Harrison philosophizes Lennon’s death by reciting a verse from the Bhagvad Gita where Krishna says..
“All things must pass. There’s no time when we didn’t exist and there’ll never be a time when we cease to exist. The only thing that changes is the bodily condition. Soul comes into the body and we go from birth to death. It’s like changing from one suit to another.”
Beautiful interview.
It’s right – “The only constant in life is change”. No change feels good to start with, but it becomes a part of us sooner than we think. It’s bound to. That’s how we survive and even thrive.
Change is sometimes voluntary (e.g. holiday, foods, friends), but sometimes enforced (e.g. jobs, illness, accidents, deaths, breakups) sometimes pleasing, other times painful. But all of these feelings are transient. They pass.
The things we woke up, looked forward to, slept with, no longer remain important. They are not part of our routine post change. The change becomes the routine. It starts to feel normal. Before long, the old routine is forgotten. The things we had to try very hard to forget become very hard to remember, and then they become a distant memory. We thrive under those new changes, exactly how we did when life threw the past change at us and we never wanted that to change. But it did. Like every other change before that. It made us stronger, better and flexible.
We shouldn’t become too comfortable in a situation, I think. So when change is imposed, we make the most of it and move on to another temporary phase.
We must remain ready to embrace the change. A time comes when we no longer want to step back into the past phase. We have to look forward to the future and the many changes yet to come.
Waterloo Station, London. Time: 22 hrs GMT.
Thousands of people pouring in and out of London. Escalators, like conveyor belts, transporting people in all directions. Men, women, transgenders, children, all looking only ahead. Some carry coffee/tea mugs in one hand and Metro in the other. There is absolutely no eye contact but every person is aware of their surrounding and the presence of others as they glide, wriggle, dodge, walk past without knocking into anyone. The whole scene looks like an alien experiment designed to study human behaviour after being injected with a soul-sucking drug. We seem to be all alone together. I am dispassionately humming Abba and switching to The Kinks’ eponymous number.
A piano busker comes into my view. He is playing and singing The Long and Winding Road that echoes in the tunnel. And as if the alien drug injected in me wore off just then….I feel a stabbing pain in my heart. My soul wakes up and moistens my eyes. Tears roll down my cheeks like broken string of pearls.
McCartney wrote every single word for me it seemed as I walk past the pianist, mouthing the song as it peters out…
Many times I’ve been alone, and many times I’ve cried.
Anyway, you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried.
You left me standing here…..
La la la, lalla laaaa…ta ta taaaah…hmmmmm..hmmm
– Sapna Dhandh-Sharma
Car journeys usually start at the break of dawn. London to Wiltshire was one such. Food, music, conversations, family – a potent mix of jollity. Few hours went by in a jiffy.
Stonehenge, a disappointment at first sight, but mesmerising on closer experience.
There is nothing instantly obvious to admire. Couple of very large stones erected in an English countryside. But you stand still for a while. Stare straight at the stones. You suddenly begin to feel them transcending their physical outfit to provide a spiritual encounter.
For thousands of years, Stonehenge has remained an enigma.
According to folklore, Merlin, wizard of the Arthurian legend, created the site with the help of giants who transported the stones from Ireland. There are some fascinating modern-day interpretations of the structure, from it being a site built by aliens, probably as their landing site, to it being a place of Druid worship. Some see the stones laid in the shape of female genitalia – as a giant symbol of fertility.
“Stonehenge” — whatever the reality, however it came into existence, wherever it came from, whoever built it – the less we can substantiate its origin, the more we will be drawn to its mysteriousness.
If stared at long enough, the spirits start to communicate. They possesses you.
– Sapna Dhandh-Sharma
I am pretty much bored of taking photos. There is no challenge around, nil creativity, internet deluged with mediocre work, everybody falsely praising everybody else, sycophantic and sugar-coated comments becoming the norm, and art critics dead.
Just when I thought I was done, I am able to envision images before shooting, and also getting the results. Oh, no, I am still far from being labelled an expert. Karma is playing a role here. Photography is not letting me go. It loves me. It misses me when I ignore it. It pushes itself in my face, in my psyche, my heart, my hands, and my dreams. It is entrapping me with fluke shots.
Last couple of days I have walked aimlessly on London streets. Like any other metropolis, this too is busy. Too busy to pause, look, or care. The anonymity it lends to individuals is sort of nice. I can sit, think for hours. It won’t impose on me its speed. I won’t be pushed or shoved if I didn’t allow. I am part of a slowly exposed still.
I stop noticing people. They are like a motion blur. My camera is restless. I spend money and time to be there. One good shot would be a bonus. I have shot almost everything on those streets. I start to create ‘odd’ images in my head, and then fire the camera. God damn it! I am starting to get exactly what I pre-see in my head. I have the camera on full manual settings, including the lens. I don’t want perfect results. I want blurs, poor compositions, over-or-under exposed shots, and other such results that will convince me enough that I am not cut out to be a photographer. It is not happening. Something out there is not letting me give up just yet. I want to travel. Have adventure. Spend my days walking and observing life, and nights in dimly-lit rooms in near silence. No camera to distract me.
It won’t happen yet. My camera is intelligent. It programmes itself to my visualisation. It is giving me the results with very little effort on my part except the part where I am being a fantasist. Canon baby is making my fantasies come true. This will last until I fall in love again. I have to pretend to ‘neglect’ it.
Seated on a bench, I watched the pigeon. It won’t leave my feet, hopeful for some crumbs. It then flies. I wait again. I will photograph it in flight, between those buildings, almost silhouette-y, but not entirely, as I want the lamp to have some light from underneath the white globe, and also slightly exposed buildings to give some context to the bird’s position.
Wishful thinking with an all-manual camera and an unpredictable bird.
It comes in the view, and I wait again until it is there where I want it. Will it? Maybe not! It just might!
And, it did.
One shot only. I didn’t want to do a second ‘for luck’s sake’. I wanted a ruined image. I wanted to return home frustrated, angry.
Can anyone ever get a image exactly how they imagined against such odds?
Divine intervention, perhaps.
On a separate note — I feel like the bird. Free. On my Jack Jones amidst urban chaos.
People | Life 