In photography , as in poetry, minimalism can be successfully employed to convey something with starkness and without frills . A lot of course depends upon how you compose the photograph .In a recent photograph I tried to pit a man-made light-bulb against the sun by eliminating all the other surrounding details .

In the following poem I have used the same technique to describe a moment in the early morning in the Grand Hotel, Kolkata .I have tried to create the moment without the usual 'haze' that a poet usually creates :

AT THE GRAND HOTEL, KOLKATA

The morning crystallises
Pure and silver. At seven
The moment swells
To an iridescent event
Amid outcry of cutlery
And bone-clatter of china
Sparrow-love on the lawns
And aromatic hotel smells.

Like poetry , a photograph can capture fleeting images in space and can even explore their inter-relationship in a spatial situation.A photograph cannot capture their relationship across different planes of existence ,in space and time,except through the viewer's own present level of consciousness . Back-and-forth movements in time or dynamic switches between reality and fictional situations are not possible in photography.

Take a look at the following poem :

Images in a train




They lived outside the pale of my existence
Just a few images that touched the fringe
“Hello image” :Mersault addressed Marthe
Just like only one of her other lovers did
The woman here was a mere image
The way her eyes flashed at her husband
As she changed the nappies of the child
The child swung in the cloth-cradle, gently,
Like a weaver bird swings in the fibrous nest
He cried , he gurgled ,he knocked about
A mere image in another image’s existence
Mersault knew Marthe was a mere image
Flesh-and-blood Marthe did not know this
This woman did not know she was an image
Only I knew she was an image ,like Marthe.


In the above poem the characters have been invested with a certain halo which is a product of the poet's own mind. A photograph cannot produce a similar effect.


However , depending upon the state of the mind of the viewer and the sensitivity of his perception a photograph can almost reproduce a typical human situation much like a poem does and can produce almost the same effect in the viewer.

I have tried to explore an insane mind in one of my poems . I have imagined the ever-expanding consciousness of an insane woman flowing in the form of a continuously extending line from her consciousness towards the universe , going over trees , houses , mountains and into infinity.




The Insane Woman


With a cloth bundle
In her fragile arms
She looks through
Your eyes vacantly
Her eyelids fall lightly
Amid buzzing flies
The whites of her eyes
Glisten with moist laughter.
I remember her artistic
Scrawls on the walls
And the finest lyrics
Set to taut music
She had composed
In her early married days.
She made a fine home
For her husband and
An open house for visitors.
Here on the footpath
She sits hunched up
With her unwashed head
Between her drawn-up knees
Her thoughts beam
In a thin straight line over
Tall buildings and treetops,
Piercing the mountains
And onward, into the Infinity.
Scores of busy people
Go past her every minute
The dust from their vehicles
Forms a smooth layer on
Her rain-drenched face.

A photograph of the verdant rice fields, on both sides of the highway, stretching to the distant blue mountains is an experience of freedom of the mind, of the ever-expanding consciousness in space. The beauty of the digital camera arises out of the freedom it affords to the consciousness to expand , much like the way you feel when you lie supine on a flat ground looking at the limitless space of the sky.

I have taken ,recently, a photograph of the inside of an ancient temple with elaborately carved stone pillars which is highly evocative . This would surely have been a throbbing centre of activity two centuries ago when hundreds of devotees thronged the place for worship. The temple today , being devoid of God in the sanctum and in a state of neglect, has collected puddles of rain water and has become green and slippery with moss. A photograph is surely equal to a thousand words !

A photograph can freeze a moment in motion and tell a story beautifully like a poem does.The spatial existence shared jointly by different things at a particular moment can be beautifully reproduced in a photograph with the object of re-creating the times gone by , or , more importantly, with a view to capturing a human situation.



I have come across a beautiful photo captioned "Expectancy" in a newspaper. In the photograph a woman is drawing back the curtains to look towards the road for the return of her husband or lover or child .The photograph captures beautifully the "waitingness" in the way the woman's body is positioned near the window.

In another picture I have taken of a child playing with the sea the child is shown as running from the surging waves as though he is tempting the waves. Freezing the moment in motion here does not tell a story but has an appeal derived from the child's playfulness

The photograph of a dilapidated temple or any other ancient stone structure recaptures the presence of the people that once existed in a spatial existence jointly with the structure. The beauty of the photograph stems out of the effectiveness of capturing the "presence" associated with the structure.

A good photograph of a dilapidated structure of an ancient temple(now Godless ) recreates very evocatively the presence of the people who frequented the temple centuries ago .








The photographic poem

In the following poem I have tried to capture the "phantoms"exactly as a photographer does : fill as many visual details as possible . In doing so I have avoided , as far as possible, the use of imagery and back-and-forth movements in time so that the life of the ancients is recreated exactly like in a photograph :

Hampi

Rows of elegant stone arches
Stretching before Virupaksha temple
Housed multitudes of shops that sold
Exotic oriental merchandise
Incense sandalwood oil musk
And rarest of the Mysore silks
Ancient Vijaynagar hawkers
Sold diamonds and pearls in heaps
The lost civilisation of Hampi lies
Buried among these weathered rocks
Here every rock is a canvas of many hues
Every boulder is replete with legend.
The rapid Pampa meanders among
These cyclopean masses and here
She takes an abrupt northward course
This was the Kishkinda of Ramayana
Where our monkey-ancestors lived
Yonder lies the Matanga hill where
Sugriva took refuge from wrathful Vali.
Hampi took birth in this wild country
Strewn with boulders of strange shapes
Worn down by the vagaries of weathering.
Larger than life , famed emperor
Srikrishnadevaraya walked tall
Handsome and athletic conqueror
A poet-king with an exquisite sensibility
(Flanked by bejewelled queens
He stands immortalised in bronze
At the temple gates of Tirumala
The mighty emperor conquered
The distant Kalinga and its princess
Brought Srikrishna's idol to Hampi .
Under the haze of the searing sun
Ruined Hampi sweltered through
Five hundred years of history
The artistic plenitude of the sculptors
Defied the ruthless savagery of
The vandalising alien invaders
The stone thali of the temple spoke of
Giant men with gargantuan appetites
The harmonics of the musical pillars
Resonated through five centuries
A monolithic stone chariot stood
Motionless as though it were Time's
Relentless chariot that had come to a halt .


In short it is a plain narration just like what a historian does.

I have made a mental note to take a shot of this beautiful tree with fragrant flowers . This has stirred up my own memories of the trees in the temple compound with such beautiful flowers that I had invariably collected a few wilted flowers lying on the ground and carried them everywhere. We folded the petals and pierced each of the petals with the stem neatly to make a smaller flower .

My poem goes thus:

The firangipani flowers

The firangipani tree bloomed
In my village temple compound
And where it hurt it bled milk
Just like it had done in my childhood.
I smelt God through the peephole
Of a child’s memory enclosed
By the fragrance of the firangipani .






I have recently taken a picture of these beautiful flowers in Hyderabad

I have just come across a beautiful use of a symbol in nature to recreate a poignant story ,an intensely personal experience that can be comprehended by others only with the help of a narrative.The picture shows a series of blooming firangipani flowers outside a nursing home where the author's father is lying on the deathbed .The narrative is so beautiful that it deserves to be reproduced here :

"It looks charming, and it is. A simple wooden gate, painted white, the typical "picket fence" attracts the eye, but looking around, the scent of the frangipanni flowers also attracts the senses.

This is the gate that leads to my father’s room... beyond this gate, my father lies dying.

It's part of a beautiful Nursing Home in Rockhampton, and I grow to both love, and eventually dread, this gate.

The frangipanni tree offers me large clumps of flowers - their heads bowed in respect. The path is swept on a daily basis, so that any flowers that may fall are fresh and clean, unbruised, unlike my heavy heart.

Will he remember me today? Will he still be there, in his mind, in his body?

I pick a frangipanni and place it behind my right ear, so it shines out happily when he sees me.

They have always been my favourite flower, in their pureness and simplicity, the heady, giddy perfume enclosing me within a safe world of childhood memories, of hanging upside down in a huge old tree, marvelling at the hugeness of the world in my front garden.

Wonderful memories of reading books and eating apples, running around the frangipanni tree kicking up the leaves in autumn...waiting patiently for the first sings of new growth, the dark green tips sprouting from each barren stem, holding the promise of another summer, more glorious flowers, more hanging upside down to compare if my world had expanded during the winter.

This gate, this white, simple gate leads to where my father lies dying.

I took this photo as a precaution to a hazy memory, I wanted to savour every detail about my dad before stress and loss dimmed my memory.

Now I look at it, and although I am smiling with my love of the tree with its daily offerings of fresh perfumed flowers for me to enjoy, I am reminded of a softer, sadder time, where breathing becomes a chore, where time not only stands still, but runs backwards, as we the children become the adults and vise versa.

I push the gate open, and stoop to collect my flower... "

The shadows have always fascinated us all through our lives although they have no substance and have no independent existence . Usually the shadows are static. Even more fascinating are the moving shadows , gently gyrating in soft moonlight .


In a photograph of a tiled house I have taken recently , the shadows have beautifully merged into the house to give it a fascinating depth, at once mystical and visually appealing.