The Ramblings

A friend tells me that I should do some free service to the society.

Here is the message I received

>the ppl of flickr in hyd are arranging someone on this weekend .....Mr.Himanshu Tiwari, the H.O.D of the Photography department at Allahabad University...collecting about Rs. 1500 /person....just for his accomodation n food.....he isnt charging anything.

Hats off to Mr. Tiwari for his generous offer. I am impressed with his philanthropy. And I will go by his approach.

The polite suggestion was that since a whole lot of people who do not even know anything much about photography and are terrible photographers in real life can advertise workshops and coaching classes, and ask for money for their classes then what was it that prevented me from doing that kind of activity and charging fat sums for it.

I have only one thing to say, maybe, it is because I am a worse photographer.

Point well taken. I may actually do this but I will go with the Himanshu Tiwari way.

I have tried to put in a slideshow of photographs on LJ but to no avail. This LJ sure is a fossil in terms of technology and services.

At last I have had to set it up on Blogspot platform. MOre greatness to them for incorporating all things hot and happening.

If you have the bandwidth, the time and the right moood to see some of the photos, here goes, give it a try. There are two right now. The personal slideshows of marriages of nieces etc have been deactivated.


http://ezeeashell.blogspot.com/2008/01/kerala-land-of-infintite-beauty.html


http://ezeeashell.blogspot.com/2008/01/slideshow-ezee-as-hell-anoop-negi.html

Every photographer worth his fancy lens wanted a peek at the color version of the earlier shot of the Mother and child from Pushkar.

Pushkar is a colorful pagaentry of people and camels. Rajasthan has the most vivid and bright colors in the clothes that are worn by the women. It is a land where the colors liven up in a sudden burst of brightness, the harsh monotonous tones of the desert.It is an eye pleasing sight when you travel through this barren land.

The lady in this shot is from a community which has the colors somewhat muted in their dresses. How I wish it was an explosion of yellows, reds and such colors.
One can be fanciful and wish for anything, PS permitting.

You can tell me whether a more colorful attire would have taken something away from the poignant and regally defiant face which for me defines Pushkar or let me say the Existence of womanhood in India.


Edit - the inability to edit posts and upload new entries as a function of a new firewall, prevented correction of the html link for the photograph above. Now the firewall gets deactivated for an edit or a new post.

The Woman of India holds its future with tender firmness as she walks up with delicate poise and flowing grace towards her temporary encampment of open air and 10 sq feet of space on scrubby sandy hillside. In the background are the various bells and whistles of Pushkar - the tents, the carts the people and the the camels

Pushkar Cattle Fair held in November 2007.

The look in her eyes, I leave for you to interpret.

Workflow - From original color, Raw Exp+ Bl+ Le Sh Fill Crop

Uploaded by ezee as hell on 7 Jan 08, 5.03PM IST.



rajasthan Pushkar
camel fair Rajasthani Woman mother and child

India
ezee123

The Camel Fair at Pushkar is an ancient event where the sellers and the buyers gather to trade their camels and horses, ridding themselves, thankfully, of the pestilence of the agents.

Nothing much has changed in the year 2007. It is the same as it was centuries ago add a few electric poles, tourists and a healthy contingent of camera toting city slickers.

This shot is of a proud Rajput village chieftain from Akeli near Merta City in the Nagaur district of Rajasthan.He was in Pushkar to sell his horses. He sits in his makeshift tent with harnesses and feeds on one side and the horses visible in another tent, behind his back.

Strands of blue tobacco smoke waft upwards as he contemplates with healthy disdain,the camera toting brigade.

(BEST SEEN LARGE FOR DETAILS ) farm3.static.flickr.com/2112/2083764066_5b22eeeda0_o.jpg

DSC_0017 copy cu le crop sharp non smooth



rajasthan Pushkar
camel fair Rajasthani man portrait

India
ezee123

The old order changeth and truly unfolds ... a new Rajasthan of Kings and Queens.
The ruling monarchs of Rajasthan ride out on stately camely splendour to survey all that is theirs and more.

This shot is dedicated to the B....y Tourists who travel the terra firma in search of newer pastures. ;-). Me too a Bloody one !

Note - The color on my uncalibrated monitior appears ok but on a desktop monitor looks too vivid. DSC_0052 copy v cu le exp sky clean SHARP crop part 2.

Uploaded by ezee as hell on 14 Dec 07, 11.47PM IST.



rajasthan Pushkar
camel fair Rajasthani Woman mother and child

India
ezee123

I am in the heartland of the Great HImalayas freezing my self
in this mountain range where, once upon a time, I could manage the cold air and the
water without any problem

Now it is tough getting used to it again.






A young girl walks down a narrow gauge railway line to the nearby town.

All pretty and all smiles.


This shot taken on a fixed lens and edited on a an uncalibrated monitor...

This is a black and white version of a predominantly red coloured photograph. Immensely problematic to convert to black and white.

Here goes.








cochin Kochi
Tripunithra Dancer Theyyam
Athachamayam
kerala India
ezee123

It has been a long long time indeed.

This is a Theyyam dancer. For more details as to what is Theyyam and all that please click through on the photo and the flickr site has more material.









cochin Kochi
Tripunithra Dancer Theyyam
Athachamayam
kerala India
ezee123

Another shot of the Bharani. Continuing with the Trance Times. !!

Bharani is a festival dedicated to the female goddess Kali of the Hindu Pantheon. Held in March of every year it is a quaint and colorful spectacle of hope, aspirations and sacrifice for the huge number of people who turn up from the rural hinterland of Kerala and Tamilnadu to offer their devotion to the female deity.

Each village or hamlet is led by their chosen Oracle who is dressed in red and gold and carries a large ominous sabre as they dance and swirl with their companions in a state of trance.

The female oracles hold their sabres adorned with tinkle bells and sway to a hypnotic rhythm of their mind.

Dressed in red they appear every year in the Bhagvathy Temple at Kodungaloor, Kerala in the month of March/April. This is a peculiar festival of color, devotion and a statement on the caste schisms of India.


For more details on the festival... Red Religion


Thanks be to the constructive inputs on this shot of the Oracles by the Oracle Lady










cochin Kochi
kodungaloor Bharani Trance
Oracle
kerala India
ezee123

The post winter season in Kerala heralds a quaint and peculiar festival of frenzy and color.

Kodungaloor is a small town about 20 - 30 kms due north of Cochin. I remember this place well for no other reason then the fact that when you reached this town, the coastal highway would suddenly go berserk into confusing circumambulation of the temple complex located shebang in the middle of the road.

So one hot day in March when I set out on the high road to Kodungaloor, I was not the least worried about how to find the place. What was worrisome was the prospect of being forced to walk to the temple from a car parked maybe a few kilometres away. The Gods must be purely pleased with my atheistic rebellion in visiting a temple, for I found a place to park a few hundred yards from the temple complex. A showroom selling sanitary fittings and hardware was where I could safely park my car.

The temple complex was a beehive of activity and the devotees were mostly in a state of their own. The oracles, both men and women, dressed in gorgeous red clothes held sway over the proceedings. Infact they were the proceedings for they were the ones who make this the day that it is. The male oracles would in general be adorned with chunky gold jewelery and head adornments that would befit a ruler of a small kingdom. The Oracles invariably would be sporting long hair.

It is a sight quite out of the ordinary to see red robed men and women dressed in finery and swaying with measured tread and demeanor towards a state of trance and frenzy of devotion. the frenzy would culminate in nipping the forehead with huge sabres to make a little blood flow which is a part of the offering to the Goddess.

The customs and rituals at this temple are quaint and peculiar. It is a temple dedicated to Goddess Bhagvathy. The devotees who arrive on this day are all from nearby areas of Kerala nd Tamilnadu and for most parts are from the castes that were not allowed entry into temples which were made and managed by the higher caste Hindus.

For more information about the antecedents and the entire ritual ceremony More Information

It was a hectic shoot with much shoving and clamor and a whole lot of noise and frenzy. Some peeks into the complex -

Looking at the Devotees






A female Oracle dressed in Red is in a state of Trance






A male Oracle comes out of his state of bliss.





There were a load of eager photographers from Kerala merrily clicking away the goings on. A Bombay based photographer called Hari Menon was kind enough to lead me through the helter skelter of it all. Thanks Hari for the good choice of a photo shoot.

Some crappy lunch at a crappy restaurant and I was driving back to Cochin. There was no cleansing of the mind and the soul in a avowedly holy place. Maybe if I knew the local language then the expletives and abuse hurled as a part of the ritual by the devotees would have acted as a great catharsis and liberated me !



cochin Kochi
kodungaloor Bharani Trance
Oracle
kerala India
ezee123

A dancer expresses a range of emotions at a demonstrative Kathakali performance.
This is a costume drama enacted in Kerala which tells stories only by the usage of hand and finger movements and facial expressions including eye movements.

It is a tough art form to master and requres immense physical control and training for 9-10 years to achieve a modicum of decent performance.

The dancer is always a man This demonstration
of a few expressions in his gaily costume shot at the at the beautifully located Taj Malabar hotel in Cochin, Kerala



cochin Kochi
western ghats palivasal Taj Malabar
tea
kerala India
ezee123

Recently I was in Munnar after a hiatus of 2 years. The only reason why one did not go there was that another friend with whom we wanted to make this journey, would always have something or the other cropping up at the last minute.

So 2 years flew by fast.

Went there in the last week of May 2007 and it was clean clear and crisp.
I had forgotten what the mountain air can be. It was a refreshing change and brought back memories of schools, college and fun and games and all that one did in the hills of North India.

Munnar has been going through the metal prongs of destruction. Bulldozers or JCB or Excavators...what ever you want to call them were much in evidence everywhere. Much to the joy of the common people and the chagrin of the rich, hotel resorts and properties constructed on illegal lands or ilegaly used had been brought down.

No pictures of those would be appropriate here.

It was the cool air that one wanted to breathe.

From the Palivasal Tea Estate you can see the mountain ranges of the western ghats as they shimmer and wake up in the early morning everyday. The night clouds which sit on the valleys below rise up with the warming sun.




If you really want to see fine details of ranges one after another, a larger size would be appropriate. you can click on the photograph and then proceed to see it large.

This picture shot with an aperture setting of F22 to bring in all the ranges possible.

Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

cochin Munnar
western ghats palivasal Tata Tea
tea
kerala India
ezee123

Originally uploaded by ezee as hell.

Here is another shot of the Pooram Day on 28th April 2007 at Thrissur.

As I said before, the actual shots of the grand show of elephants and the twirling of umbrellas, were not taken because of poor angles and humanity in excessive numbers.


Pretty dainty hats for the ladies on display on a Red and White Towel placed on the haloed grounds of the complex.



Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

cochin Thrissur pooram kerala India
ezee123

Thrissur Pooram in Kerala is a splendid pageantry of Elephants and changing umbrellas and drum beaters and swirling masses.

Alas, the exercise for the year 2007 on 28th of April was of not much achievement because of bad angles and excessive crowds.

So for the sake of having driven 80kms to Thrissur specially for the Pooram and having braved the dust and the din and the near stampedes and the general effluvia of excessive humanity at close quarters, there must be something to show.

A total of 80 shots for the 80 kms travelled. Not all was lost. here are some objects of Vanity -

Hair Clips,, on display at a streetside vendor.

Magnification reveals it to be a product of ???? Guess what?
You need to see a larger sized image to know that.


Coming up some headgear in the next post.

Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

cochin Thrissur pooram kerala India
ezee123

The Chillipam Monastery is tucked away off the beaten track on a hilltop in the Himalayas.

A brand new temple complex is coming up at the site. This was in 2005. By now it must be resplendent with red and gold and sending peace, prayers and warmth to the valleys below.

Even at these rarefied heights, the flamboyant green notice board in Red, Orange and Green proclaims "NO SMOKING"in three different languages - English, Hindi and the local script


For a slightly bigger shot of the above ( Click here )



Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

Arunachal monastery Chillipam Buddhism India
ezee123

For a slightly bigger shot of the above ( Click here )



Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

cochin boatman backwaters kerala India
ezee123

It has been quite some time since I posted anything out here.

So here is an evocative shot of a boatman in the pristine back waters of Kerala. It is about sunset time and the sky is a irridiscent blue with clouds for ever stating their significant presence.

This shot is currently on Page 1 of Flickr Explore, which for some seems to be a leit motif of existence but for me it is just another non event of not much significance.




This is the url for Page 1 on Flickr for that date. Mind you, the photos pop in and out of the pages so at times you may not see this picture at all on the said page.

http://flickr.com/explore/interesting/2007/1/11/page1

You can see some good shots on flickr on these pages and sometimes a whole lot of kitsch to grotesque to downright silly manipulated pictures. Flickr has the largest repository of images on the net and the numbers are really mind boggling.

For a slightly bigger shot of the above ( Click here )


Uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezee123/

cochin boatman backwaters kerala India
ezee123

Originally uploaded by ezee as hell.

A sand miner with a smile on his face. In the background are the wooden country boats that carry the cargo of sand from inland waters.

Sand mining is a tough job on any given day. Consider being in neck deep water all day long and diving down to fill baskets of sand from the water bed and bringing it up and storing it on the boat. The easy part is when you pole in the boat to the water side and stack up your sand for the sand dealers to come and take it away.

Kerala is going through a major crisis trying to figure out what it has to do with sand mining. The government has given permits to some entities to do commercial sand mining for extracting metals and that has had its fair share of opposition. Sand mining for the building industry is a nebulous subject which still does not have clear well defined policy and it may never happen as the people look the other way when the sand mining goes on in small crafts with sand miners doing their daily grind in the traditional way.

There are reports of mechanized sand mining done in the dark of the night which seems to be a malaise that is altering water levels and depths in certain backwaters and rivers.

For a large size photo ( Click here )


sand miner
backwaters canoe Kollam ashtamudi kerala India
ezee123

Sandman - A working portrait

I have not been LJing for a long long while now and I find that a whole lot of people I know seem to be not doing it either. Is LJ on its way out or what or has blogging at last suffered a burn out.

Anyway, I have been travelling a lot all over India. Last first. In Kerala I shot some shots of sandmen and sand woman while they were loading sand onto lorries. The hardest work one can do.

Neck deep in water when you breath in air and then you go down with a basket to scrape sand and bring it up and dump it on your boat. The murderous work goes on and on for endless time while the merciless sun and the tepid water of Kerala back waters plays havoc with your being.

One remarkable thing that I noticed was that the wisdom of the water and the sun had turned these people into silent understanding and worldly wise saintly figures who spoke very little or got excited about the inanities of the world.

Here is a shot of one of the sandman