Flaneurbanite's Urban Legends

Urban Legends Is Changing!

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:19:00 +0000

Just in case you were wondering, I haven't abandoned this blog! I know I haven't posted anything worthwhile here lately, but it's all for good reason.

Around the middle of last year, I started feeling that this little Blogger blog isn't allowing me to do many things that I originally intended to do here. It did great for a while, and then it started to stagnate. I needed more space and better space to do what I really wanted to do.

So, after months and months of deliberation, procrastination and self-doubt caused by a humbling lack of technical expertise, I have kicked all of it aside, and have plunged headlong into the world of self-hosted Wordpress.

Which does mean what you think it means!

Yup, I will have a new website in place of this little blog very soon!

It should be up in a matter of a few days from now, in fact - if all goes well and if I can manage not to crash it for the third time. (Having a partner who deals with technology in his professional life is a very blessed thing in such circumstances).

The new website will not only have all of this blog's existing content, but a whole lot more of what I do - professionally, personally (and passionately).

Thank you for being with me on the three year long journey that was this blog.

It continues, albeit elsewhere.

Stay tuned...

Work In Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:33:00 +0000

Just in case you were wondering, I'm still alive. So is this blog. I'm just working to create something that will (hopefully) be a bit bigger and a lot better than this little blog that I created nearly three years back - wow, time flies!

Meanwhile, I hope you're getting ready for winter - here's some warmth from my Diwali celebration at home in London to keep you warm, while I return with what I'm working on.

Thank you for your patience!

Love and Light.

~ Flaneurbanite.

Postcards from Italy...3

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:14:00 +0000

continued from here

I know this blog channels the spirit of flanerie, and that, by common understanding, is more about cities than lakes and pristine countryside. But then again, this blog is also about photography, about the beauty of the moment, and I strongly believe that beauty must be shared. Even if it makes me look much more like a hopeless tourist than a flaneur.

For this week therefore, a few more postcards from Italy.

Paris Je T'Aime | Paris, I Love You...4

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:10:00 +0000

Others in this series, here

And the last few bits of lovely Paris...

Until next time. Sigh.

Paris, Je T'Aime | The Street Artist of Marais

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Others from Paris, here

When you look at this...

A version of this famous painting - Rembrandt's "Titus, le fils de l'artiste"

...would you believe, it's being drawn live by this guy?

Yes, as I was as astonished and impressed.

The Business of Being Parisian...2

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:00:00 +0000

continued from here

Like London or Delhi or Bombay or New York, Paris is more than one city. There's the Paris of the garish tourists, for no outsider can match the finesse and grace of the true Parisian, and there's the Paris of the classic and nonthreatening seediness, if there's a such a thing, in Montmartre. There's the Paris where I narrowly avoided being robbed*, and there's the Paris of the puppet artist who shooed away an ice cream quaffing American from his shop but warmly welcomed wide-eyed me. There's Hausmann's Paris, of course, and weaving through all of this is the Paris of the Parisians, where they go about the seemingly uniquely cliquey business of being Parisian.

It all comes together in a sort of unreal utopian fairy tale unlike a London or Delhi or Bombay or New York - the wonderland that Paris is, to me.

*Not exactly a hold-up, but boarding the RER train, I caught a girl trying to open my bag that was carelessly slung on my shoulder. She disappeared before I could react, leaving me very indignant indeed. Well, served me right for being a careless tourist. I clung on to my belongings for dear life for the next three days in the city. And no, this episode did nothing at all to spoil my Parisian fairytale - if you've been watching this blog lately, you might have guessed that. :)

The Business of Being Parisian

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:22:00 +0000

Others from Paris, here

Paris Je T'Aime | Paris, I Love You...(3)

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:30:00 +0000

(Others in this series from Paris, here)

"The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers." ~ Charles Baudelaire on the Flaneur.

and the story continues...

Paris Je T'Aime | Paris, I Love You....(2)

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:15:00 +0000

...continued from here.

In large part, what makes Paris Paris, and keeps it what it is, are the Parisians, the people of Paris. I met a few really nice ones, and spotted a few interesting ones...

...like these two little boys, play-dancing on a busy street in Montmartre, oblivious to the bustle around them...

...or Monsieur Carry PlasticBag In Mouth. New form of paparazzi protection?

More to come, soon.

Paris Je T'Aime | Paris, I Love You

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:32:00 +0000

The Flaneurbanite's fallen in love. With Paris. It happened almost at first sight - just like in the movies. Four days of a whirlwind romance later, she's back in London and pining away. It had to happen, it was meant to be - a flaneuse is bound to fall in love with the city where it all began... so far, she only knew Paris through Baudelaire's walks. Now she knows it as her own, her very own.

Paris, Je T'Aime...

The love affair begins :)

Postcards from Italy | Varenna

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Tue, 24 May 2011 03:00:00 +0000

...previously: Como

Varenna

Just one of the picturesque villages around Lake Como that we spent a day in. Varenna is more or less two parts - the lower lake side, full of awestruck tourists like us, and no surprise that, for the lakeside is indeed that pretty - and the upper town, which we just stumbled upon in our exploratory spirit.

Varenna remains with me.

Postcards from Italy | Como

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 23 May 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I know I disappeared again after my grand proclamation of being back. Oh well, what can I say - all I have to offer is the usual excuse of work, life, and holidays. I hope these vignettes from my last holiday in Lake Como will appease you for the time being.

Como

More tomorrow.

Last Night's Perigee Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:15:00 +0000

I was probably one of the only people on the Earth last night who were completely unaware of the fact that we were about to have this dazzling moon. I noticed it only as I returned home from a day out - and then raced upstairs with my camera for a few shots.

The moon, as it looked to me, last night.

Stunning. :)

Dusk at Twickenham Riverside

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:48:00 +0000

On a freezing cold day in March, spent walking around in a relatively run-down area of London because work insisted I must; cursing the weather and my inappropriate sense of dressing-for-the-weather, I found redemption on the riverside.

The Twickenham Riverside is not the most stunning of places next to the Thames in London, but it was calming enough (if not warming), to make the day seem worthwhile. What made it even more worthwhile was that I was carrying my new camera, and had a glass of red wine in me.

Presenting some of the very first pictures from my very first DSLR.

I'll be back with more, soon.

Hipstamatised Kuala Lumpur

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:40:00 +0000

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I've been travelling a whole lot recently. Most of it has been of the hectically-working-while-being-severely jet-lagged variety, which leaves little room (or consciousness) for taking pictures.

On my last trip to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) though, I was forced to slow down and take notice - by a massive but beautiful thunderstorm - and then, I had to take pictures. But it was one of those rare moments when I wasn't carrying my camera, weighed down as I was by tonnes of paper and a laptop (sigh, work trips...and being tiny) and so I gave my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app a chance. The only credit I'll take for these pictures is for that consciousness...and perhaps, the composition.

It had been a while since I had seen a tropical thunderstorm in its full glory and power. The only rain I see in London is the feeble, unsure type, with a complete lack of self respect. You know, the deeply annoying type? Tropical rain is all powerful, seductive, all-consuming. It makes you stop and take note, awes you by its presence. It forces you to celebrate its beauty, its glory, even its destructiveness. Ah, I miss the Indian monsoon.

And so, I went to bed that night, tired, but strangely happy...and woke up the next morning to this stunning view.

Who says you need a state of the art camera to capture the beauty you see?*.

*Having said that though, I must confess and rather proudly announce that on the same trip, I became the owner of a new DSLR camera - my first. While the camera can no doubt do nice things, I'm busy figuring out what I can do with the camera. I'll be back soon with my first results. :)

A Day's Walk's Worth - 2

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:17:00 +0000

(continued from here)

...and as fleeting as the breeze on Pondicherry's seaside promenade, the flaneur passes, leaving no trace, but bringing back a few snippets, just a day's walk's worth.

A Day's Walk's Worth - 1

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:52:00 +0000

How long does it take for a flâneur to find that little blister in the fabric of the city to be able to start peeling its layers away? A few days? A week? A month? How many years?

Certainly more than a single day, spent walking around in flip-flops under a 30 degree Centigrade sky, meeting the incredulous amusement of the local auto-rickshaw drivers, and the mostly closed doors and windows in Pondicherry's French Town - very French, a little Indian and just a vague hint of old Dutch.

The only hope I had then, was to bring you back a day's walk's worth.

Yet, a day's worth doesn't quite fit into a single post. More tomorrow.

And we're back!

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:22:00 +0000

Yes, it's been a long time away, and I've missed you, I've missed the blog, I've missed the pleasure and the hard work of clicking and posting, I've missed replying to comments and watching you come and go...but not for a moment did I give up or forget - I've been meaning to come back, and here I am again.

My personal all-time favourite picture on this blog, and certainly the one that attracted the maximum attention in 2010. Just because, I love this picture and I'm proud of it (and because no post on this blog can be sans a picture!)

In the last four months, I have clicked, but not as much as I'd have wanted to. I've travelled a whole lot, and some of that is going to find its way to this blog. I've also been busy writing for some publications and I'll soon show you what. I've worked hard elsewhere because I needed to, and that goes on. But what changes is that I'll be posting regularly again, and if all goes as per plan, I'll have some new things going here not too far into the future.

But before I go on to all that, I need to thank you, dear readers - all those who stuck on to this blog, left comments and sent me emails despite my being A.W.O.L; and to all those new subscribers who've recently joined the little party we've going on here (it's a bit dull at the moment, I know, but I promise to amp it up, and soon!). I know I can't trust technology a hundred percent, but if my subscriber statistics are to be believed, this little blog has not lost any subscribers in the last four months - instead, added a whole bunch! And do you know what a big boost of encouragement that is? A VERY big one!

So Thank You, and I hope you've all missed me just as much as I've missed you.

Here we go, again.

Bohemian Spitalfields

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 12:32:00 +0000

I have often wandered into the Old Spitalfields Market even when I don't quite intend to be there, and have ended up spending hours walking through and by the fashion markets and the vintage shops. It is perhaps the eccentric bohemian hidden in my closet that emerges to fish these scenes out.

If you like what you see here and have an affinity for the East End like I do, you might like the first few books listed on the right hand column of this page. As for me, I'm plotting my next escapade into the old notorious alleys of the East End. Until then.

A Passage To The East End

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Behind the money making powers; behind the glass and concrete towers; behind The Suits and the expensive watches ticking to the work day; behind the booms and the busts and the redundancy pays; behind the lunch sandwiches and Friday pints...lies one of the many streets of the East End of London.

I wandered into one of them and brought back a few snapshots....

...and something tells me they hide more than a few stories.
I'll be going back for more.

Places Between Spaces - 1

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:28:00 +0000

When you walk down a city street, do you peep in the cracks?

Do you wonder what lies beyond the hubbub, behind the facades, in that space between places?

I do.

I poke my nose and camera into those crevices that hide in the mosaic of the city. And often, I stumble upon treasure.

These are, what I call, Places Between Spaces.

Like this narrow alley hiding in a crevice on Oxford Street.

Peep in, and you'll likely have to make space for the person blocking your view - for the mouth of this crack is only one-person wide.

Step in, and it surprisingly envelops you as it widens to receive you.

Walk on, and it dwarfs you - the tall buildings on either side of this cobbled boutique-lined lane looking down upon you.

And then, as indulgently as it received you, it abruptly throws you into a square bustling with people. And character.

Where people dine al fresco...

...muse under fountains

...or talk to the pigeons (or themselves)

Then just when you thought the ride was over, the quirkiness grabs you.

Of history...

And elephants for charity...

Of fairy tales and magic lands (full of sweets)...

Of cute shop assistants picturesquely perched in thought..

And of a realisation that all this lies behind a crack in the mosaic - a crevice on London's Oxford Street.

Welcome to St. Christopher's Place. Just one of my favourite places between spaces in London.

Hints

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:58:00 +0000

Why do we travel?

Pico Iyer, in his famous essay of the same title, says, "...the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle". Close to my heart, this Mr. Iyer, for he often says what I mean, and puts just the right words to what I think and live by.

You have no doubt noticed my absence here for the last couple of months. I traveled to Portugal in March and soon thereafter I went on a bit of a journey - quite a fantastic one at that for all its ups and downs and lefts and rights and wrongs - and having done what I needed to do, I'm back, armed with a bunch of hints.

Hints of what is to come here in the following months. Something incredibly special, something very unlike everything you've seen on this blog so far is just getting dressed backstage, waiting to happen. It has been in the making for a couple of months now and involves a bunch of very special people....and that's all that I can say at the moment! I promise you that when it happens, it will be worth all the curiousness!

Meanwhile, I brought you a bunch of hints from Portugal. Hints, not a story, because I could barely weave one in six days of a whirlwind trip. Hints, because I couldn't possibly pretend to have scratched beneath the surface, though I'd love to go back at leisure and do that one day. Hints, because that's what these are.

The hint of history embedded in the layers of Lisbon..

Hints of the ups and downs that Lisbon is all about (atleast for a stairway lover like me)..

A brief hint of yellow as the famous 28 tram rattles past...

Or the suddenness of a warm yellow village house in pristine white Sagres...

Perhaps the burst of yellow succulents defying the concrete of the Sagres pier and the deep azure of the ocean?

...as suddenly interrupted by red

... or orange, when you least expect it

A hint of a packet of weed, offered to me by a roadside tramp in a dirty suit and a stumbling gait, quickly returned to the secrecy of the pocket when I shake my head..

Just metres away, hints of a better life, in a better suit, but nevertheless a stumbling gait...

Blue tiled walls, hinting at patterns, and sameness and decay...

While in Sintra, a past that continues to thrive and bedazzle

Pico says in the same essay: "Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is -- and has to be -- an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what's really there and what's only in him."

I brought you back these hints. I wonder what, if at all, they tell you about me?

Back in London, opening a new chapter, for myself and for this blog, and perhaps for you. See you soon.

The Portugal Stories : A Slow Train to Lagos

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:37:00 +0000

Three days back I woke up at 3AM. Eight hours and a delayed flight later, we finally boarded a slow train in Faro - at first glance, a grungy grey metal entrapment - as surprisingly clean inside as it was grey and grimy on the outside.

Yet, I was excited because I love trains and train journeys - rarely do any other means of transport reveal a country like trains. As the train started, I realised that my view of rural Algarve was destined to be through a grey screen of congealed dust, but a little while later, as I considered that window-frame again, I thought this view was picturesque and telling in its own way.

At that moment, I decided to do a little experiment with my photography.

Welcome to my journey then, as seen through the grimy windows of a slow train in Portugal, along the southwestern most coast in Europe: the journey from Faro to Lagos. Who said travel pictures need to be postcard-perfect?

Around this point, I fell into a deep slumber and woke up some time later to the Significant Other gleefully clicking pictures of me ungracefully slumped in my seat, mouth open, still holding the camera in position. Hrrmph. I started chronicling the journey again, only to realise quite a while later that I had switched from portrait to landscape in my half-embarrassed indignation. Oh well.

The rural panorama was suddenly encroached upon by a whitewashed monolith of seaside resorts and I stuck my neck out from the ventilator opening to realise we were pulling into Lagos.

I thought my dusty frame was a better view than the monstrous concrete reality of Lagos. Thankfully though, we were moving on to stay in Sagres, a quiet picturesque village atop a hill at the southwestern-most tip of Europe, overlooking the Atlantic ocean. Of course, that meant another taxi from Lagos. And if you think that all this means that there are more pictures coming from Portugal, oh, you're so right. And if you think that I'm back in London now, oh you're so wrong - I'm in Lisbon as I write this. And this holiday is far from over. Ah.

The Mews of Kensington

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:24:00 +0000

If you're not British, chances are that the title of this post is making you think cats. As much as I would personally love to dwell upon all things feline, I'd like you to think of horses instead. Good. Let us proceed.

As Wikipedia will tell you, and as I learnt as a student of City Design in London a few years back, Mews is one of those British English oddities that actually describes a row of stables built around a (mostly) cobbled street or square and dating from the 17th and 18th Centuries. Hence horses. However, if you think the fauna references end here, you're wrong. The term actually originates from the 'mews' or partitioned row of quarters that were used to keep falcons! And why 'mews' then? Oh, you see, the term actually originates from the French term 'muer', which means 'to change', and which was used because the falcons were kept in these quarters when they were changing..er..moulting. Go figure. Is the mind sufficiently boggled? Glad to be of service.

In those wonderful times, when people engaged in dreaming up confusing names for simple things, these mews were usually attached to the properties of wealthy families in London, and the stable hands or servants would live in small quarters above the stables themselves. So the mews were actually stables-sum-servant-quarters with a mini community space in the street or square around which they were built. Over time, they went on to become infamous for their seediness and filth - places where the rich and cultured would never set foot.

Today, however, in keeping with the great tradition of boggling the mind, these are some of the most coveted properties in London and have a slew of famous names attached to them. From the outside they look nearly the same as they did three centuries back, but the insides have gone from smelly shabby stables to the poshest modern conversions one can think of. You would be hard pressed to find a mews property under a couple of million these days (yes, that's in pound sterling) and at a supply of only about ten thousand of such charming dwellings with an actual community of their own in London, it isn't hard to see why.

Welcome to the mews of Kensington in London.

Of peaceful cobbled streets, arched entrances and winding alleyways...

Of picture-book prettiness and quaint quirkiness...

Of famous names - past and present.

I spent an afternoon roaming around in the mews of Kensington, under the threat of looming skies about to burst any moment - the winter greyness that I so hate. Amazingly though, this grey light lent a very contextual atmosphere to my flaneuring this day, making my experience all the more surreal and wonderful. I sighed and sighed, wishing I were living here and wondering how many banks I'd have to rob in order to buy one of these. Perhaps some of you should start paying me for writing this blog and taking so many pictures! About time, I say. Hmmph.

Itsy Bitsy News ... And A Wee Landmark.

noreply@blogger.com (Shilpa Bhatnagar) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:37:00 +0000

It's been a while since I last posted, but I'm content on two counts - one, that the last post continues to attract comments (thank you!) and two, that the gap hasn't been in vain. I've been busy changing a few things around here, but to see them you'll probably have to click through from your feed reader.

Look!

New layout!

New links section!

I know the layout is not the best, but give me some back-pats, please. I hardly know any code and I did this all by myself!

The links section contains a few of my all-time and current favourite photoblogs, photographers and photomags. Some are friends, some all-time greats and personal inspirations. Some, just darned good. It's a dynamic list and I'll keep adding to it.

In other news, the awesome Editors at Londonist invited me to do a Londonist Behind The Lens, which is pretty much a description of me as a photographer, what photography means to me and my love for London. Also, I got to share a bunch of my favourite London shots (selecting which, was a te-ee-ee-dious task. I have thousands of London pictures, thousands...and I like about fifty of them. I was supposed to select seven. Only. In short, aarrgh.) Anyway, do read it if you want to know just a little bit more about me.

"Psychedelic City": Just one of my favourite London shots that did not make it to slideshow here.

Oh, and the other wonderful thing is that this blog just officially crossed the 10K mark. That's ten thousand unique hits (and nearly 21K page views) . Over exactly 1 year and 1 month. Not the greatest blog stats ever, but hey, when I started this I wasn't sure of getting even five hundred, so tralalalala! In other words, it makes me happy.

And so, to all of you who've supported this blog; to those of you who follow or subscribe to it; to each one of you who's ever left a comment, suggestion, constructive criticism or just a hello; to those who've sent me heartfelt emails: Thank You.

It's been a good weekend. I'll soon be back with more.

~The Flaneurbanite.