Some times , in a photograph, a perfectly strange element creeps in assuming the central role in defining the moment . I have always wanted the photograph the way I wanted – keeping the theme I had in mind as the central motif but this does not happen all the time . Sometimes an innocuous element surreptitiously enters my consciousness before I click and some times it is a post exe affair , the element not being there in the original scheme has somehow usurped the central position after I click . A similar thing happens in poetry .

The theme before I clicked was “ the red hills “- the hills being excavated for iron ore for export.

The theme after I clicked was “ the grass “. For some unknown reason the tall grass has assumed the central role in defining the moment.

The picture depicts the utter devastation of the hillside wrought by the greedy iron miners. May be , the grass is the only element that stands for hope in the bleakness of the mountainscape !

My poem tries to capture the despair of the situation :


Wounds

In the recent monsoon
Our rivers felt as if
The mountains had bled
From fresh wounds
Their flesh has gone,
Across the green seas,
To the distant Chinaman
To fill out his bones.


But this is not the poem where I set out to do something but landed up with a different theme. Here was another of my poems which happened out of a photograph . I tried to take a picture of the cluster of dwellings in the lower heights of the hills seen from the elevated plains where I was standing. It was a beautiful scene more particularly due to the wistfulness of the rural scenery of a tribal village . There was smoke rising up above the houses .Unknown to me the theme transformed , as I went through the creation of the poem, to death and the cremation rites of an aboriginal settlement.
Here is the poem :


Smoke


Beyond the grey hills
Thick white smoke
Rose in a column .
From my vantage
My glass eyes saw
Veiled habitations
I heard voices rising
In musical supplication
As drum-beats quickened
Existence turned into smoke