In the name of god

I have been thinking of an apt introduction to this note, decided to ignore all that and be upfront, just like how my experience to one of the most coveted holy spots in Bombay was.



The plight of the people I saw outside the mosque is all I can remember of Haji Ali. Besides being a tourist spot, it is also a place of worship very well known to the people of India.



I’m agnostic, and probably the only reason I remain as one is because I still believe that there is an overwhelming energy that surpasses me most of the times, when I enter a holy place. Be it a Church, a Hindu temple or a Mosque, is supposed to evoke that boundless energy in you, it surely does that for me.



As much as I’m perceptive am not very judgmental. I was genuinely giving it a try from the moment I stepped into the walkover bridge of Haji Ali. How do I find peace when the entrance to the mosque is ushered by hungry, lecherous hawkers, all kinds of beggars, lepers, stray animals, physically challenged, mentally challenged, photographers with their printing machines to give you an instant copy, local guides, you name it and this place is a congregation of them all. This is perhaps the only place I know of where retail therapy and religion co-exist in a single platform!



As I entered the mosque, I refused to remove my footwear, that’s how clean the place was. As I walked around the Dargah, I often heard something break under my feet. Added to which, there were eagles hovering above my head, and for all that am not a very tall person! They were fluttering right above me, waiting for me to move away from what I happened to have crushed, there were bone pieces all over the floor. I choose to ignore, and step outside and see people exiting towards the rocks bordering the sea. Some spit, some dump the left-overs from their picnic baskets, some urinate and some vomit, in the midst of all this some pose for a picture or two!

I am not being pessimistic about the place or the religion; I will be lying if I said none of this happens in a Hindu temple or a church for that matter. Just for relevance, even Sidhi Vinayak temple isn’t as clean as it could be. But there is this overwhelming energy one cannot deny while sitting inside the prayer hall. Amidst the crowd chanting “Ganapati Bappa Moriya”, you will not have to try too hard to find peace. The Cathedral church, in Chennai leaves you with such a lasting impression that you yearn to go back there again.



I am mighty disappointed that my first visit to a mosque had to be this way. Forget the people visiting this place, even for the ones who stay at the mosque, the one’s who sell wares on the footpath to the mosque, if faith and belief is not the foundation of this place, then what is?



Is it a set of like-minded sexist men who like to cover their woman from head to toe while they wander the street passing lewd comments about other women, the reason for them to be united as a religion? Because I do wonder if there is a Mother Mary, goddess Lakshmi, I’d like to see a Muslim goddess who laid the path for how women of her religion should be.



I’d be more than happy to be proved wrong about all that have said above, not in the name of terrorism but in the name of reasoning.


I have tried to capture, to my best effort without any bias. Have a look and share your thoughts/criticisms - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sowmyaportfolio/sets/72157623109886349/with/4284198045/

Edge of Faith

While your busy commuting by train everyday, from home to office, back and forth, sitting on the backseat of a chauffeur driven car reading your morning newspaper while sipping on the best take away coffee to work seems like a breath of fresh air.

Well, that’s the same feeling I got when I visited Edge of faith, a unique photo exhibiton by Prabuddha Dasgupta.

Not to say any of the other shows I attended during the day were bad or mundane, but I always knew what I was in for.

Bright and spotless white walls with focus lights that are ergonomically designed to bejewel each masterpiece of the artist, obtrudes on the wall, void of any distractions.
To further accentuate that moment of connect between the photographer and the guest, there will be a comforting instrumental music in the background.

Well, you might be thinking that the experiences of an upcoming photographer visiting art shows tend to be cynical. But I hope you will understand what I mean, when you visit Prabuddha Dasgupta’s exhibit in a rundown warehouse in Byculla Mumbai.

I have no idea if this is the same modus operandi he had followed for rest of his exhibitions. But this one worked perfectly. The theme of his work circle upon the Goan people who are tangled between their Portugal influences and the eventual necessity to adapt themselves to changes culturally and otherwise as Indians!

About 30 of his pictures are up on these stained, decrepit walls of a derelict warehouse. The viewer enjoys the experience of crooning his neck between the branches of trees that adorn each of his frames to get a good look at his images. As you soak into the goan-ness in each of these images, a local train zooms past you in the background setting you on an ethereal time travel to Goa.

While I stare upfront into the eyes of the girl standing behind a huge cross for a background…there is an eerie silence in the warehouse. You will find yourself staring at Prabhuda’s pictures in absolute stillness that is disrupted once in a while by a crow or two that echoes the mood of Prabhuda’s mind and its interpretations on the walls of this warehouse.

The exhibition, Edge of faith, was such a wholesome experience for me, probably because this is the first time that I am experiencing a display of very realistic work in a very realistic environment that it almost makes it surreal for me. The kind of feeling, one would enjoy very rarely!

For those of you in Mumbai, the exhibition is on at 561, 563, NM Joshi Marg, Byculla.

Cheers,
~s~

Idea for a garage sale

The days spent in Ooty were spartan yet effortlessly gratifying. I come back home (home being Bombay for now!), there were just too many things (read gadgets, books, clothes, CD covers, candles, random cute things) that I didn’t want to look at / use anymore. Assuming I’d like to sell a sandwich maker, there are zilch takers for it in the market, it just doesn't make sense to give it to my bhai (she is gonna take a lifetime to understand the purpose of sandwich maker and later justify that "10 rs wala sandwich issey behtar hai"!) As a resultant of my unjustified prudence, I have accumulated quite a number of things I don’t require, but might be useful for someone else.

I am thinking it will be wonderful even if a couple of us in the same city / nearby area can get together and have a garage sale. I’m sure we have a “100 need to buy” list in the back of our minds, and the takings from this sale will help us get to that sooner. Thereby, we can resume the circle of consumerism hence garage sale all over again. “For the less inclined towards shopping kinda people”, this money can go in the way of donations to gay organizations, and other such… etc!

Am back and so is my website!

Its been a while. Lots of things have been happening in my life.

I graduated from Light & Life Academy this August.

I had my photography exhibition in Bangalore and Mumbai. That's probably when I also realised how I suck at marketing myself. Bombay turned out pretty good. Had great responses. Fell ill during the exhibition, hence missed a couple of days. Besides that all is well.

I have my flash website ready. For those who have issues opening a flash site, you can check my flickr site to browse thru my pics.

I am now on the look out for photography assignments across all sectors (photo news agencis, ad agencies, magazines, film stills, etc). Have just started approaching people and should finally bounce back to being the work addict I used to be a year back :-).

That's it for now. Will spam ya ppl with detailed updates on the struggles of an upcoming artist very soon.

Till then

Sowmya

days of struggle

I'm still in Chennai, trying to get my portfolio sorted out. Had a series of shoots in Mumbai and have a few more to be done by end of this week in Chennai. My convocation is on the 19th of this month. Hoping to have a decent body of work ready by then.Did a road trip to Kancheepuram last week. Attempted a couple of moonlight shots but in vain.

Have a lot of experiences to talk about. That I shall, very soon.

At this moment, my brain is so dead and am hoping its not one of those creative blocks that am going through cuz this is seriously not a very good time for that!

I was generally browsing through and found this artist highly impressive and inspiring.
http://www.mehmet-ozgur.com/oscommerce/catalog/index.php

travels

Its been a mad mad week...with my shoot with 3 different models in one shift!(had an amazing session) and then my travel to Chennai with a kid for a co-passenger. Right now am getting in touch with ASI for permissions to shoot in some beautiful temples in this part of the country. Let's see how that goes.

~S~

Varkala

I have always noticed that every time I wanted to backpack and travel to some off-beaten part of the country, I have always been stuck with lack of information about the place, even after maximum optimisation of internet help! Hence to do my bit to all those backpackers of the world, here is my first bit of information to one of the most beautiful places that I visited recently in Kerala. Destination: Varkala (had heard so much about this place and hence decided to visit there before leaving Ooty for good). One good thing, about the whole trip was my roomie decided to accompany me, and she is a mallu (well not the best of them, but she could make few sentences which at times saved us from a lot of trouble)

Mode of transport: well here's the adventure part of it, considering we were in Ooty, it took us multiple changes before we got to Varkala. To cut a long story short:

Trip 1: Ooty to Coimbatore (left at 16:00 hrs), it was unfortunately a 5 hour journey to the Ukkadam busstand in Coimbatore. Bus fare: Rs 36/-
Trip 2: Coimbatore to Palakkad. It was one and a half hour journey, ideally for single woman travelers, I would suggest you hit Palakkad before 20:00hrs, not that the place was very unsafe or anything, it just well... looked spooky to me. We took a bus from Palakkad to Trivandrum. It is roughly an 8hr journey and there are buses plying between Trivandrum and Palghat every hour. Another option is to take a bus from Thrissur, it cuts your journey time by 2 hours. However, we took a bus from Palghat, bus fare was quite steep for the comfort we received during our journey. Bus fare: Rs 450/- per person
Trip 3: After ignoring the persistent conductor who tried to convince me that he would show the way to Varkala and accompany us for the entie trip, I figured out that our bus passed via varkala before reaching Trivandrum, it's just that it was too early in the morning (around 4.30?), and I didn't want to end up looking lost in that place at that hour. We reached Trivandrum at 6:00 in the morning. So I took a bus which went to a place called Kallambalam, from where Varkala was a ten minute drive. Beautiful drive, with lush landscape on either side. The bus was very clean and the people were friendly and helpful. Bus Fare: Rs 10/-. Journey time: 1 hour
Trip 4: Oblivious to the stares we were getting at the tea shop, had my hot cuppa chai and after having inquired with several people there, we took another bus From Kallambalam to Varkala. A very bumpy drive at that, we finally reached our destination in fifteen mintues
Trip 5: We had to take an auto from Varkala to get to the actual beach side. Now here's the thing, there are two parts of Varkala beach with staying options. One is the cliff side and the other is the beach side. Going by our intuitions, we chose to stay at the cliff side with a beautiful sea view and amazing sun-sets. Auto charge - Rs 50, after much bargaining.
The only place, I had read about in Varkala was Funky Art Cafe, thats the only place, mentioned across all sites on the web. So decided to hit that place. They have a lovely make-do coffee shop and highly functional huts, with a bed and private bathroom. They charged us Rs 150/- per night and we weren't sure how long we were going to stay there, so took up the cheapest option around. We slept for a while and then hit the beautiful beach, its clean, unpredictable yet safe with lifeguards around to warn us on and off. Three days just went by swiftly, in a perpetual state of trance. The guys who work in Funky art cafe were overtly helpful with everything that we wanted. Apparently none of these guy have the license to serve liquor, but you know how it works in India, in some places beer was referred to as "mutka chai" whilst in others beer was "below the table" commodity. Food is quite expensive here, and in case your looking at a three day meal, its going to cost you anywhere between Rs 300 - Rs 600 per day.

Apparently we were there during the off-season, so not too many tourists were around, which suited us perfectly fine and hence accommodations were really cheap. All hotels and cottages are in the same line as Funky art cafe and they all serve to different array of tourists based on their budgets. There were a couple of very cozy wooden cottages, couple of them with spa, jacuzzi, swimming pool and the works, but all these guys came to funky art cafe in the evening, as these guys keep coming up with impromptu jamming sessions every other day.

Night life is not as exciting as in Goa, there are no swanky pubs or clubs that you can go to. But I think that's exactly what makes this place unique, you soak into their way of living so comfortably. You just have all the time in the world to do what you want. Its perhaps one of those unique places were you decide how fast you want time to move. I although would strongly suggest, you carry ample amount of mosquito repellent cream and cash in abundance as mmost of these places do not believe in plastic.

If you visit during the season time (sept - february) small trek down the cliff of Varkala leads you to what the locals call as "black beach", a small walk into the sea would lead you to a small island of black rocks, were you can sit around and watch the sun-sets, it sure would have been beautiful to see that!

A friend of ours from college, "Ro" joined us at Varkala and we decided to head to Alleppey for a night and head back to our respective destinations post that trip. I was headed to Gurvayoor, "Pi" and "Ro" were headed back to Ooty. We took a train from Varkala, I have no idea where this train was headed to or how much we paid, yes that's how baked we were!!! All I know till now is, we left Varkala around 15:00 hrs and reached Kollam at 20:00 hrs. We then took an auto to reach our guest house, in Alleppey. If I'm right I think the places's name is Evergreen resort and they charged us Rs 600/- for a night! Yeah it was expensive! but a very clean place.

I just wish we had stayed a little longer in Alleppey, sweet of "Ro" to have chased down the last bar open in Alleppey at 22:00 hrs and got all of us beer, we were happily sitting on one of those over bridges above the backwaters you find all over Alleppey and sipping our beer talking till midnight. We had booked for an early morning boat ride around the Alleppey backwaters so hit the bed early that night!

The backwater trip was completely disappointing, none of us were impressed, had heard so much about it and was truly miffed. Maybe it was not the best of organisers or the best part of Alleppey. So yeah downed our sorrows with a couple of bottles of toddy (& Rs 50 each) and headed back home.

I love the way this trip unwinded itself, and have been doing more such trips recently and thoroughly enjoy the time I get for myself!!! Do mail me if you need more info on Varkala.

And as for how beautiful these places were, I'll let my pictures do the talking as usual :-)



One of the guys working at Funky Art Cafe - that's the fish my friends devoured for dinner





The maid, who cleaned our rooms and fancied herself with a beer bottle for the poseys :-)





This was part of a competition I entered my image for. Burning Embers was the competition's name.
And my message was "Stepping back from rising water levels is not going to help you. ACT NOW"





ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ



Lazy afternoons of Varkala while inebriated!





As I said earlier, glorious sunsets of Varkala



There was some construction work happening here...and the entire place had this "magical lighting"




Row of shops in the line of funky art cafe, overlooking the sea


PS: Thanks Sachin for sharing the link for increasing the image size, this is a lot better, am still fiddling around and learning in the process!

~s~