A lust for life (and lenses)

Or, since I have already managed to get myself a Nikon 600 mm f/4, what I am lusting for now is an as light as possible tripod (Gitzo series 5?) and as versatile and maneuverable gimball head arrangement (Wimberly? or Jobu Design Black Widow?) so that the lens is supported, stable, etc, etc

As opposed to being a deadweight that cannot be raised to eye level for shooting birds.

Aren't these -- the tripod and gimball head arrangement -- unnecessary accessories that will be put away in some convenient corner and gather dust? After all, that is what happens to most tripods, by virtue of their weight and unwieldy nature, it is not?

Ummm...well, I hate tripods and would rather handhold my lenses all the while. And I have managed pretty well all these while (the Sigma 150-500 is more or less a pygmy in terms of weight when compared to the Nikon 600 mm, but its no featherweight, all said and done). And over the last couple of weekends I have managed to do a lot of shooting with the 600 mm, totally hand-held and also by bracing it here and there (including my knee, etc) but the fact remains that it progressively ends up becoming a deadweight.

To get an idea of what I am saying, think of a scenario from a Hindi film, just after a gunfight in which one of the characters (mostly the villain) has taken a bullet but is still trying to raise his gun, summoning all the remaining vestiges of strength in his body and yet, fails, to either pass out or die. In my case, there are no bullets involved and nor is there any blood, but a bird looking at me with a mischievous glint in its eye while I am straining the sinews of shoulders and biceps and arms to hold the lens steady to squeeze off a shot...

And yes, most of the time I am able to squeeze of the shot as well...but

So, the lust for a carbon fiber tripod and a sufficiently advanced gimball head continues.

*****

Meanwhile, at the buffalo wallow (a buffalo wallow that is as full as it has ever been, in the last 3+ years that I have birded around it) a pair of Darters have taken up residence in addition to the numerous Cormorants (great and small) that are there from morning to evening. As have a pair of Purple Herons, in addition to the the Great Egrets and the Blue Herons that are there from morning to evening. Which means that I see a lot of fish getting caught and I keep missing "capturing" the moment "perfectly" (read full-frame and in absolutely sharp detail) mostly because I am a bit distant or because the bird gobbles the fish too fast or because the light is wrong or so on and so forth...

But catch the moment pretty soon I will, pretty soon...

And hopefully it will be when I will have the lens mounted on the Vanguard Auctus 283 AT that I have recently acquired and hence relatively stable as well! 

Also back at the buffalo wallow (while a reed bed grows) is a Common Kingfisher. I mean I have seen only one as of now (incidentally the lady) but I am sure the other is around as well. And, something tells me it is Lil' Blue which is back.

About time, about time -- it was around now last year that they strayed into my life, to progressively grow more and more familiar and to make me feel accepted. In the process, making me promise that I will bring out Stray Birds in their honour. Would this year mean even closer encounters?   

Speaking of which, I have already had one close encounter with Lady Lil' Blue -- saw her ensconced deep in the shadows of a thorn tree, went to ground as efficiently and soundlessly as a well trained hound and then fired away at something close to minimum focus distance (of around 6 meters) for more or less 10 minutes. I swear, I felt the bird was aware of me. And I would have got a couple of "perfect" shots as well (unimpeded sight of the bird, without any branches or leaves in between and with the bird in the light) by and by, slowly slithering through the dirt and slime, but then a Chatak came and landed on the thorn clump as if it belonged to it and our friend Lady Lil' Blue took off...

******

All this talk of lusting -- for a camera, a lens, a tripod, etc, etc -- is peculiarly not much off the mark considering how obsessively I photograph birds. Its even lesser off the mark when one remembers the madness with which I set out birding in March / April / May of this year; the costly visits to Uttarkhand and Bor, and the almost-daily jaunts all around my place in 45 degree plus temperatures.

But that is how it is, maybe -- sometimes its a madness that keeps you sane.

And yet, by comparison with someone like Van Gogh (his autobiography is titled "A lust for life") how mad can I consider my own obsessive streak to photograph birds? How much of what I capture is art? Yet, there are similarities -- I lug around a lot of gear, in all probability I lug around more weight than he did, in his quest to paint his subjects as seen in natural light, in situ.

And yes, my ears bother me (though I will never cut them off) more than his ever bothered him.  

Meanwhile, I am assailed by sore wrists, thews, biceps, shoulders, lats, back, knees, thighs and (dead) feet. No, I have not joined back a gym or survived a duel with Conan, the barbarian, just lugging around 10 kilos of gear and photographing birds -- over yet another weekend.

But this is a good pain to have, I will say. 

                    

Stray Birds in Bangalore -- Postponed

Just a quick update.

My book launch and photography exhibition at B'lore, Stray Birds has been postponed to November.

The opening (of the exhibition) and the book launch will now be on November 9th.

And the exhibition will be ongoing till November 16th.

More updates to follow.

Why is this event getting postponed, you ask?

Cold feet is one reason -- I have a lot of trepidations about lugging all my photography gear, about Bangalore, etc., etc.

What to exhibit is another reason -- I have too many photographs of too many birds; selecting from a gazillion of these feathered folks is no easy task. Then again, this is art -- and always a Work In Progress.

Work -- yes, that's the primary reason.

November isn't that far away; meanwhile I have canceled a train ticket and Stray Birds has been postponed.       

Stray Birds in Bangalore

This was under consideration for sometime.

I mean the good folks at Thalam have kept an invite open for almost 3 months now.

But as is my wont (as befits someone who uses hearing aids and would rather be behind the camera than in front of it) I have been diffident.

Which is a trifle unfair to the book and the photographs I take -- to the Stray Birds, considering how successful the launch and show at Hyderabad was.

Anyway, here it is now, more details soon, please watch this space.

P.S. -- Photography exhibitions are certainly peculiar animals (logistics wise)...what goes without saying is that this one will be as much of a learning experience for me as the first one was; what doesn't is that I bloody wish I had a car now, a car capacious enough for me to load all the framed prints (read  exhibits) and highway it to Bangalore. Which means I have minimum issues logistics wise and maximum control (artistic, artistic) on what I exhibit.

Oh well, not that I bloody know how to drive.      

Doggerel?

A lot of what I write, what is allegedly poetry, what has gone into three books -- a substantial number of the copies of which have been bought and (even liked) by various people who have become readers and then friends (or the other way round) -- is personal.

It was never meant to be so, I am not someone who is milking an udder here, nor am I flogging a dead horse. In the way that it transpires, my life has been such, I have faced various vicissitudes and I have dealt with them, the way I could best.

Writing poetry has helped and in all probability my books (and the poems in them) are some kind of not-so-ordered-or-chronological chronicle of the life and times of Anand Vishwanadha.

A personal chronicle, mind.

The degree of "personal" doesn't make me any less a poet and doesn't mean I don't slog at writing what I do; a lot goes into my poetry and most of the time I write it the way I want to. So I am happy with it, the way any artist would be with the end result, most of the time at-least.   

So imagine my shock and sense of hurt and anger when (on sharing a poem from Stray Birds) the moderator of a Facebook Group called Indian Poetry replies to my post in more or less the following vein

"The cold is real
 the real is cold...

...I gather in power
whenever I shower.."

I must say two things here itself.

One -- I never joined this group, I was just added to it, one fine day (and yes, as I am rarely active on any of the Facebook Groups, being the recluse that I am, this was incidentally my first post there).

Two -- It would seem this group is moderated by a gent called Philip Nikolayev and is backed by "The internationally renowned Journal of Poetry -- Fulcrum" and has a strict "No doggerel allowed" rule. You post doggerel and you are removed.

Who likes which poem and who dislikes which is subjective; and I for one have never believed in judging anyone's poetry. In all probability if Philip Nikolayev had deleted my post (thinking / considering it to be doggerel), I would have been fine with it, after all it is YOUR group you can run it the way you want to.

But posting the way he did, posting in doggerel was a bit insulting, uncouth and uncalled for, was it not?

So, naturally I asked if he wanted to ban himself.

And as naturally, he removed me from the group.

That wasn't anything earth-shattering either. But what happened thereafter was. Enlightening that is. Because I told Facebook about this incident.

And what happens? Nothing.

Yes, nothing. Which is particularly surprising considering that almost half the people on my Facebook are Indian Poets and these are all pretty active on my Facebook too. Yes, no one (apart from one reader / friend / occasional poet) had anything comforting to say to me; far from showing solidarity with me (I know the very idea is laughable considering how badly I am networked and how artless my poetry is).

What a defeat this is no, this inability to make an ingress into the cliques of Indian Poets?

On the other hand, seriously speaking, this shows how utterly un-Indian Indian Poets of today are; allowing themselves to be "moderated" by a downright rude and borderline boorish Russian who bosses them around on behalf of a prestigious American Journal of Poetry.

Good riddance for me, that I don't belong in any of those cliques, is all I can say.

And yes, up yours Philip Nikolayev, whoever the eff you are!    

    
    

Treebark

Its only when you have written them,
only when you have consigned them to time
like a four or five letter word uttered artlessly
or a spicule of your spit
that the wind blows away into the night
of the road behind your motorcycle

Its only after putting the distance
of your years in between
that you know, your poems were preoccupations
a vain affair with words, even.
The earth has wrinkled, treebark has aged
while you were outgrowing them.

On a different kind of walkabout

At something close to 6 kilos, this is more bazooka (or LMG) than a lens.

But make no mistake about it, a lens it is and a bloody marvelous one at that -- as fine a culmination (and celebration) of physics and optics as is humanly possible.

I am talking of my newly acquired 600 mm f/4, I am talking of this 

So then, how did a poet who was flirting with financial ruin and poverty manage to acquire something as costly as two (or even three) cars?

Mostly because of another loan (like in case of the other 600, the D-600 -- a camera --that I had acquired).

So, in terms of relationships of the financial kind, I now have another EMI to add to my Housing EMI, but yes, it will get paid and it will get paid bloody soon.

Because the Birdman doesn't like owing anyone.

Especially not for a 600mm f/4 beauty.

Now that I have taken that off my chest, a few things about how this is more bazooka (or LMG or Rocket Launcher) than lens. The first day I tried photographing with it, my left bicep gave up on me, swelling up / cramping as if I have arm-wrestled with Hulk Hogan. I got back home within barely a hour, counting the steps back, worried that I will "drop" the deadweight of the monster thing.

The second time was better, the third more so. The morning after, as I write this, my biceps, shoulders and almost all of upper body still feels as if I have just got out of a grueling gym session, but then those are pains any birder can live with.  

Here's looking forward to more such walkabouts with this beautiful marvel of technology that lets me live the gift of my eye.

And as I am already saying again and again, if nothing else, carrying all that weight around will help me lose some. 

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

-- Seamus Heaney

(And by God he stuck to it and kept digging; did he not? For all of forty years. RIP Seamus Heaney!)

For those who teach others to hear :-)

Paradoxically -- for someone who has always been afflicted by gravitas, has always been serious and aloof -- I have constantly seen myself as an eternal child, someone who hasn't really grown up.

Now firmly in my forties, with the hair on my head showing more salt than pepper, I feel no older -- maybe because of the more-than-a-decade of motorcycling ingrained in me, or because of the artless (and awestruck) poems that I write, or because of the borderline juvenile obsession with which I photograph birds (and nature).

But its not because of the way I am, or because of what I do that I feel most like a child, it is because of my ears.

Increasingly, across the last 3-4 years, it is when I have persisted in looking for a solution (while dealing with the light-headedness and headaches arising from hearing aid trials and audiology sessions) continuing to battle my aural frustrations, it is when I have been to institutes like AYJNIHH or AURED, that I have felt the maximum import of being Hard of Hearing; felt lost and defenceless (like a child?) and struggled to deal with the utter defeat -- of not knowing an adult way to come to terms with it.

But it is also at these institutes that I have felt like a child in another way, felt a kinship with the 4 and 5 year old kids running pell-mell in the corridors unmindful of the large hearing aids draped over their ears (technically called Behind The Ear instruments) wondering at how their ears can tolerate the din (simplistically speaking, most hearing aids are bad at filtering out noises; unless they are programmed -- but when programmed, they damp speech too).

It is here again that I have met the amazing people who teach these children to do something that most of us take for granted.

Teach them to hear.

Teach them to speak.

Teach them that they are special, that they are loved, that they are expected to go out in the world and do wonderful things (like other normal children are taught to).

Teach them with a belief and selflessness that would touch even the most cynical amongst us, with a conviction that belies mainline epithets like "Children of a lesser God" or "differently abled" or even "hearing handicapped".

Teach them to never stop trying, to never give up.

It is because of interacting with teachers like these, because of being touched by their grace that I (in my own frustrated adult way) never stop trying to hear.

It is because of knowing them that I refuse to be deaf.

Happy Teachers Day to all such teachers out there, to those who devote their lives to making special children's lives special.

Because, though love, life and the road have taught me numerous lessons in turn, it is only you who have inspired me to continue the koshish, to make the most of the gifts that I have been given.

P.S. -- I have purposefully stayed away from my blog for a bit, this was written on Teachers Day and incidentally after I had been to AURED Mumbai (to look for a Cochlear Implant for myself). This isn't exactly a comprehensive take on my own increasing defeats with the aural element in my life, and I have not been directly "taught" by any of the teachers I refer to, since my interactions with most of them have had to do with getting hold of a better hearing aid for myself...but then, I have still been lucky enough to be touched by their grace. So this tribute. So to say.

And, ummm...hey, this was first published on Facebook!  

मेरा कुछ सामान...

मेरा कुछ सामान तुम्हारे पास पड़ा हैं
सावन के कुछ भीगे भीगे दिन रखे हैं
और मेरे एक ख़त में लिपटी रात पडी हैं
वो रात बुझा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

पतझड़ हैं कुछ, हैं ना ...
पतझड़ में कुछ पत्तों के गिरने की आहट
कानों में एक बार पहन के लौटाई थी
पतझड़ की वो शांख अभी तक काँप रही हैं
वो शांख गिरा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

एक अकेली छत्री में जब आधे आधे भीग रहे थे
आधे सूखे, आधे गिले, सुखा तो मैं ले आयी थी
गिला मन शायद, बिस्तर के पास पडा हो
वो भिजवा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

एक सौ सोलह चाँद की रातें, एक तुम्हारे काँधे का तील
गीली मेहंदी की खुशबू, झूठमूठ के शिकवे कुछ
झूठमूठ के वादे भी, सब याद करा दो
सब भिजवा दो, मेरा वो सामन लौटा दो

एक इजाजत दे दो बस
जब इस को दफ़नाऊँगी
मैं भी वही सो जाऊँगी

From the Hindi movie Izazzat, directed by Gulzaar; the lyrics of this song are also (of course) by him.

Not surprisingly, I haven't seen this movie, and (very very surpisingly) never really heard this song. For me, that means I don't have the good fortune of enjoying its soulful solace by singing it to myself the way I have sung other songs, the way I still sing other songs (which I had heard when I could hear, which tunefully reside in me).

Since I have used words like "soulful" and "tunefully" maybe I need to also clarify that I am leagues away from being a musical virtuoso, but since I largely sing to an audience of two (my ears or my bemused parents) it doesn't really matter much.

Maybe it also doesn't matter that "Samaan" translates to "Baggage" in English; I won't lie to myself to say that I have dropped my baggage and yet, I have this quaint satisfaction (just for the record) of not letting the maudlin nature of my muse run riot.

And yes, I am not sleeping as of yet.