I look like this.

I want to see you like this.

Seeing double

I dreamt that I had travelled a long while, and I walked up this tight spiral staircase, and you both were there, sitting at a table and you looked and me and yelled in happiness because I wasn't supposed to have come to that city but I did anyway. Avani hugged me and then I hugged Sindhu and I remember saying to you in my dream, that this is exactly how I had dreamt this situation to be.
The maroon tables, the light, the low ceiling, everything was exactly as I had dreamt of, before, or in the dream. 
You both looked at me and smiled. 

Pre-sleep Holiday Question

Do you every think about making a manifesto?

important memories

Sorry I dont have a better picture from that afternoon, I thought I should put it somewhere before I lose it.

muchlove,

avani

To Start Pottery Workshop

Last week while rummaging in one of the Amber cupboards, I found a crackly newspaper clipping. I looked everywhere for the year, but it had been cut out. (I was later able to calculate-it was the year 1955) It was about the exhibition my grandfather had had when he was 29 in Wimbledon, where he'd gone to study sculpture and pottery.
Tai says that in that day and age it was difficult to arrange an exhibition in your own country, let alone in a foreign land. Aai was amazed I found this clipping.
I was most thrilled about the paragraph titled 'TO START POTTERY WORKSHOP'-
"Mr. Wad who is 29 years of age and has widely travelled in his own country, intends starting his own pottery workshop when he gets back to his native Poona."

This dream that he'd had since he was 29, or even before, finally came true when he was no less than 60 years of age, when they all finally came and settled in Pune again. Marvellous.

Love.

Sudden rain

There has been a sudden on-and-off rain in Pune for the past 4 days. The afternoons conceal the evening show exceptionally well by being burning hot. And then as darkness falls, the clouds rush in and start their tamasha. It's been crazy lightening, thunder and loud gushes of rain, like bucketfuls of water-throwing from someone up there who's either really mad, or really bored. 

This is near Vaishali, while we waited, after a brilliant coffee, for baba to get the car. 

Eyes

Quite unexpectedly, we saw a little grassy hillock with eyes. 

The rest of the Taj property in Goa is very chic and cool and rustic. 

I love this sort of strange, out of place sculptural moment.

I maintain, very strongly, my deep love for the joy of discovery.

Shamoo and eyes, for scale more than for her love for this piece of strange. 

this-is-for-that

Received

Picture via Dhruv
Self timer
Udaipur Old city

A forest museum, 1906

Forest Research Institute, Dehradun.

Roadtrip

Kapil bought a new car in Dehradoon, and flew me down to drive it back for him to Bangalore since he had never driven a car before this. We drove a total of 3500 kms in two weeks via Delhi - Jaipur - Ajmer - Udaipur - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Goa and finally to Bangalore.

We met friends and family, saw new and old places and made it back without any major misadventures (except my phone is now broken and so is kapil's camera and I had a crazy spell of food poisoning).

I missed seeing Ishita by -this- much, which was most unfortunate! Sorry shoo, only if I hadnt had that ridiculous food poisoning..

More from this trip to follow.

trinity

We've all been to sri lanka now! I went trincomalee-sigiriya-colombo-negombo and it was like a dream. 

Trincomalee especially, only a few years past bombs and tidal waves, is a bare but beautiful reminder of how the land retains memories. Of course, most tourists there don't have a clue. The sea there is just so beautiful that it's hard to turn your back to it. But one morning we found ourselves chatting with Sajeeth Khan, a boatman and snorkelling guide, who told us stories about his 5 months in LTTE custody and close-range details of genocide in the area. His almost poetic Tamil ("time of the moon" is night, for example) was being washed away by the sound of waves, above us it was the noon sun, and all the stories he told us seemed so unreal. As if he was reciting a poem on tv, with a lot of static. Crazy. After a while the sun bathers flipped like eggs on a pan. Our skin was burning so we said goodbye and went to find some shade. 

I wish I had spent some more time in Colombo. Tell me what it was like? I want to go back for a longer time.

 An evening with my uncle ended up at someone's karaoke party - the old school way.
This was the highest scored that night. 

Moral Sci-fi

Stumbled upon a Brahmakumari cult office once.

Duet

'Singing in twos';
Joint portrait of the Dharap Sisters
May 2013

you on your nineteenth!

Happy twenty-three!
x

New work

New summer works means messing around with leather and beads, and friends who model wonderfully.

The Red Room

The Delhi Central Railway Station is so weird with this red flashing from every board above eye level sea level see level. It reflects off of everything around, giving the whole thing an eerie, thuggish yet whimsical appeal. I love taking photos in coloured light, I learnt.

Tent activities

Picturesqueness, now fleeting

It's so difficult to find a way to capture things in the mountains when you imagine that you're going to want to remember everything right as it was back there. I remembered that issue of Richie Rich which had something called a Smell-o-Vision that Prof. Keenbeen makes. So until I figure out how to bring to you two the smells and the goosebumps on skin in these freezing, sub-zero places I saw, here's some scenery and cloudery. This is shot on my way from Manjhi to Agoda, both in Uttarakhand. I never tire of the Garhwali lanscape, though next time, I hope to travel to a new part of the Himalayas.

Looking for questions

I found myself, at some point, at the end of a galli.
I felt like I was being given a reason to look for questions.
I wonder why I always feel  like I've set out to look for answers. 

Dessert

Cinnamonogram

Fits in a pinch

Packs in a punch

Stuff the stuff

Into the other end

Of that Cinnamonobun. 

from Gunher

Nilli's song by xindhu

cheeks+xin

I miss you, xin.
Love,
cheeks+chin ishooe

Agnes/Incy

I would like to introduce you to Agnes/Incy. She's about 2 weeks old, about a foot and three quarters in diameter when she's stretched all her arms out, and has a surprisingly pleasant disposition for  spider. Shamoo thinks she's a man, so she always calls her Him, and she asked me if it was possible that we both thought Agnes was of a different gender, and I said yes, just that Agnes might suffer from some dire questions about her/his identity somewhere along the line.
Inika loves Agnes, but she only calls her Incy, and she thinks it's a he-spider too.

Say hello, everyone.

unlikely

On a print job in fort (Bombay) and I had three hours to kill before anything came back so I walked into Leopold's. Never been there before and there was no waiting line like always, so I decided to go in. I was asked to be seated opposite a random woman, tall and big eyed, as is done to maximize space in leo's(?) The interior design magazines tell you to add mirrors if you want to create the illusion of a larger room, but they never mention that mirrors also double the number people in the room. When the shootings happened, can't imagine the chaos here.. Back to the table -- I'm seated, I begin conversation. Are you from here? No, Singapore. She has a strange Malayan accent. She looks mostly (South) Indian. She works for the government of Singapore. As a police officer. She's backpacking here, read about it in Shantharam -- look at the books stacked at the cash counter -- evidence. Food arrives. Her Kesar Pista icecream is not green, shame. Ideally, it would've been a green pista base with kesar bits in it, she says. People on every table are trying to get wide angle pictures of the place. She speaks Tamil! her great grandparents were from India. Her Tamil accent is more natural than her English. But it was too strange to continue this game of go on, speak more in that language, so I dropped it. Didn't have too much to talk about really. Almost end of meal I blurt, I'm sorry I didn't get your name. Sindhu. She's smiling. My jaw is dropping. I check again. I explain. We exchange cards. We walk out, eat a paan together. 

Winter Brew

 

Ingredients : 

Strawberry, Plum, Kaffir Leaf, Vanilla, Cinnamon & an Orchid Flower

Soaked in Vodka for a week.

Best holiday 'hip-flask' drink!

With Kapil

This was my second day of learning to ski 

and we were already skiing down 

from first phase (where the tree line ends). 

It was also my first snowfall. 

+++

 magical 

You were here Xin

On the rickety bus back from Gokarna
Sunburnt
Dec 2012
x

Shamoo's Miraculous Uneven Chocolate Caramel Squares

AVANI

In Rs. 13.20 INR, the most wonderfully warm conversation with Avan, still in snow-swathed Kashmir.
She can now ski, too!
(: Happy birthday