India

posts about that mad, beautiful country I proudly call home

Head in the Black & White Clouds

The top of a cloud in black & white

I mentioned in a previous Black & White photo post that while I love the aesthetic I'd never done much of it, i.e. I'd never bothered to process my (colour) digital pictures into adequate black & white photos. But now that I've hit upon a method whose results I like, expect a lot more black & white posts on this blog!

Today I'm presenting 5 shots taken mostly during my last India trip (except the first, which was taken in Khor Fakkan). I hope you like 'em, and if you'd like to find out how I did them, do check back here in a few days when I'll put up a tutorial on how to convert images to B&W using the GIMP. (You can follow the site's RSS feed, and me on twitter).

Black & White in the Streets of Bombay

men drinking tea near a roadside barber
Been back from my India vacation for a fortnight now, and only now getting round to sorting through the pictures I took. I didn't do as much street photography as I would like -- I'm still not comfortable taking pictures like that -- but I did manage more than I ever have, and I think I am starting to come out of my shell. Unfortunately it will be several months before I can practice the form again.

Another thing I haven't done in a long while is take Black & White photos. I love them, but other than a few experiments with my brother's camera when he was in college, and then a few shots when we first got a digicam, I have never tried it. Another problem I've tried to overcome, and I hope you like these....

Townie to Burbie



Took the excellent BRTS bus all the way from Rajabhai Tower to Thane. Excellent ride, but I wish I had the SLR on me to pull off quicker shots. I'm far too shy about using my camera in public, though (it's a necessary precaution when I'm in a more restrictive place like Dubai).

V

A Grand Day Out in the Natural Beauty of Dharavi

leaf growing out of the grille of an abandoned ambassador car
Quick: what is the first think you think of when I say the word 'Dharavi'?

Slums. Squalor. Crowds. That movie that everyone was talking about a while back...

Of all the answers you came up with, I doubt that Nature Sanctuary was one of them. But that is indeed what you will find in Dharavi, smack dab in the middle of Mumbai.

Mahim Nature Park (also called Maharashtra Nature Park) is confusingly not in Mahim as most people define it, but sits unassumingly opposite the Dharavi Bus Depot, a five minute rickshaw ride from Sion Circle. Most people have probably never heard of it because you can't find a single swing-set, merry-go-round or snack stall inside. You will however find plenty of twisting pathways and dense foliage, countless species of plants, flowers, and bugs, all for a meagre Rs.5 entry fee.

It's a no-frills slice of nature, and a photographer's dream. Fantastic for a shutterbug's Sunday out, and a great roadtest for a new camera or lens. I took my Pentax K200D out with me on its first real shakedown, and once again I am reminded that isn't the camera that needs improvement, it's my photography skills!

Still, out of the nearly 400 pictures I took on Sunday, quite a few didn't suck. And here they are:

Vishal Remembers a Lot of Cable TV


Nearly two years ago now we let the subscription on our cable TV lapse, and haven’t bothered to renew it since. In this age of DVD season sets, 24-hour streaming internet news and just plain frustration with the rubbish value for money that local cable bouquets offer, it made no sense to continue. Nowadays when I go to a friend’s place and see the TV on -- inevitably tuned to some flavour of news -- it feels like some kind of alien world. The last time I was on vacation in India I tried to spend some time flipping channels, seeing if I could recapture those feelings of discovery and entertainment that TV provided for a long time in my life, but it ended with me bored and angry, two hours later having not stayed on a channel for more than five seconds.

Strange things have happened since then. I find that the large chunk of space in my brain that used to be reserved for TV is shrinking. I remember TV, but not as well as I used to, and in a few years time I may not remember much of it at all. Hence this post, which is an infodump; a big steaming brick about TV and the way it was when I used to watch it. Because, though I loathe the way it is now, a lot of me has been shaped by TV, by that first viewing of Star Trek when was an infant, by entertainments factual and imaginary, by the rush of information and colour and sound.

TV was the internet of its time. And this is how I saw it.

The Landing Lights of Deepavali

picture of two Deepavali oil lamps, with modern electric lights in the background
So a few thousand years ago a guy and his wife set out for home after fourteen years of exile in the spiffy jungles of peninsular India, and having just rescued his missus from the clutches of a very bad guy with ten heads, he decided that he was totally entitled to the guy's flying car for the journey home -- spoils of war and all that. This being the days before the IATA and GPS, the folks back home tried to make things easier for their returning king (whose slippers were doing a fine job of running the kingdom in his stead, apparently) and lit up the entire city so he could spot them from the air.

Hang on -- did Laxman have to walk home?

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