a dealer in reflections and parallel lines

this time last year

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 13:51:00 +0000

I have hardly been a regular blogger. It is difficult for me to share my honest thoughts and opinions openly in public for everyone to see. I have a predilection for saying nothing or baring my soul. I struggle standing anywhere in between. I thought photography would be the best medium for me to express myself without saying too much, you know. But I also stopped doing that. As much as I am still intrigued by photographs, those moments captured in time, I think it became too much of an effort carrying a camera around to take pictures. Plus I was too busy living life. Perhaps expressing myself became too much of an effort.

Almost one year ago today, I woke up in a place I never ever thought of traveling to. There were too many other places I wanted to see before heading to the African continent. My life has always been like that; I plan one thing and usually end up getting something else. I am beginning to enjoy the surprises and something in me wants to share the serendipity of these experiences. Here's a few random pictures from July 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Table Mountain captured by a lovely girl I met in Cape Town with her analog camera.

Informal Settlements in Khayelitsha - the less frequented side of Cape Town

The edge of Africa - Cape Point

Second hand section of Clarkes Bookshop on Long Street, Cape Town - because bookshops are critical in forming my opinion of cities

ordinary love

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 16:35:00 +0000

Amsterdam!

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 22:30:00 +0000

I'm here :)

joy

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 20:18:00 +0000

to best friends, to unforgettable nights, and to a life full of love!

cute stuff

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 11:34:00 +0000

I loved this cute,fancy little box of mithai (sweet) sent by our neighbors on the birth of their daughter. Totally cheered me up.

when it's gone

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 14:48:00 +0000

I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last - the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

wither

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 11:48:00 +0000

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” - Lauran DeStefano

sysyphus

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 13:06:00 +0000

waiting...

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 20:50:00 +0000

I'll wait for you. Come back.

The words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word.

- Ian McEwan, Atonement

surrender

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 21:14:00 +0000

"Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all... And yet another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity -- oh the tediousness of it... Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all." - Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

between here and there

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:20:00 +0000

I have recently noticed that somehow I have ended up with pictures of a lot of doorways. I think a lot about choices and it may be that these pictures, on a subconscious level, are a manifestation of that obsession.

There are times in life when you have to choose between what lies right in front of your eyes and what lies behind the other door. As tempting and mysterious those doors may be, sometimes even the most adventurous ones of us have to turn around and choose to go only with what we can see.

strangeness and charm

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Row 1, L-R: One of the streets in the old city recently renovated by the Aga Khan Trust; Govt Girls School situated within the walls of Dehli Gate; Delapidated Chitta Gate

Row 2, L-R: Back wall of Haveli Dina Nath; Shahi Hamam (Royal Bath); Shahi Hamam renovation underway

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” - George Orwell

No wonder these places have fallen into ruins...

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:55:00 +0000

Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming -- the echo of God on the human wall! ~ Victor Hugo

technicolor

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:13:00 +0000

After a while you'll forget everything
It was a brief interlude and a midsummer night's fling
And you'll see that it's time to move on

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:59:00 +0000

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire. But if I had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice. - Robert Frost

of coffee and conversations

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 08:45:00 +0000


Only one thing is certain about coffee.... Wherever it is grown, sold, brewed, and consumed, there will be lively controversy, strong opinions, and good conversation. ~Mark Pendergrast

photo project: week 3

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:36:00 +0000

Theme: What i am reading
Location: Amsterdam, Lahore +basim nabi

with you i feel again

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:02:00 +0000

photo project: week 2

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:48:00 +0000

Theme: My city
Location: Amsterdam, Lahore

1984

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 21:11:00 +0000

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun: today, to believe that the past is unalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not trouble him: the horror was he might also be wrong.

a photo project: week 1

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:49:00 +0000

Theme: Canal

Location: Amsterdam & Lahore

why did i go that way

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 21:08:00 +0000

you think you're safe until you see a picture like that. and then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

some things are more than what you say

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:02:00 +0000

i hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 08:45:00 +0000

"The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is."

-Philips Brooks

symbolic interaction

noreply@blogger.com (SR) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:39:00 +0000

If you look at the city from here, you'd realize

that in the entire crowd, there's nobody

really dignified,

nobody truly sagacious;

every young man's neck in a noose,

every woman a branded slave.

[Faiz Ahmed Faiz]