How to Make a Kill

The patience is pristine. The stillness, perfect. Relaxed energy flows through your body, barrier free. You don’t move a muscle. You don’t bat an eyelid. Your nerves conduct no impulse. Your thoughts? There is no space for thoughts. Your mind is ripple free.

Like a pool of muck. Calm, viscous, dirty.

Dirty. Of course. This is no Meditation 101. There are no transcendental motives. The practiced peace exists only because it improves your chances. And don’t you even think about setting into inertia. Because any moment now, and it could be any moment really, you shall be called.

You are called. From perfect stillness to perfect motion, in all but an instant. A great big mass of speed and rage. Your eyes are still free of emotion, your mind cannot afford the spikes. But you will need the rage - it is what will make you overcome the inertia of inaction with the drive to get it done.

Calm your heart rate now. Let the neurons fire at a more leisurely pace. It is done. The quarry encountered. Every option anticipated, every move matched, every counter countered. The instant of the strike is only incidental. Like the rolling credits after the movie. The true story has already played itself out.

What’s better? You always knew it would be this way.

Mechanical. Clinical. Successful.

That is how you make a kill.

Saffron

I really like this one. It was probably put there during the celebrations of one of our fundamentalist political parties. The fluttering saffron flag strung across the road did not inspire any feelings of religious pride in me, nor did it invoke any memories of great warriors of the past. It was just a simple sight of beauty. By the time I had gotten my camera along, the clouds had obscured the view of the great blue.

Saffron is just a beautiful colour, like them all.

Kirtan

Kirtan, originally uploaded by Sopan.

This one is off a period drama we did in college. It was my first sepia conversion; tried it out for eye-candy and a feel of the time; but it ended up adding a lot of emotion to the photograph. Overdid the tinting a little bit, got too excited with how it had transformed the image. Our practice place has pretty challenging, yet very enticing light, and the frame was right there, inviting. The 2:1 crop allowed for a tighter composition. Could not manage the exposure too well in this snap...sorry.

Of times gone by...

Of times gone by..., originally uploaded by Sopan.

A portrait of my grandmother. The diffused, directionless and hueless light on a typical gray monsoon day was beautiful. Looked to capture wrinkles and dignity at the same time. The cushion at the bottom right added some much needed colour to the image.

Photography

At seven rolls old on my Canon EOS66, there is some work worth displaying now on my blog. Hope to post some of my photographs here, alongwith the thought and expression behind the image.

I still dont know what attracted me towards photography. A graphic mind, maybe. Photography has been a fairly recent passion, one struck with infrequent bursts of inspiration. Possibly because photography, to me, still comes out as a highly restricting and fairly opportunistic form of art, tilting a tad bit more towards aesthetics than expression. The pretty visual of the green landscape or the splendid flower in full bloom is always there; all one must do is arrange the elements in the frame in a visually appealing manner, and "Wow!".

Restricting, because we tend to "take" photographs, not "make" them. The word "photograph" itself implies restriction...a record of light...a simple and true representation of already present electromagnetic waves (or quanta, if you will), manifesting themselves in what we percieve as brightness and colour. A photograph might not even qualify as a work of art for some, since it has not been created in the first place, just captured.

Opportunistic, because one needs to be at the right place at the right time with one's eyes open to the million frames life throws at one every second. Indeed, unlike poetry, the visual seldom uses the photographer. By virtue of that, a photographer might simply be a smart guy with visual awareness and a steady hand.

Or is he...

A photograph still has the capacity to take one's breath away. To stir emotions, catalyse thought, generate goosebumps, and stimulate the intellect. Just like one of Sandeep's poems, Hussain's carelessly thrown lines, Pacino's flawless demeanor, a mudra in Kathak, or a bandish in Todi, maybe. How could that be if a photographer is acting merely as an interface between a natural visual and the viewer, and not really creating anything?

The difference probably lies in the way each one of us sees things. The way each one of us sees light. The way each one of us interprets a shape, a visual. Therein lies imagination. Therein lies individuality and expression. Therein, lies art. Which is why photography is easy. No need for nimble fingers, a golden voice, a lithe body, or a mind that frolicks in invisible shapes and colours.

All one needs to have is an artist's soul, the will to say something through an image, and a camera. All one needs to do, is see.

Poet

A poet is he, who is used by the poem.

He who uses the poem is probably smart, or at the most, successful.

- Suresh Bhat.

Punishment

In the grand scheme of grander things, one obscure, erratic voice drifted onto a path that did not confirm. It was, typically and promptly, disowned.

Wonder if it made a difference to Pluto.

The Ocean and the drop...

Some comforting Sufi wisdom to cope with this bewilderment as I stand on the shores of this ocean called music.

Thus the Sufi spake :

"Witnessing the Ocean with the eye of a drop is impossible.
However, when the drop becomes one with the Ocean, it sees the Ocean with the eye of the Ocean."

Self Portrait

Self Portrait

Strengthless legs. Gutless wrists.
Angry, eyeful mists. Alone. Accumulate.

Twisted bent spine. Benumbed back of an arc.
Like a question mark. Pontificate.

Demented, delusional. All day I ramble.
Words in ink amble. Intervalled. Spaced.

I am, to myself, useless. Lament.
This failed experiment. Lord above.

- Sandeep Khare.

Translated and transmuted from Marathi by
Sopan A. Sharma.