always elsewhere but that one moment when the thunder strikes, we come back to life. Our World is at war. Still not at its peak as the real WAR is still around a few years away, but as we read this article in 2024, the world is already on a boil and soon rather anytime it is expected to burn. Only if things, governments, war companies do not mend their ways but even for that the time has already gone. Ever since the US moved out of Afghanistan; West Asia and the Middle East has become ever so vulnerable. The ever going war in Africa, Syria, Yemen, ever since in Afghanistan, Russia-Ukraine. And …

Amazing Unheard Facts about Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and What Its Success Meant for all Indians

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Ramayana became the 1st serial of the TeleVision world, which earned a place in the Limca Book of Records as the world’s most watched Television series. For millions of Indians, life came to a standstill for 45 minutes every Sunday morning. At 9.30 am, people settled down to watch this epic serial, the greatest hit in Indian TV history. The budget for Ramayan was Rs.9 lakh per episode, making it the most expensive show produced at that time! The shooting for Ramayan went on for over 550 days! Arun Govil received such intense love and adoration for his portrayal of Ram that he had to give up smoking in public! Ramanand Sagar’s serial Ramayana comes in the 1st category in the history of television. It was telecasted on Doordarshan, on 25 Jan 1987. When it first came on TV, no one imagined that it would get so much fame. Ramayan, which was actually the second show that Ramanand Sagar created for TV (after Vikram Betaal), remains one of the most iconic shows to have been made …

A Dairy of a Photographer and his Incredible Rural India Stories

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Being a Photographer myself, I have always been fascinated by the old world charm that Rural life provided to my spirit. And Its not just about India but whole of South and South-East Asia had an unexplainable charm to it, still has. There is so much in common. Culture going centuries back. And today in 2023, when the world has started sprinting at a breakneck speed; when people, younger generations have almost, already left things behind; I feel an urge and need to conserve things, documents, stories, creations and life of the past. As much as I can in my limited means. And what better there is to learn and study from someone who himself has been a conservationist in the real sense. Jyoti Bhatt’s work is a proof in itself, that had there been no him, we wouldn’t have ever known what Rural India of the past looked like. Here sharing excerpts from his travels, some never seen images and stories that only his closed ones must have known. The diary of Jyoti Bhatt …

Smile Professor Einstein : The story behind Einstein’s most iconic Photograph

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Smile for the camera, Professor Einstein! When the photographer Arthur Sasse asked physicist and scientist Albert Einstein to smile for the camera on his 72nd birthday on 14 March 1951 – this is the image that was taken. Einstein was tired of smiling at all the photographers and instead decided to stick out his tongue. Einstein himself later used the image on greetings cards that he sent to friends. And became one of the most famous and iconic images ever taken of laureate Albert Einstein, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 30 years before the photograph was taken. You may appreciate this memorable portrait as much as the next fellow, but it’s still fair to wonder: “Did it really change history?” Rest assured, we think it did. While Einstein certainly changed history with his contributions to nuclear physics and quantum mechanics, this photo changed the way history looked at Einstein. By humanising a man known chiefly for his brilliance, this image is the reason Einstein’s name has become synonymous not only with “genius,” …

Two Days To Many : Few Days to the Angkor Wat Photo Festival in Cambodia

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The newest feeling when you arrive in a new country, and not really to visit or to travel but you are invited. You are a fellow finding a story for a prestigious organisation. So active and pumped up i was that I had been walking everywhere for last two days in Siem Reap. But did not really reach anywhere. Concurrently It took me two days to understand that there are parallel roads running together through the Siem Reap central market, they looked very much alike. As it took me two days to understand two important Khmer words like Susrai/hello and okun/thank you, even though i am better with languages. I finally decided to rent a cycle with city tyres i.e. thicker than ususal as it was the best option I found then. And lord, it gave me wings. Today, I spent all day roaming around the outskirts of Siem Reap. Touching rural parts, unpaved roads, fields, seeing houses and realising the difference or the similarity with the huts there are in my country villages. Meeting …

A Visual Diary Of a Day In My Village

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I do not live in my village. Neither I get to spend time there any more. But there are days when the news comes like the fresh winds after Rains. That grandfather is calling. He turned 101 this month. And well who knows he could be even more or less as there was no way to document it in those days. On paper he was born in 1921. Rains. Photography has become like that elusive rain for me. I have stopped photographing like I used to. I do not use any of my three cameras and 8 old-world manual Nikon lenses anymore, that I had carefully and proudly bought. It was through my 20mm and 35mm lenses that I taught myself to photograph day in and day out. To an extent I always felt a sense of belongingness that they knew what I want to see every single moment and day of my outing with them. But times strangely changed or did I? More after I started using ‘Road to Nara’- my blog as a …

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 …