Please do not dirty my lake

On of the things I will miss about the present house when I shift to the new house is the proximity to the Madiwala Lake here in Bangalore. The closeness of the lake keeps me motivated to go there to the park along side it for my morning jog and exercise.

Some of the views I get to see every morning, include fishermen on their coracle, doing their daily rituals, migratory birds and the sun's rays dancing on the water, the people who come to feed the fist everyday and the kids who come to try their hands at fishing as i watch them experience something wow every morning. 

Needless to say, it is one of the most beautiful time in the day for me, and something that I have got to do almost daily.  It is my moment of Bliss every day. I follow up the jog with the sound of the water and the birds. The traffic noise in the yonder does play spoilsport, but I get so mesmerized with the beauty of the lake that i just ignore the traffic noises.

I really applaud the officials who have tried to clean the lake, and also maintain it. Water planktons and other plants that form a mess on the beautiful water is painstakingly removed by them and made into piles on the shores. The effort to remove them is evident just by the piles of these water plants.

However, recently I was disappointed at the incidents of two 'well-educated' people, who shamelessly went about polluting it in the name of performing a Puja. What irritated me was the fact that they were throwing polythene in the lake. When I saw this, I went up and spoke to them. Both of them from the Northern part of the country, and mentioned that the rituals require the stuff to be deposited in the lake.
I found the argument really ridiculous and said, hello I appreciate your religious sentiments, but that does not give you the right to pollute the lake. I also mentioned that as you can see, it takes a lot of effort to clean the lake. And with people like you polluting the lake, it is really difficult to keep it clean.
The authorities have placed these large dustbins in the park for you to throw the plastics, so why not use them.

Thankfully one of them went back and picked up the polythene that he had thrown. The other one had thrown it too far into the lake, and hence could not pick it up.

I just requested them to consider these things before they do the act again. I hope they understood.
:)

Enter the Super 30

Thank you all for the wishes on the birthday. It meant a lot to me.
I had a most quiet but nice birthday. I spent time with my near ones without much halla gulla.

This coming year should be exciting with the things that I have planned.
Some of them being, marriage, growth of the companies that I have started, visiting a few more colleges as faculty, setting up my own photography studio,  reaching out to people more, and finally working more on the Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! project, which has been on hold for the past few months.

I also foresee some more travel, as there is the remaining parts of India to be covered. I have to complete this target that I had set way back in 2005 of visiting every state in India before I turn 30.

:)

Photography and me

I often get asked this question when I am in my workshops and talks, on how did photography happen to me. Needless to say that it has been an integral part of my life for the past decade. So much so that what started as a hobby turned into a passion and now it has become a parallel career for me.

I think my love for photography was deeply influenced by this site that I would see every morning for close to 11 years, from my dormitory window, in boarding school. The mountains had cast its beauty spell on me and I was always in the mood to capture timeless beauty.

The sad part however was that till I was in Darjeeling, I never owned a camera.  

The first camera that I had was a Yashica MF2 super, point and shoot film camera, which I got when I moved to another town, Ranchi. I used that mostly to capture events, trips and class farewells.

The best part about this camera was that it was super easy to use and gave amazing results. But this was a bit bulky to carry around.Yes I was trying early morning shoots from high rise (8 storey) buildings, eating the sun photos, etc back then itself.

Following this I got a Kodak KB12, that was actually a prize that I won in college. Very handy to carry around and for the price tag that it came with,  I thought it was a great camera.


I then moved to a Vivitar 3800N with the money I managed to save out of my monthly pocket money that I got while I was at IIT Guwahati. I loved this camera a lot and this was the one that actually was responsible for most of my learnings.  Every month a considerable part of my pocket money would go in purchasing films, and then getting it developed. Even today when I go back home, I still have a cupboard full of the film negatives and the prints and flip through them every time I go home.
 
Being in a design department at IITG, where Photography was a part of a curriculum helped in my endeavors. At any time, I always had a camera body, a couple lenses, and a tripod issued out on my name and I kept experimenting. I learnt printing and developing in the dark rooms too and brushed up my knowledge on the history of photography etc.

In the third year of college (2004) I had a chance to visit Canada on a summer internship project and made a trip to the Canadian Rockies. This event was a life changing experience in my photography life. I just wanted to capture more and more of these nature beauties.

Being in a picturesque campus, surrounded by the blue mountains and the majestic Brahmaputra river (which would also later be a backdrop for my documentary Madhushaala) further helped in my cause. Trips farther into the north east got me more engrossed in this beautiful art. Till this point however I was mostly into nature and landscape photography.

I still love film cameras, but I wanted to experiment a lot more and try out a lot more without having to depend on getting prints. Moreover I was not sure if I wanted prints of all the shots. So I then got a Nikon D70s with 18-70 mm (whom many know as Netra, from my early blog posts) from the savings from my first job. A digital SLR camera in those days (early 2006) was so expensive, that I did not tell the price of the camera to my parents for a good six months.

By this time the junoon of photography had me totally in its grip. Every weekend would be spent in shooting and Monday mornings, was always photographs editing time. My circle of friends grew around Bangalore Weekend Shoots group on Flickr. Flickr and Bangalore Weekend Shoots was perhaps the two biggest factors in helping me hone my photography skills. It is in these two forums that I understood what it meant to learn from the peers and have discussions around photography. Countless discussions over tea, and in online forums made me understand photography from a very critical eye, which I would have not got to, had I been all by myself. The more I read, the more intrigued I was. The more I saw, the more I wanted to try it myself and experiment.

The groups also introduced me to interacting and clicking photographs of people. I had slowly started to interact with more and more people and realized that I was genuinely happy when I saw a smile on a person's face when they saw their images after I had shot it. Somehow language never was a barrier in the relationship I shared with my subjects which ranged from children to senior citizens, from people on the streets to people in posh office locations.
 
I got a 50mm f1.8 lens and shot portraits only for a while. The best part about a fixed focus lens is that it strengthens your composition skills like nothing else. You do not have the flexibility of a zoom and hence you are forced to compose by moving around. What it also does at times, is give you a totally different point of view to things that you may not have earlier fathomed. The 50mm also allowed you to go closer to people and take their pictures. What it also meant was that you could not hide and take pictures.

When I moved to the US for my masters, another change happened. Here it was just the reverse of what I was used to shooting. Anyone would be offended if you pointed a camera directly at them and try to take a picture. So I got back to my kit lens of 18-70mm and shot extensively with it.

It is here that I fell in love with wide angles. The fact that in a wide angle shot the number of elements in the frame increase, allows for a story to build up. So my focus then shifted to composing shots in a way that it told a story. I would often wait for long minutes; for my subject to come into the frame, so that I could take the story that I had in mind.

The constraints and limitations with the camera and lenses allowed me to understand composition, light better.

It was only after I was planning to go professional in Photography sometime in 2009 that I decided to get another professional camera. A Nikon D300 joined my kit in May with the Tax refund that I got in the US.

I have been shooting assignments, taking workshops and giving talks on photography. I like to share the little knowledge I have, as I know that I will learn further in the discussions that would follow.

Photography has been an integral part of me. It has helped me, cheered me, and motivated me at all times. I only hope that this goes on for a lot more years to come.  

And so I got engaged

Been a while since I wrote here. Thanks to the ever increasing to-do list and a few happening events. A lot happened in this period. I traveled to Jaipur, to attend a friend's wedding, where I was also the event photographer. I got tied up with a client project, that I am still struggling to wrap up. However the most important of all has to be the fact that I got Engaged.

Another milestone in this beautiful journey called life.

Now mine is a cent percent arranged marriage. I am sure many would think that in this age of open minded nature of people and my exposure to different parts of the world, why did I select this route.
I have my reasons and I must say it was a very well thought about one. There are basic things that I was looking for, and I found it in the girl.

A long time ago when I was discussing with a friend, I had mentioned that I hope that my better half would be a person who is into writing and traveling. I was least expecting this to be fulfilled, especially if I was going the arranged marriage route, but I was still hopeful. I am glad that my parents were able to find one that fit the bill. For me it was (and still is) that the respect to the parents should be the most.

She is an English Literature graduate, likes to travel and has been to places where I want to go. (So I have an English speaking guide for those places also). The one thing that is common is that we both like to shoot. The difference being that I do with a camera and she with a rifle as shooting is both our hobbies.

Just before the engagement at a family gathering over another case, we were having a heated discussion on love marriages versus arranged marriages. My stance was that the freedom should be given to the child to decide which one. In my case I decided the arranged route and stuck to it. That also meant turning down couple proposals, but that is ok. I can only say sorry to them and move on with the wish for them to find their better halves soon.

I believe that in the end its all upto the couple to see where to take their journey. It's their actions that decide whom to interact with, whom to respect and whom to expect respect from. Its a journey whose reins are in the individuals hands. One has to ensure that for the chariot on the journey of life to go and in a controlled manner, there is a proper resonance in the way the couple handles things.
 
Here's a photograph from the engagement, if you have not seen it on Facebook already.

A lot of people asked me, why was I smiling so much in the images. Well aren't we taught to do what we preach? Being a wedding photographer to a few of the weddings that I have shot, I have strived to capture such candid moments, that bring a smile to the viewer a long after the event is over. So it was but natural that I did the same.

As I step into this new phase of life, I am sure there are going to be a lot more obstacles and challenges. But I am glad to have Vatsala by my side in whatever I aim for and strive to achieve.

People are People

This post is a way to find a reason for the internal conflicts that I am having, and hence there are chances that there might be statements and points that contradict each other. The post is about me trying to understand that people are people and not business contacts. At least that's the way I see it or better put, have so far been seeing it. 

Over the past few months, I have been involved in running my own design startup. Now I do not need to reiterate that, that is a challenging job. However I do need to re-iterate that its a monumental task when you try to run a business by comprising on values that define you as a person. 

Perhaps this is the situation that I am in and is becoming a part of my biggest internal conflict. When I interact with people, I deal with them as people. Over time, when I tried to develop the acumen towards business, I guess I started to compromise on that value that defined me. There are numerous outcomes of this. One of the prime things being that I started to see business in everything.

Any small favor that was earlier done in the goodwill of things, was now viewed upon as a business interaction. (I do not mean to contradict this with one of my earlier posts regarding charging for an effort spend on a task. That still holds true.)

In this process, I lost a few very good friends. Friends with whom I had shared a lot of great moments and they were there always in a position to help me out when I needed help. The interesting part is that these friends were the ones who got us the initial few projects.

The other day, I was talking to another college senior of mine, whom I have admired for what he is. One of the things that he mentioned is that there are two ways of running a company. One is a boutique style and the other is the corporate style.

Presently we are in the boutique style (let us call this a) of running the company, and have dreams to become a corporate style (let us call this b). Now this transition from a to b would require us to compromise on a few things. And one of those things is that having to deal with people only as business contacts. And as another entrepreneur friend of mine would say, in business there is no value for a person. It's all about the money. Somehow I do not buy that and I refuse to believe it. I have read and heard about a lot of entrepreneurs who build a team of people they value and not of businessmen. Only when I have a team of people I trust and have full confidence in, I can strive towards building the business.

Coming to the internal conflict, I feel that this is the whole tussle that is happening within me. The other partners see people as a business contact. For me however, the way I interact with people, I first try to understand them as people, or better put, as Humans. This understanding I owe to my graduate school education in Human Computer Interaction Design, wherein the most emphasis was put on the Human part. I think that was one of the most valuable things that I learnt there.

I cannot see people as business contacts first and then as people. For me business comes only later on. I cannot sacrifice so many friends and acquaintances on the pretext of getting business.  It's just not me. I think the basic premise on which people should lead their lives is with the notion of help. Even if you are working with a client, you are actually helping him/her solve a problem. We strive towards making them smile. Towards making their lives easy and hence help out in bringing about some more happiness. Isn't that how things should be?

Money will flow. That is not a concern for me ever. If I was after money, I would be leading a totally different life. I have always believed in that, however sometimes (like now) I have to rewrite that. 

Conflicts are not uncommon. It's something that everyone has at some point of time. However how we get out of that conflict is important. And one has to come out of it, no matter what. If not, then things get hampered. A lot of the things that you had planned to do appear a far fetched dream.

I am struggling to come out of the conflict. I hope I do.

Fear - from Life of Pi

I read this a few years back, and it has stuck to me ever since. Chapter 56.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

A morning with a call

A pleasant surprise early in the morning, from seven seas across. A dear friend who understands me so well, called up. Caught me in my morning yawns,  but well worth the call. A more of a eye opening call, and not just in the literal sense, but also in the philosophical sense.

In that long call, he was clearly able to point out exactly where my internal conflicts were.  I was surprised at the whole thing initially, but one good thing he mentioned was that in the morning you have a uncluttered mind. As the day progresses, we tend to clutter our minds with one tension after the other. By the end of the day, its very likely that we are unable to even think of the first thing that we started off our mornings with. How true!

Some points from the talk that I will never forget and will try to follow everyday.

• Your passion should not become your obsession. There has to be a clear line between the two.
• Nothing is worth it, if at the end of the day you cannot get a peaceful sleep. 
• You are only 28 and have a lot of life left to do a lot more things. Do not burn yourself out rightaway. 
• You have to keep working at things you really believe in. And doing such a thing takes time, a lot of patience and determination. 
• Try to make the mind decluttered. Focus and concentration would follow. A lot of the cluttering is coming from the internet and the moment we see and read about the things around us. Try avoiding that for a while and see how much at peace you are.
• Decide between the two sides of the coin. Are you a photographer ? Or are you Deskala?
• You can be the way you want to be as long as you are single, but when you are married, things will be different and you have to be prepared for that. You cannot just ignore that.

I feel blessed to have a few friends who understand me so well.

Thanks for the awesome call.