Reality is Black & White

Its been a few months since I got my cell phone equipped with one of the most handiest cameras. A 2 megapixel worth of capturing capacity gave me a chance to see the world in a completely different way. I have always been carrying this odd yet deep urge to shoot the eccentricities of life. Watch the world as I want to see it. To create a mental map of reality. Although painfully difficult as it may sound, I was just trying to do what some of the great photography Gurus like Ansel Adams & Henri Cartier Bresson have always been doing.

To have a piece of technology in your hand that enables you to see the world differently, this concept always fascinated me. With my minuscule camera & more so my negligible photography skills, I still tried to capture what appealed to me. I still roamed around my usual path of journey to find the decisive moment. To find everything that I might have missed or hadn't noticed all these years. What disturbs me more is that the harder you try to grasp these oddities the farther they seem. They seem unrealistic & you lose faith in capturing them on your camera. For instance, take the fruit seller on my street. I have been walking that street for almost 20 odd years & have noticed that fruit seller everyday on my way to school. The other day I was on the same road & noticed him again & I pointed my lens at him. The shot was black & white & the light settings were for 'daylight', 12 O'Clock in the sodding afternoon. I pointed at him & tried to get a best shot with his fruits & him. He noticed me & as if he was used to people capturing snaps of him, ignored me completely, which was exactly what I wanted him to do. Like a professional model, who never gets camera conscious. I think he knew who I was. I stood there in the middle of the street avoiding traffic & hopelessly trying to figure out how to compose the picture, I lost it. All i wanted that day was to capture this guy I have been seeing all my life, everyday on my way to anywhere, on a frame, on a portrait. I somehow had engraved the fact in my brain that no matter how many years I would walk past that road I would see this guy. I had developed a mental picture of him with his apples (no pun intended), in black & white ofcourse. But somehow I wasn't able to recreate that mental image with my camera. The next day when I was going someplace, this guy was gone. Exactly like a ghost or a tormented soul finding salvation. He wasn't there anymore, not after that day. I totally regret not having him on my camera. But this also made me wonder, was he there on that afternoon when I tried to shoot him or was I just hallucinating ? Spooky.

That day allowed me to think about photography in a passionate sense. What exactly should be going in our minds when we are taking a picture ? I figured that the technical details of the photo like the intensity of light & the focusing & the shutter speed, somehow are reflex actions for a photographer. (S)He thinks about it all the time, even when (s)he isn't shooting something. It becomes a part of his vision. But that day I came real close to figuring it out. I just thought, what if we think in black & white ? What if the world is just portrayed in the various shades of gray, black & white. Almost immediately my mind raced back to all the things that will look good in black & white. I found a whole new area of reality. Life becomes so easy without colorful distractions. Black & White allows to understand the dynamics of shadow. How shadow actually works. I came to understand that even a shadow is as important as the subject itself. It has a life of its own & is evident in every Black & White photo. Without a shadow, there is no black, without black there is no gray, its as good as a white piece of paper. What this taught me was to look at life in two different perspectives. Good & Bad. Until that day I never really understood the concept of bad. Bad is as important as Good. It was always there, lingering in front me, but I hadn't noticed it. This is one of the primary reasons for having GOD in the first place. People want protection from evil & god becomes a sort of psychological aid to assist them in believing that they are safe. The whole construct of religion is surrounded by god & the evil. The Dev & the Rakshas, the yin & yang of any religion.

Almost at the same time I figured out how impractical it is to search for utopia. It isn't law & order we are looking for. Everyone has the urge to be perfect & correct in all aspects, but its a design that we have believed in ever since the human race was first incepted, that nothing is perfect. Even Newton gave it a law, “For every action there is an equal & opposite reaction”. This is the black & white of life. This is where physics & spiritualism merge. In scientific terms we can say its the balance of matter & antimatter, in spiritual terms we just name it God & Evil.

Its amazing what a simple unsuccessful photograph can make you think on a rainy afternoon. Although I have been enjoying it with a cup of tea & plate full of my favorite biscuits, I am still imagining everything in Black & White. It somehow takes me closest to reality, to the source, to the religion of my mind.

Black & White is raw beauty.

Deformed Reality or Reformed Consciousness

After watching Superman Returns last night, I bowed with respect in front of Bryan Singer to bring the most supercharged hero of all times alive again. After the promise for Superman III, 26 years ago, & after enjoying Christopher Reeves as Superman, I was thrilled to see this rejuvenated version. Doesn't Brandon Routh seem too perfect to play Superman ??? Although highly entertaining as it was & I enjoyed it just like an 8 year old, I felt I could relate to it in someway. After all, all the comics that I used to read back then as a kid, paid off somewhere in form of a passion to see the modern Superman wearing blue spandex & flying all over the place once again.

As a matter of fact, the past 24 hrs have been the most exciting ones of my life. Now I know how it feels to be a Graduate. I passed with satisfactory grades & finally got out of the 3 year grind. Its just a matter of time that I would get the marksheet & the convocation & be branded as a graduate. The experience was enthralling. It was 1300 hrs, a friend called me up & said that the result was out. I called another friend & the news spread like wild fire. I checked on the Mumbai University website & as usual those numb nuts cannot handle a damn server & they have 4 graduate courses in computers. But thats a different story. So there i was, fondling to find the link which would display my result & I paused for a moment, I noticed my heart was beating abnormally. It was the first time throughout my graduation I sweat before I saw my result. Maybe it was the fear of failure or I was being paranoid fish. Ever seen fish in a fish tank, swimming away like normal fish, but as soon as u approach the glass, they seem to acknowledge your presence using their peripheral vision & giving you a shrewd look, just in case.

So there I was, like a fish, with a shrewd look on my face, my left eyebrow making funny movements & my heart even funnier & on a full panic mode I found the link. It was like a final showdown, like the ones we have in video games. We fight all the small buggers & at the end there is this huge & weird looking final monster boss we have to fight with. “THIS IS IT”, I said to myself. “Make or break dude”. I punched in my roll number & waited. In a bout of desperation & tension I forgot to click on the GO button which would take me to my result. It should have been an instinctive action, but I never did it & I was waiting. I felt sweat on my left cheek coming down from my brow & several seconds of agony & anxiety went by. I thought it was all over, its taking time, its not happy that I failed, its a disgrace, a shame & after all these thoughts I just happened to glance at the status bar of my browser. DAMN. I realized what I hadn't done & clicked GO. The sweat vaporized, my heart started beating even faster but this time with a happier beat rather than fear. My eyebrows restored to their shape & form. There it was, Roll no. 268 Passed with First Class, Congratulations !

BOOM, ignition & lift off. I was on the moon. I just felt my left foot leave the ground, it was anti gravity. I finally found that true moment of solid true happiness, it won over all the crap. This was the adrenalin shot I had been waiting for all these years. Although I was a graduate, the first thought that came to my mind was about Matunga, the katta, the fun times, the food, the hangout central. The second thought, college canteen, very pathetic but we had our good times there as well. Third thought, never tried to knockout my BSc IT coordinator....huge amount of regret there. Almost immediate but fourth thought, finally got away from my campus. The nightmare was over & I can see some sun shining through the monsoon clouds.

Almost instantaneously megalomaniac thoughts started to flow through my mind. Thoughts of future & some crazy shit. Whole 3 years of my graduation flashed before my eyes, first day, first hangout, first Matunga experience, first everything. If someone would have told me that I would feel nostalgic after my graduation a few days ago, I would have ripped off a few teeth from their mouth, but as the unthinkable was happening right before my eyes, I was more than glad to graduate...

I think i am getting a tattoo on my upper back tomorrow that says, “GRADUATE AT LAST