Shot using: Canon Powershot A95
Location :Ramana Maharshi Park, Bangalore
Time: Around 6.30 PM
Settings: Program Mode, ISO 50
Zoom: A little
Tripod: Yes
Comments: Bangalore has some nice old buildings here and there. And when these structures are found in any of the numerous parks, they make nice subjects for night photography. I am very pleased with my camera’s performance in low light. And of course, my tripod is great!

Every one of us would have at some point of time stood at cross-roads and wondered which direction to take. It could have so happened that some past traveller, in their moment of confusion, interchanged the signboards or mislead you. And hence, it could be possible that you took the wrong road. And probably that’s why you are here, reading this now.

Ok, that was a stupid joke. But the fact that the cross-roads is here and now isn’t. We have, over the years, tried to build a life where everything is measurable, predictable and within the pages of some big encyclopedia. And since when I can remember, I have refused to believe what I’ve been told. I have always lived a life of validation. I have treated the cross-roads of my life as the answer to the many questions I’ve always had. And guess what - the monkey liked it!

Now you must be wondering which monkey I am talking about. Well, in one of my previous posts I linked to a page which had a funny story by a good friend. He talks about the un-evolved monkey in all our heads, fighting, jumping about and generally creating nuisance. And look around. What he says pretty much true!

Although I agree with him about the monkey in me, I don’t think that the monkey has stopped evolving. If there is any thing that saddens me more, it is the fact that we are living in times in which shallow relationships, stupid dogmas, unethical practices, lustful pastimes and the rest have created a situation where evolution is the last thing on anyone’s mind. Evolution? Hello? I’m too busy doing what they told me to do. I’ll earn my two letter degree and find a good job and whatddya know - I’ll marry by age 25 and breed more mon…err..kids! I’ve got it all figured!

Unfortunately, it seldoms happens like that. Unfortunately, it’s never possible to escape arriving at a cross-road. And years of devolution have made the sign boards untrustworthy. You were probably all monkey and not man. But it is possible that you arrived at some fork and never realised that it’s time to make the monkey wiser. It’s possible that you gave in to all what they said and tried to live happily ever after. You probably had other monkeys to take care of, and couldn’t chose higher ground.

I arrived at a mental cross-road today. I had to make the monkey listen to the man in me. But it wasn’t easy. The man feels small. This world looks like one big zoo to him. Full of overgrown monkeys. He feels trapped in a cage meant for monkeys. But I know I am standing at the cross-roads, waiting for a little sign, a little something to show me the way to farther shores. I am watching the monkey and the man. I am watching the road. I am also watching her…..

Where I live…

I am not even 3 months into my digital photography trip, and I’m already yearning for an SLR. The learning curve with my first Digicam was pretty high in the beginning, but now it’s more fun than “duh, what button do i press?”
Actually, good old film sometimes takes the fun out of learning photography. For one, developing all those rolls involves spending money. And the waiting time is too long for someone as restless as me. Digital obviously eliminates these two shortcomings of film. Three cheers for Digital!

I wouldn’t have come this far without the help of some of the very informative & friendly forums. I visit DPreview (the Canon forum especially) almost religiously, and JJMehta’s forum also finds my presence ocassionaly. Incidently, I got my tripod from JJMehta.

While I am at it, I thought I should also thank good friend Khan for introducing me to my two new girlfriends - Shutter Speed and Aperture Priority. Yeah dude, I am learning how to strike a balance between the two
It has been great going so far. My little Canon A95 is tops, and I hope to someday own a better camera. Something along the lines of a Canon EOS. My only crib about the A95 is lack of RAW support. For the uninformed, RAW is Digital photography’s equivalent of film. The camera stores the image’s unprocessed information in RAW, and hence is a preferred format (over JPEG). The Canon G6 has RAW available, but is twice the cost of the A95

Will hopefully put up a short photography guide sometime. Maybe on my website, when I update it next?

Meanwhile, check this out.

When I chose this title for my blog, I never imagined this day to come. This day when the words of the song ‘Breathe‘ by Pink Floyd, from where the title of my blog was chosen, would be so apt for a certain someone, a friend, who is the newest visitor to my blog.

Welcome friend. Read these words. They were written for you
“Breathe” (Waters, Gilmour, Wright)

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

There was a family get together last night. One of my cousin is getting married today, so yesterday was the ‘day-before-the-wedding’ getting together of the bride’s and groom’s families. As expected, a lot of my relatives where present at the function - people whom I really don’t interact with, but smile anyway because it is basic courtesy.

I was standing next to my mom, just about ready to leave {after a sumptuous meal ;)} when a lady, probably as old as my mother, came up and began speaking to us. My mom looked at her and introduced me, and this lady’s eyes sparkled as she told me with a huge smile “I have seen you once, when you were a three month old baby. We had come to your place in Madras, and you were sleeping blissfully then.” I was dumbfounded!! What a memory!! The way she spoke made it look like she had seen me just yesterday, thumb sucking, cradle and all!! Boy!!

I met an old friend online yesterday. It’s funny, coz when I say old, I mean two things: One, we go back many years. It was a chance meeting at a bookstore that got us talking and he shared a rather similar taste in music. Well, the similar taste was only to an extent; while I was all Gn’R, he was all Metallica.

The other reason why I saw old, is because I have always felt that he was too old for his age. He was an old soul trapped in a young body. This also caused us to discuss stuff beyond our age. Boy, we did have a lot of mind-expanding conversations, eh?
Anyways, he is now in Germany, supposedly studying, but nevertheless getting drunk most of the time. It’s now an old joke between us that he may not live to see many dawns…well…not because he’s gonna pass out regularly…but because he may never wake up one day. His dad died of alcoholism (much before I knew him) and they say it runs in the family. Do I feel sad? Strangely no…

Yea, so I met him online after a really long time. I haven’t seen or heard much from him for two years, so it was a pleasant surprise. Refreshing, I should say, considering that I don’t have too many such conversations these days. It was a good feeling of connecting over some nostalgic frequency, talking about music and mental degenaration (his, not mine). And of course the drinking..

Shot using: Canon Powershot A95
Location: Lalbagh, Bangalore
Time: Around 6.00 PM
Settings: Program Mode, ISO 50
Zoom: Max
Tripod: No
Comments: A very funny scene..and i was like “damn, wish i had more zoom”

IMG_0529_small
Originally uploaded by nidrajiva.

Shot using: Canon Powershot A95
Location: Sankey Tank, Bangalore
Time: Around 7.00 PM
Settings: Program Mode, ISO 50
Zoom: A little
Tripod: Yeah, yeah!
Comments: A lampost…and insects insanely flocking around it…What do you see in this?..

No, we can’t. It is totally irrational to expect everyone to get along. If there is any mistake we are commiting, it is raising our expectations to a level where we believe that everyone can just be friends.

And the other extreme is when we expect everyone to understand why we don’t get along. When we try hard to ascertain the fact that we are different. Some people go to great lengths to prove ‘This is how I am’.

It is not to say that I havent foolishly believed that everyone can get along. Or have not tried to prove my uniqueness. At times I have, rather naively, seen this world through rose coloured glasses. But i have fallen, picked myself up, and learnt my lessons. Sometimes, only to repeat the same mistake again.

But beyond the basic truth that we are all quibbling meat-things living in a world that believes that ‘no man is an island’, is a certain mental landscape that is way beyond, above and far from the uncertainities of human irrationalities. This mental homstead is a beatiful place where everyone needn’t get along. It is more of a state of conciousness, than a place with a zipcode. But to live in that almost dream-like state of mind one needs to be able to get over a few basic tendendencies.

The first tendency, which is human and hence not uncommon, is dependency. I believe that we should all be raised to be independent souls. We can then perform much better in our lives. But as I already mentioned, ‘no man is an island’ or, ‘Lays - You can’t eat just one’ is what we have been brought up to believe. And I have taught myself to believe otherwise.

But unfortunately, it isn’t very simple to start believing new things. For ages we have built cliche after cliche to make sure that we are tied-up and tied-down in layers and layers of complicated made-up relationships. Like marriage. And everything is such a viscious cycle there after.

So to start with, we need to break free…