soliloquies of a footloose
Quite literally, the blue sheep lives on the edge… marvel many a folk at the sheer nonchalance of the caprid in the face of vertical walls… yet ‘tis a rather ironic quest for safety, for even the most exceptional climbing skills or large herd numbers fail to get them out of that twitchy demeanour – …
photo essay on vernacular architecture of Western Himalaya
‘tis the season when pine burns, and we lament the colonial lumberjacks whose commercial legacies reverberate through the plumes of smoke afore the horizon, the natural transcends into the political and the tree is duly vilified… its canopy an invitation for the sun and cigarette butts to raise an inferno, its dry, acidic leaves a …
A temple is a kernel around which settlements, permanent or temporary, are spun… across history and religions, they have laid the ground rules for civilizations, defined the contours of culture and cradled the arts… one might say it comes at a price though… an opacity of belief and conviction beyond which societies offer little incentive …
the way we mistreat water more or less defines the way we mistreat the gods, cleaving away the elements to deprive divinity of its roots and imprisoning it in a seclusion that can leave even the most devout stymied at times… yet one feels that this thought is more of an urban construct, as a …
come the cusp of rains receding into autumn, those mountain meadows are a sight to behold… while the rest of the senses are trying to figure out the nitty-gritty of navigating through the chaos beneath that seemingly innocent carpet of green… the outdoors from a macro perspective prefer dressing up conservatively for most part of …
what does the mountain seek from a bird?… music for one, since most of the other fauna seems too preoccupied with wrapping its mortality into complex layers of camouflage… the avifauna is smug, teasing the wayfarer into rummaging through the thickets for a glimpse of the song… simply on the dint of its ability to …
mountains make their own weather, goes the old adage… what it forgets to mention is that they keep it too… only letting the last vestiges of moisture tumble downstream… in a fiefdom determined by relief, the environs are pristine and breathtaking… yet they exact a price, these pinnacles, for bestowing one with the true liberation …
surprisingly ubiquitous — that’d be how one could sum up the modern day prayer flag, an instrument of purification turned into a static, decorative artefact by the forces of internet and the travel it has induced over the past couple of decades… a codification of beliefs residing in animism mass retailing on Alibaba for half …
the sense of expansiveness brings about a longing… a desire to partake in all but not knowing what in… one yearns for a past built upon the corrected plinths of the present… the mountain becomes more a curtain than a barrier, never refusing a passage but strongly suggestive of moving on… the elements become a …