soliloquies in the outdoors
‘Twas perchance that I stumbled into Coptic Cairo, after a dusty morning gazing at the pyramids and the early noon spent at the Egyptian museum, we’d planned to visit some market after lunch but the restaurant was close to towering church spires that spurred a change of plan and spooled us into their fold… Somehow, …
Pyramids – they’re full of stone, geometry, and crowds… entrenched in the memory since childhood, as one crammed up the seven wonders of the world, they fade into, as much as they stand out in the desert… architecture at a scale that the modern world keeps trying to fathom, excavating for remnants and clues that …
For a country holding one of the world’s oldest civilizations, and mummies, within its bosom, ‘twas a rather cruel irony to be holed up in a swanky resort town… freshly paved sidewalks, functional fountains and free shuttles… busy doling out rhetoric in another quintessentially exasperating environmental conference proclaiming to be humanity’s (and the planet’s) last …
Temples, those that have been wizened by the meanders of civilization since medieval times, are more often than not draped in a bemused solemnity… been there, seen that… the tomes of religion remain the same, but their interpretations are forever in a state of flux… the monuments lie somewhere in the middle… tangible testimonies of …
Prehistory, one feels at times, deserves to be left alone… for we aren’t doing much with it, except maybe for emojis… there’s no cultures to revere or ancestries to venerate, and consequently, no opinions to subjugate… hardly any narratives soaked in drama… just a clutch of unembellished facts aloof to sensational revelations or discoveries… content …
Musings on an old Parsi cemetery, Ranikhet, Uttarakhand
Holipura Heritage Village, a small (and save for the glossy paint, largely non-descript) board on the road from Agra to Bah announces a potential excursion to those meandering in the ravines of Chambal… that ‘tis a short detour swings the decision in its favour as one turns the car down a narrow bumpy road for …
ruins of forts, beneath their decaying exteriors, are wizened storytellers… at peace with the encroaching shrubbery, defecating humans and tenant bats, as their stories retire into the annals of history, they subtly assume role of observers in stasis… between warrior kings and wasted princes, the sombre chambers let go of the bricks and mortar… the …
If one were to look at the innate motivations that pique one’s curiosity about temple ruins – somewhere in the middle of the animal instinct of seeking shelter from the elements and the intellectual cycle of constructing theories from the deconstructed – it’d be the simple appeal of geometry, large cuboid appearances staring from plinths …
photo essay on vernacular architecture of Western Himalaya