Concert Alliance France

p.s. my website is mostly down, so I am posting photos on flickr and here.

These are from Raju's concert in June '05.

blogthis - My new job.

blogthis - My new job., originally uploaded by _quasi.

blogthis - My new job.

Utsav in Motion

utsav in motion
22^nd-24^th dec 2005


Utsav, the high point of a year at Ruia. We swear by it. We adore it. We immerse in it.

This year was different. We were part of it, yet apart. Strangers in a familiar place. Relics from the past. Times had changed, so had people. Like warriors of old, we hung around, competing with the young brood.

But it had its toll. There was joy. There was dance. There was energy. But it was laced with sadness. Sadness that this must all end. Sadness that this is joy on loan. Sadness that this was not living the present but reliving the past.

The innumerable friends, all gone. The girls, the crushes, the inspirations, all gone. The belongingness, the innocence, all gone. All that remained were fading echoes from the past...


It touched the heart as nothing else. There were no tears on the outside, ...

blogthis

blogthis, originally uploaded by _quasi.

blogthis

Senior Gavankar

Harsh's dad : he fed us good food.

Eve O' Utsav '05 !

Utsav

Last year of college. MScII.
Sumedh and Sujay are volunteers for "Infra" this year again. :) It's back to college for real.

run down

"The only thing constant in life is change"

Then, how or what, in this constantly changing world, are we supposed to feel a connection with ? Change has always been here. But the pace of change has never been so much. An intuitively vague thought creeps towards me ... hold on - hold on to something. Only the ones with strong anchors and protective coves will survive the storms ...

A very complex web of entanglements has me struggling for breath. The culling of trees planted with love's labour. How long does one carry dead bodies ? How does one know the body is dead ? Because it speaks to me. My hallucinations surround me. The law of nature is simple. The new replaces the old. Life goes on. The dry grass is burned to destroy the weak. Then the rain bring life again.

Coglin's Law "Bury the dead : they stink up the place".

I wish I were dead sure about the death of the dead one.

matheran chronicles

When I arrived at the Gavankar residence at Matheran, I was meeting Harsh's old man for the first time. He immediately put me at ease with his warmth. Dinner was ready and the old table with it's warped top planks was laid with large inverted white porcelain plates with inverted glasses on them.

The plain rice with the phodni che waran and ultra thin special matheran potato wafers to accompany tasted like the best meal I had had in a long while. I was tired from the long lonely journey from Mumbai and then the even lonelier long walk from the bike parking to the Gavankar residence. That was a good meal.

The next day Senior Gavankar made mutton, dry and with gravy. We had mutton pav for lunch and mutton rice for dinner. After a heavy breakfast of omlette pav me and Harsh went exploring. The late lunch was a feast. I have never eaten so much mutton at one time before. After lunch me and Harsh spent hours trampling through the odd sopts of Matheran. We were dead tired by the time we got back home for dinner.

Above photo : Harsh in post dinner contemplation.

nut

Photo by Harshwardhan Gavankar

At Matheran ...

me

me, originally uploaded by _quasi.

near madness

That Night

I reached at 2100hrs, after braving the darkened bylanes of Matheran, at the Sarasvati Vidya Mandir school. The old gate, the heavily wooded grounds, the climbing pathway, they all made me feel like I was entering some mysterious old castle rather than a school. In the diminutive light of my torch I climbed up as fast as my quirky knee would allow. As I reached the top, the sight of light put some heart in me. There was a single naked light bulb lighting the school varandha.

I called up. No answer. There was no one there. Like a moth, I squatted underneath that light. Outside was pitch darkness and weird noises. The funny part was there was no cell network under the light, but as soon as I walked into the darkened far corner and into the weird noisy night, the cell showed a bar. I sms'd a few who I assumed to be near. One never really knows. I waited for half an hour twiddling my thumbs and getting more and more restive ... then I unpacked the camera and the tripod and clicked a few. The one above is one of the school buildings. I could barely see it to focus.

Light

Irshal at midnight

... the longer you look, more details you see. If you are looking.

spur

I stand alone,
surrounded by such beauty,
free as a bird,
the whole world my
playground ...

back

Finally back online.
New place. New life. New connection.
Old me.