Talking pictures

Work

2009-08-01T18:34:00.002+05:30

Work is something I've been thinking about for a little while. I had no insights at all to be entirely honest. I have a few vague notions about how to approach it. I didn't have any questions clearly formulated so no good digging. Then I heard Alain de Botton was going to talk about work at the festival of ideas in Brizzle. I thought I would go and then predictably forgot. Ever since if I stumble on an article or talk video I watch it. This one was worth sharing.

It articulates so clearly why I hate the word 'loser'. And so many other things. Listen to him. Now I need to pick up the book.

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Secret Lives: floating around the net

2009-07-16T11:14:00.002+05:30

Hey there,

A few people have told me recently that a pdf of the entire book has been passed around the net. Be nice guys, that was a lot of work and is important to me. It's not meant to be viewed as a pdf on a screen, which is most likely uncalibrated and far too small to do the images justice.

Besides passing a copy around like that means someone, somewhere, can poach my images and use them without permission or payment. I'm assuming that most of you that read this wouldn't want that to happen to me. So if you have a copy or know who has one and is passing it around, delete it, ask the person to delete it. If you know the source of the leak plug it and let me know who it was, and I'll offer the person a good piece of my mind. And then get a copy of the book!

Thanks,
Natasha

At the top of the world, everything is falling down.

2009-07-13T16:18:00.010+05:30

Gomuranjan in Zanskar

What can I tell you about the Himalayas that you don't already know? The Himalayas are falling down. At an astonishing rate. In the time we were there we saw 5 or 6 avalanches and landslides. We heard a few more at night from the illusory safety of our tents. If the mountains continue to grow, they grow faster than they fall down, which you imagine is an astonishing feat when you see the rubble that litters the Zanskar valley.

We walked into the Zanskar valley over the Shingo-La pass after having started from Palamo, near Darcha. When we reached Kargiyak a tiny village in the valley, we stopped, stayed a day and then we walked back. It was all accomplished in 9 days. No part of the walk was lower than 4000 m above sea-level and the pass was just over 5000m. It took a while to get used to so little oxygen, it took even longer to get used to the weight of the packs. I never did get used to it, I got helped a lot. The dust made me stumble all the time. The dust got everywhere. I've decided I hate snow, particularly sun-melted, soft snow, but really all snow.

But the pain was always forgotten when we pitched camp and when I looked around. I forgot a lot, my mind stopped whirring. I was tempted, no matter how briefly, to go live in Kargiyak and teach in the Sun school there. I found myself partial to mountain men. I fell in love a few times, facilely. I laughed at myself what I hoped was enough. A lot of things that would normally have been mundane, felt magical. Although I was exhausted with the traveling and the contingent living by the end, I would gladly resume now. Eat, walk, pitch camp, eat, relax, eat, sleep, resume- it's a pleasant rhythm to live by. It helps that where I am now feels equally adrift and contingent.

Lots of things happened, exciting, strange, bizarre, even mundane, as they do when you walk through strange places that are almost inaccessible to the world outside. I'll might tell you sometime. Here are a few images in place of the words.

Zho/Dzo in Kargiyak

A lake at the top of the Shingo-La pass

Walking to Khi

Walking to Khi

Gompa in Kargiyak

2009-06-15T04:34:00.000+05:30

Come here, Sunshine

2009-06-14T16:04:00.005+05:30

We went for a walk in Leigh woods again yesterday. The flowers are different ones now, bramble and honey-suckle. The copper beeches were the colour of old clotted blood. We saw a roe deer and swung on our swing which was new and improved this time. The rain had beaten the garlic down and the woods still smelt of it from the broken stems. But we were happiest and staring like little children in wonderment when we saw Sunshine.

Here is Sunshine, and you might see why we were so pleased.

What a beautiful bird! What an amazing sight to see this bird flying behind this gent's car down a road through the woods. It landed on the car which went up and down that stretch giving it a nice flying session a few times.

I am no fan of exotic pets. The wildlife trade is very destructive and kills a lot of animals. But apparently there are many parrots that are bred at the country of destination and are not imported which is the major cause of mortality and morbidity in such pets. I hope this is one of those. It surely was a beautiful and healthy looking bird. And much more surprising than the peacocks I heard in Cornwall.

I kept hoping to see the parrot and owner as a pirate at the Combustion club, but sadly no.

Someday

2009-05-15T03:47:00.001+05:30

Some day if I get really good, or lucky, or some combination thereof, I will be able to say this about one of my pictures: "But I'm not at all bored of talking about it."

As many as tell the tale

2009-05-07T07:09:00.038+05:30

There was always the attention, the eyes that turned towards us throughout the entire journey and the steady stream of questions. We had tired of telling our stories, spending so much of our life like small change on insistent little children who came running up to us, asking, unbridled yet by convention. Our story was now becoming mere words. Every time I told it, reality seemed to erode a bit. It became my construction and not something that had really happened. It was to end soon; it was our last bus ride home.

I sat facing the window; my body sunk into his shoulder, with his arm around me. As I hunkered down for the long dusty ride, I realized that I had wondered whether we would even make it this far, but we had. He had gamely borne the sun, the scrutiny and enjoyed himself nonetheless. As the bus pulled out of the station and into the stone cobbled lanes of an ancient kingdom I said, “Tell me a story.” He nuzzled my hair and asked, “What kind?” “Old stories, tell me really old stories, they seem appropriate somehow. Tell me what the world is made of, tell me how it was made.”

It never took him long to come up with stories. We had lived worlds apart and our stories were different, we could rely on our old familiars being new to the other. “You remember that beautiful tree in the courtyard?” “Umm hmm, the Frangipani tree.” “It made me think of the Yggdrassil.” “What is that?”, I asked. He mocked something I’d said oftentimes before “You haven’t heard of it?” “I have”, I said smiling and then in my worst pedagogic voice, “but you have to tell me all about it. That’s how you tell stories.”

“Alright, my little Besserwisser”, he said indulgently. “So I’ll tell you how the world is made according to the Icelanders. There are these old, old Norse poems from about the 13th century I think, in these old books called the Eddas. Pretty much all of Norse mythology comes from them. They say that at the centre of the universe, standing in nothingness, there is a massive ash tree, which is the tree of the world, the Yggdrassil. It shelters and links all the nine worlds together. It is the source of all living souls in all the worlds. One of its roots is in the upper world of Asgard, where the gods live, another in Jotunheim in the Midgard, the middle worlds and the last in Niflheim in the Helheim, the nether-worlds, the realms of death. Under the Asgard roots, the Gods assemble everyday to decide on the affairs of the world, the Midgard root dips into Mimir’s well of wisdom and in Niflheim the tree is constantly chewed on by a snake called Niddhog, the eater of corpses, who continuously tries to destroy the Yggdrassil. Life and death and learning are all organised around this tree. But when Ragnarok comes, everything will be destroyed. Niddhog will be destroyed and so will the mighty gods and all the middle worlds and their puny inhabitants, only the Yggdrasil will remain. And from the tree, life will begin again.”

I pouted and teased him, “There they go, your stories, killing my snakes, making villains of them! Eating the tree of life! That’s even worse than the biblical story, which only makes them responsible for the fall of mankind. Only the mere and meager tempters of essentially flawed and weak humans. This is grander evil. Poor buggers, no one loves them at all.”

"Oh yes, little one, pick on that tiny bit of the story!" But then, smoothing down my mock ruffled feathers, he said, "To be honest though, there are positive snakes in all mythologies. For instance, the Ouroboros, the snake grabbing its tail is the gnostic symbol of eternal return, renewal, of the very soul of the world. Plato even called the Ouroboros the perfectly constructed animal because it had no need for anything other than itself and had nothing that was superfluous."

"Hmm, ok, so maybe they don't all make them bad. The renewal and return are quite positive and it also makes me think of Sheshnag. So, Sheshnag is the massive snake upon whose coils Vishnu, the preserving god of the Hindu trinity rests. He is Vishnu's constant companion, born with him on the earth in every one of Vishnu's ten incarnations, the dash avatars, which by the way is where the word comes from." Realising I made constant unnecessary diversions, I impatiently added, "Anyway, more to the point, the word 'Shesha' means what remains. And like the Yggdrassil, when the Universe is destroyed, all that will remain will be the serpent. He is the only truly eternal being, which is where his other name Ananta or the eternal comes from. In the Norse myth, the snake eats the eternal and in the Hindu one, it is the eternal and the Ouroboros is a symbol of eternity. Funny that snakes are so often linked to the forever."

Doubt still niggling away at me, I added "But there's loads of different Ouroboros aren't there? I mean mythic snakes that eat their own tails? And also the Christians don't take such a kindly view of the symbol, they don't see it as a eternity symbol, but one of being trapped in a limited material world."

"Well, the Christians always hated what they saw as pagan beliefs, they just found a way of twisting them into something ugly so people wouldn’t use them anymore. They were also just a bit more scared of fertility symbols, I think. But, off course, there are others, I think Quetzlcoatl is sometimes depicted as an Ouroboros; then there's Jorgmungandr, Loki's son, the world serpent who catches his tail while encircling the world. I can even think a non-mythological one and I bet you can't guess it", he said his eyes twinkling.

I squeezed my eyes tight against the distracting confusion of images that was tumbling through the TV screen of my window and tried to dig other images up. I gave up eventually and said "I'm going to kick myself for not trying harder, amn't I? Alright I'll bite, tell me."

“Aren't you clever?” He quipped while his fingers traced the contours of my ears as he half whispered, “Kekule’s benzene rings!” and waited for my protests.

I laughed rather than protest and said slyly, “And that’s a real story, isn’t it, unlike Newton’s apple apocrypha? Kekule talked about it himself.”

“Umm hmm, Yes he did. But I think some people think he might have confabulated. So it might not be a true story after all.”

“Such a pretty way of saying he lied! But yes, there were loads of different stories that floated around; different stories that he told different people. So it's thought he might have made all of them up. I wonder though, if a story is a true story as long as it is good, veracity be damned. Well, it certainly gets repeated more, and doesn’t what is called enough get called into existence?

Anyway, snakes of sciency legends, huh? Well, the staff of Asclepius has a snake wound around it, doesn’t it? That’s sciency, the symbol for medicine; it sometimes gets botched a bit, has two snakes instead of one, sometimes it’s done right too. The Greeks used to try and cure people of different ills by letting snakes crawl all over them in some of their temples. That’s believed to be the origin of the snakes on the caduceus. I wonder what kind of magic that is, cause it wouldn’t be Frazer's idea of sympathetic magic, would it? Seeing how snakes are associated with venom and all that.”

“Like I keep saying, it depends how you see it. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh at the end of his long and arduous travels, gets this plant from the bottom of the ocean. The plant was supposed to grant him eternal life but a snake eats it while he is sleeping and it becomes immortal instead of Gilgamesh. And that’s why snakes moult, as a symbol of being reborn again and again. So maybe it is sympathetic magic after all, the patients want a bit of that eternal life to rub off on them. I guess that's another bit of the forever that sticks to snakes.

And, the caduceus, there's also another story for it. Asclepius is supposed to have learnt the secret of immortality while he lay dying, by seeing one snake heal another using a plant. He used the same plant and revived himself. It might be this snake on Asclepius’ staff. Asclepius, by the way, was killed by Zeus for having acquired the secret knowledge of immortality. Zeus feared that all humans might become immortal if Asclepius told them about the plant and so he killed him. Some more snakes with forbidden knowledge. But not evil in this case, I guess, not temptors."

We must have gone quiet for a while at this point, because I remember looking up from the window and noticing the expectant faces around us. A half-lit, insulated tube, full of human faces, hurtling through a fading day in the Indian summer. I imagined for a moment that they were listening to our stories. But perhaps they were merely waiting for us to do something unusual. Or even were just surprised with our freeness with each other. They watched and I was amused and the bus carried on, on its dusty, windy way.

“With both her hands she labors at the knots.” He broke my reverie, and asked me, “What were you thinking of little one?” I sighed a little at having been woken up. It was starting to turn dark outside, the sky turning that beautiful inky blue, against which the tungsten lamp-lit streets and faces are so vivid and beautiful. “I was thinking of the sin of making everything human and how it is impossible to tell a story that at its core does not deal with our concerns. They are all stories of rebirth so we may live forever, fertility so we may be productive, so on and on.” “Well, that is true, I guess till snakes tell stories of themselves, there will be no truly snake stories. There will only be reflections of humans in snake skin. But there must be something, a story out there somewhere that is at least told in the voice of a snake. There’s just too many stories for there not to be one.”

Even the last light was now gone, I turned around and faced him, leaning against the window now. Happy to watch his face, exhausted as it was, but unhappy at not being attached to his hip as I had been for so many days now. We were drifting apart just then, exhausted by the traveling and the intensity of it all. The connection had to be reformed; that narrative had to be found again somehow.

“Well I suppose there is one, there is at least one story told by a snake. Krishna, one of Vishnu’s human avatars, performed many miracles when he still just a child, things that amazed even his parents who knew of his divinity, demonstrating he was no mere god. One of them was the taming of Kaliya, a terrible snake that lived in a lake near Krishna’s home. Kaliya was the bane of Krishna's people. He made a precious resource completely unusable. He spewed his venom into the water of the lake and made it undrinkable and no one could swim or bathe in the lake for fear of dying by his bite or the bite of his many wives and children.” “Evil, evil snake…” “That’s the general idea. But Krishna was not afraid of Kaliya and went to the lake and splashed around in it and sure enough Kaliya came along and attacked the little boy. Krishna was not going to be initimidated by some mere reptile and he jumped on top of Kaliya’s many hooded head while evading all his attacks and danced and danced on it. He danced on it till the snake was exhausted and completely subdued. And then he danced some more, he danced and danced until the snake vomited blood and was near death, he danced till Kaliya’s wives begged him for their husband’s life. And then he stopped.”

“So where’s the snake’s story?” “Patience, it isn’t done yet. When Krishna decided to spare Kaliya’s life, Kaliya was very grateful and thanked him profusely and offered Krishna his best hospitality. Krishna was pleased and told him he could continue living in the lake with his family if he pleased, as long as he harmed no one and did not pollute the waters. Then he went to Kaliya’s home with him at the bottom of the lake and lived with his family for a while, enjoying their hospitality, sporting with their maidens as he had done with those in his village. Krishna was a massive flirt, eventually married some ridiculously large number of women, some sixteen thousand of them. Anyway, one of Kaliya’s daughters told him the story of how they came to be at the bottom of that lake and how they became snakes.

She said that her father was a rich merchant who had lived on the banks of the Yamuna, a long long time ago. He had been very prosperous and had made a great deal of money. They had everything they could ask for and never needed to work to increase their riches. The whole family had grown accustomed to a life of profligacy and sloth. They would eat and drink and lie about and do not a thing for days on end. Their servants would carry them everywhere, to their baths and beds each day and even feed them like infants.

One day, they were all lying about in their front room after a huge lunch when a rishi, a sage with great powers, came to their door asking for alms. The servants had only just retired to their meal and no one in the family even stirred at his presence. He had to wait a long time to even be asked into the house. And when he came they did not think to ask his forgiveness, in their indolence they would not even offer him food or a drink of water. No one rose to wash his feet as is customary to do. Enraged at their sloth, he cursed them, he said these arms and legs you no longer use will fall off and you will crawl on your bellies everywhere. You will become ugly to the eye. You will be reviled by everyone around you, as you shun your duties to me, so shall everyone shun you. He cursed them that they would poison everything they touched and people will hate and fear them greatly. And before their very eyes, they all lost their arms and legs and became scaly and slippery and had to crawl on their bellies to get anywhere; in short they became the first ever snakes. The servants around them seemed terrified at the very sight of them and threw things at them attempting to kill them.

Swiftly, for once, gliding between the blows from the servants the family asked for the forgiveness of the rishi. After much pleading and groveling the rishi finally relented. He told them that they must go and live in the lake they now lived in. They would be reviled and feared and no one would come near them. But one day in the future the lord of the universe would come to them as a child and would fight the merchant who had become the biggest ugliest and most fearsome snake of all, Kaliya. Kaliya must fight the lord with all his might and he will come near death in this fight and in this fight he will be purified by the touch of the feet of the lord. And then if his wives succeed in begging for his life, they would be able to live peacefully from then on. They would remain snakes as they were now, but at least they would not poison the world and would not be hated by all. The snake girl told Krishna that they waited for many many eons for his arrival and were much relieved by his blessings. There that is the snake's story.”

Exhausted at the effort, I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. As I started to drift away, I realized he was restless. I don’t know what tipped him off, whether it was the skeptical looks that I imagined our fellow passenger’s faces wore or whether it was that I had told him of the primordial snake before. He said to me as he wound his comforting arm around me again, “That’s a nice story, love, very evolutionary, but I think you might have taken a few liberties. Haven’t you? That isn’t a real version of that story.” I smiled through sleepy eyes, as the bus conductor turned off the lights to let us all sleep for the night leg of the journey, I said “There are, my love, as many as tell the tale.”
.................................................

PS. Do tell me if you like the stories. Or if you hate them and especially if you think they are so bad I should stop all together. Or best of all, if you know how I can make them better!
N

Orlando
In another skin

Leigh woods

2009-05-07T02:39:00.004+05:30

Bluebells in Leigh woods

I went walking in Bristol's Leigh woods this last weekend. Quite the beautiful English woods. Hazel, Hawthorn, Sticky willy, Beech, Yew, Laurel, Oaks and Ivy, Nick, my flatmate told me the names of the trees and plants we saw because I lamented not knowing their names. Then he ruthlessly quizzed me on them and tut-tutted at my poor recall. Pointed out a badger hole, no badger though. Freshly hatched flies swarming over water. The ferns were unfurling from the ground. There were buttercups here and there. I saw for the first time the ground under the trees carpeted with bluebells.

And with garlic! The woods even smelled of garlic!

Garlic in Leigh woods

Enthusiasms

2009-03-29T15:17:00.004+05:30

Bristol's not full of graffiti or street art, or at least no more or rather less than other European cities that I have seen (few that I have seen). But it does boast one rather famous artist, Banksy. I have seen a few of his, one at the end of the post, but here's just a few others from around home and work.

This one from a closed pub down the street I live on.
It resonated a lot with how I feel right now.

On the wall of the Highbury Vaults, an old and lovely little pub with a garden full of
metal statues of animals, that we used to go to often. Reputedly the place where
some criminals who were to be hanged went for their last meal.

And the famous Banksy on Park street, on the walls of a sexual health clinic.

One rainy day in Bristol

2009-03-29T00:20:00.031+05:30

I looked out my kitchen window and this was what I saw. (Go on click on the image to see it full size.) (I feel like I am breaking a nice little rule or two here.) It's a good portion of the Clifton end of the city of Bristol. And a big red thing, red and gray thing, that looks a bit like a missile, sticking out of the top of a building.

That building is the Royal West of England Academy and it's hosting Crimes of Passion, a street art show. I finally couldn't wait any longer (sorry, V) and went and saw it. Here's a few favourites from the show (Urban wildlife included.)

There are a few that there is no use reproducing here, cause they have to either be seen at that size or up close, or are very very Bristol. You have to see them for yourself, like the Bristol city dinosaur and associated map and the red, black and yellow Bristol images.

Glorify and Persecute

First lessons(?)
The Helpful Panda
The things I miss the most right now
Bacchanal (The things I don't) Rings a bell somehow

Escheresque?
And here come the beasties: Bag lady
The chav
The can eater
And finally, the drunk (!) cans: the prey species

Ordering the book from Scholars without borders

2009-03-04T14:01:00.004+05:30

And finally you can order the book and pay online from here!

Only so this post isn't a single line long here's what a few people have said about the book:

SwB
The Benagluru Pages
The Hindu (a while ago)
Timeout (also long back)

Do something about Bangalore becoming unsafe for women

2009-02-28T15:44:00.002+05:30

I`ve been reading some really scary things happening to women in what was my city for a long time. Read about them here. This is really disheartening; I grew to love Bangalore as much as my hometown of Bombay. Both of these were relatively safe cities for me and this is a rare thing in India when you are a woman. You can read about a few of the incidents that happened in this post.

The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women, which I am quite proudly and naturally part of, is along with many others organising protests and actions. I wish I could be there helping out in some way, fighting back, doing my bit to keep a city I love safe, but I can`t. I`m stuck in Bristol and it will be a while before I will be back.

But there are those of you who are in a position to, so get involved! Do something!

Orlando

2009-02-25T03:51:00.009+05:30

Orlando

(with apologies to Virginia Woolf)

The rustle that is obvious to your ears was nothing to her. A distant susurrus, hidden under the drumming sensation of many bodies moving against each other. And rather than hear, she felt. Outside, the warmth had begun stretching longer; the sun undid the snow into runnels of water, spreading little spikelets of green on the ground. Deep in the den, the changes were smaller, yet enough to shake her torpor away. The earth flexed its supple spine shrugging off the winter and set the urge upon her.

Her ancestors had come to this northern land when it was still under water, covered by a lake the size of a small ocean. In this fresh water, there was food for all; frogs and fish, snails and insects had kept their bellies full and them healthily glowing in their radiant shiny, smooth skin. They had thrived and become many. The water that had brought them abundant food also fissured the earth’s interiors into dens, one of which she was now waking up in.

Her sleep had been a long one, she spent more time under the ground in these dank caverns than above on the surface where her kind belonged, under the suns burnishing gaze. The winters in this northern land were cold and the icy fingers of frost reached deep into the earth. Her forbears had escaped into the dens that lay below the frost line, a meager but necessary oasis of survival in a winterland. For mere survival it was; of earth’s trip around the sun, she was condemned to spend only a third above. She cursed Proserpine her fortune every chance she had.

And yet time it was, the sun advanced, her blood ran faster and the cave warmed up with the motion of a few thousand waking bodies. She could feel her mood lift as she thought of the sun after months of immobility and hunger, the promise of release made her mind scream with impatience. But before release, before sunshine, before warmth and food, she remembered there was always the final test. She prepared herself for the coming task.

And then when she felt ready, she dove into the thick coils of the many that were making their way to the exit of the den. As her eyes adapted to the new brightness, she saw those she had known would be awaiting her arrival. They saw her and began their onslaught. Not a few, but hundreds at once, they began approaching her at close quarters, circling her slender body closer and closer, they flicked their tongues at her, smelled her skin. What they smelt seemed to prod them further into action. Like her they too had slept long and hungry, yet they had woken earlier and waited for her holding their hunger for food at bay. They announced their intentions by rubbing her body with their heads, coiling closer all the while. She did not repel their advances, her smells were calculated to elicit and encourage them. They climbed onto her, one upon another in a frenzy of hope, until she was the centre of tightly packed ball of bodies.

The bodies wrapped around her provided her with much needed warmth after the winter sleep. They worked faster and better than the feeble rays of the sun. The men, now wrapped around her, had left the den earlier, soaking the weak sun over days preparing for her exit and that of the others like her. Now they pounced on each woman they could find hoping that they would be the chosen ones.

This many-coiled embrace that she had willingly accepted, even encouraged, slowly melted the cold bones of her body. The pressure they exerted forced the air from her lungs and the winter seemed to leave with it. She had passed the test; her ruse had worked again. She remained there calm, nothing could be taken from her, she knew that it would stop when she wished. And as easily as she had turned it on, she began to turn it off. The mass of men around her, sensed it only a little in their frenzy. They rubbed her smell off as they continued to seek her favour, the female they could no longer surely identify. To them it seemed that they lost the scent of their quarry; that the alluring female had merely moved a bit further from them. They felt no anger, merely confusion as she faded from their senses. Quietly, imperceptibly, the slender body disappeared into the ball. Slipping coil over coil, by merely trying less, it surfaced above the tightly packed mess of bodies.

Like a rope uncoiling from a spun top, picking momentum and warmth from his former embracers, he disappeared to look for someone his own to hold and have. He went off in his own direction searching for the smell that they all followed. Warmer now, at their expense, the glint off his scales had the look of the twinkling of an eye. All he hoped for now was not to be had and as he had had them.

Link

Ordering Secret Lives

2009-01-28T12:20:00.004+05:30

To begin with sorry for the long long absence. But here is at least one thing some of you have been waiting for. Tata book house finally has the book up for sale!

Those of you in Bangalore, I strongly suggest you just drop into campus go to the book store which is quite close to the entrance and buy the book there. The book will soon be available in the Chennai branch as well.

Those of you elsewhere, who want to order it, you can order it through the inquiry form on their website. Alternately send them an email / call. They'll give you a quote for the book + shipping (with reputed couriers), you'll have to send them a cheque or DD / bank transfer and they'll ship you the book.

I realise this is a bit more complicated than the usual procedure, but that's the best there is as of now. There's something in the works with Scholars without borders which should hopefully be easier, but is not quite there yet. More as it happens.

PS. SWB quite boldly say this on their website "Need a book that is not listed on our site? We can source any book (published in India or even elsewhere)-just write in!! Our email addresses are mail@scholarswithoutborders.in and scholarswithoutborders@gmail.com" So if you prefer their payment options you might write to them and ask them. This is where you can find contact address for the publisher.

Book release

2008-12-10T19:19:00.008+05:30

Secret Lives is available right now only at the IISc Archives and Publications cell (Old TIFR building next to ECE), I'll let you know as soon as it gets available elsewhere.

The book will be released on the 13th of December at the IISc centenary conference (I have this vision of books fluttering away from me.) It will be available at the conference, and then at Tata book house, the campus book store (from where you should be able to order it). I'm currently working on getting to other stores as well. Also eventually the IISc alumni cell will set up to do ship orders as well. We'll see how it all goes and will keep you updated and linked as soon as it happens.

It's gonna cost INR 1500, about (30USD,23 EU, 20GBP ), 20% off at the conference. I'll probably hang around a bit to smile benevolently at my babies and coax you into buying a copy. See you there!

PS: Sorry I've been busy and tired and really haven't had much to say photographically recently. Life intrudes. And I haven't been shooting much, which is what used to set my posting rhythms. But I will do my best to return soon. Until then!

Further book stories: Pragati printers

2008-10-20T17:06:00.005+05:30

I'd love to do a longer post, but I simply do not have the time. The extremely short version is I went to Pragati press is Hyderabad to start the printing process. These guys know what they are doing, they are good at it and extremely professional and great to work with. They have a great reputation and I can see why. I would recommend them very very strongly to anyone wanting to get anything printed in India. And if the prices are competitive, think about them even if you are not in India!

The print isn't done, but the proofing is mostly done. Colour corrections, etc through. Print when the payment gets made. Which might take some time, since IISc needs to go through the entire bureaucratic process.

Here are just a few shots from the proofs, which were gorgeous!

Secret Lives, the book

2008-10-08T20:02:00.001+05:30

Repost
I've pulled up and put upfront one of my old book posts since many of you are going to be arriving here from the various sources that have been talking about my forthcoming book. (Many thanks to everyone who linked here!) There's also an older post that this one links to, do have a look. Especially on the book structure.

And as a bonus, at the end of the post, the current working cover...(umm, all those who voted, please don't kill me!)

Somewhere along the line, I felt that I had to do something with the huge collection of photographs I had racked up with my obsessive shooting. I'd met someone who had been a photographer once, stopped, moved here from another country, was working software. And was nonetheless planning and pulling off a book on the Kaveri.

A seed for a book was planted. Shooting got focussed and was ratcheted up a fair bit. Then I pulled together what I thought was a decent structure for it, first the chapters and their scope. Then I tried the first tentative layout, showed it around, got my fair share of gentle criticism, redid it a few times before settling on a structure. I wrote and laid out two entire chapters. And then the truly hard part began.

I had to find someone to publish it. The book was going to be about the biodiversity in IISc. So the obvious choice was to take it to IISc, especially since the centenary years around the bend. So began a long process of negotiation. In many ways, very difficult and exhausting, made so partly by my own inexperience and partly by just how things are this end of the world. I had a lot of help and thanks to the folks who helped me along each of the steps of my own negotiation. It made photography look easy and I truly admire people who do this for a living!

The good news is that the negotiation is done!. We've decided on terms, a schedule for meeting them and things have begun to move. Chapters have been submitted and hopefully have gone out for review. (We're scientists, we believe in review. I, for one, am quite grateful for the once over.) All things should be finished sometime middle of this year. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a book on the way!

That there on the top is the current cover, it's changed, and it can again. If you have a favorite that you absolutely think should be the one on the cover, lemme know. May the wisdom of the crowds prevail!

Little more info on book structure here. Sneak peek of opening pages here.

Book dummy no. 1

2008-09-29T15:32:00.003+05:30

Sorry I guess you've been waiting and wondering what I've been upto. So I thought you should have a look at it. That's the first book dummy. The first full print out I taken of the book!

And it has been covered in correction post-its over the next two days. Tonnes of them. It's so much easier to catch mistakes in hard-copy than on a computer screen. But I will never catch them all. I despair! The book goes to the printer by the 1st!

M.I.L.K.: the photo competition

2008-09-19T16:26:00.002+05:30

This sounds like a really nice competition for those of you that might be humanistic photographers. Not least because they have truly fair terms and because its less a competeition more a recruitment of photographers for a book with the added benefit of award money.

Link to competition website

Overview

In 1999, British publisher Hodder Headline (now Hachette Livre) held a global photographic competition called M.I.L.K. (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship). Inspired by the 1950s landmark photographic exhibition, 'The Family of Man', M.I.L.K. began as an epic global search to find unique and geographically diverse images on the themes of friendship, family and love. It was not only the richest in photographic history, but also one of the most significant, drawing participation from 17,000 professional and amateur photographers in 164 countries. In total over 40,000 images were received by M.I.L.K., including at least four Pulitzer Prize winners. The 300 winning images were chosen by the Chief Judge, Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, and were the basis for three books entitled Family, Friendship and Love and an international touring exhibition launched at New York's Grand Central Terminal in 2001.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original M.I.L.K. competition, M.I.L.K. Licensing (now a subsidiary of PQ Blackwell), again in association with Elliott Erwitt, is conducting a new competition founded on the themes of friends, families, lovers and laughter to create a new collection of 150 images. The 150 winning images will be published in a new book entitled Fresh M.I.L.K.: Friends, Families, Lovers & Laughter in Fall 2009, and on selected licensed products.

Link to competition website

Eyecandy number N

2008-09-15T18:03:00.004+05:30

My blogging schedule seems to follow my shooting schedule. And my life's heated up since I came back. The book is breathing down my neck, MS writing and post-doc fellowships and other assorted things-to-do. Some might say I got a life finally! :)

At any rate, shooting is slow to non-existent, and I went today after a long while and this is from today's shoot. I love this image, this lovely soft jungle effect which comes from shooting through trees in low light.

White breasted water hen (click for larger image)

Magic Mushrooms

2008-08-26T18:01:00.002+05:30

Mushrooms and fireflies (my twin obsessions)

Both of those images were made in the field, but the procedure is much the same as used and described (check comments) here before. The first image itself will be up on Redbubble shortly for those who want it to remind them of all those days in the 60s gone by. It just needs a hookah-smoking caterpillar on it, doesn't it?

Extinctions R US

2008-08-18T21:52:00.004+05:30

Kaloula sp., a microhylid found on campus

I found a specimen of the Painted toad and photographed it. Last of the four amphibians I am certain are on campus. There should be more but I don't know for sure. (Older post for context)

And then I was treated to these two stories based on research from this supplement of PNAS. Leakey and Lewin have said before that we have been responsible for extinctions in the past. I think the setting for their scenario was in Africa. A paper from the PNAS issue has a similar theory based on new evidence implicating humans in the extinction of Tasmanian megafauna. Giant sloths, giant kangaroos, marsupial rhinos, leopards, that no longer walk this earth at least partially due to our ancestors.

And then another paper, that implicates us in an ongoing one, that of the amphibians. Where we exacerbate the effects of the fungus that is affecting them through global warming. These animals that have survived four mass extinctions, are too fragile for human messes.

One can only wonder when it's going to be our turn.

Mushrooms and more

2008-08-06T23:19:00.004+05:30

So this weekend, with all my deadlines looming I went took photographs. Why, you ask? Well my trusty Dell, for only the second time in it's four years went *poit*. The adapter had gone bad. And nothing could be got until the week began. Incidentally all things go *poit* on Fridays when you can do little about them.

I took it as a sign that the world wanted me to do something else for a while. Here are some of the results.

Mantis female laying her eggs in an ootheca

A peach one (not quite impudent, how I wish it were)
A purple one

The 80/20 rule

2008-07-31T20:38:00.005+05:30

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink
The monsoons are a terrible time to be sitting on the metaphorical bench

This was never going to happen to me, no, I was too clever for that. Or was I?

I'm no professional photographer. My main income isn't from photography. And yet, all things tend to this state of affairs. Unfortunately my other professional life and my photography have both gone and done it at the same time. And it is deeply unsatisfying and cuss-word inducing....This my 80 % penalty catching up with me.

To echo Benvie, one day I’ll get out to take photos again, I’m sure.

Editing

2008-07-28T18:05:00.002+05:30

And how blogs are places to put the sharp cuts.

There are far too many images crammed into the 224 pages of my book. I am cutting a few out. And I am attempting to be ruthless about it. The hardest to remove are those that are interesting for some reason (the story of how they were shot, the behaviour depicted, etc), but not really upto the mark visually. I'm going to use the blog to make the thing a bit easier to do....

Here's one that is out. (For now. (Commitment-phobe!))

A gruesome little drama plays out on the football field.
A Tawny coaster butterfly remains attached to its mate even
after it has been partially eaten.