soliloquies of a footloose
The farmer belongs to the romanticized sect of imagination, weaving his craft across the terra firma in symphonies attached firmly to the cycles of the sun, from days to seasons to generations… a lilting lore of never-ending toil, pain and suffering, of mute courage and resolve that seeks benediction from the land… agriculture is perhaps …
Winter solstice – the longest night – one end of the seesaw from whose embers daylight begins to claw back… it is dreamy, surreal time in the mountains, when contrasts of autumn are overtaken by misty monochromes of cold… for darkness is a time of reminiscence, and as the solstice approaches it gains in strength… …
Musings on geometrical patterns and their visual perceptions in mountain landscapes, especially the interplay of fractals and triangles…
If one looks at it from the perspective of ‘being’, or ‘consciousness’, insects can be intriguing… their interactions with humans are mostly harmless, the nature of their existence is seemingly linear and unassuming, even mundane maybe, yet they stand out enough for them to superimpose their behaviours and characteristics upon us… social organization, collective intelligence, …
Trek to Raktisar, source of Sainj River, Great Himalayan National Park, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India
There’s little that lichens can be likened to, for in the realms of science where order and categorization are the sanctified decrees, they tramp around like atheist in a papacy, a concoction of symbioses so abstruse that one is often flummoxed by the humility of their existence despite all the biological pomp beneath… Fungus, algae, …
One should stick to trails that aren’t suitable for mules, if a higher degree of isolation is what one seeks in the mountains… for where the beasts of burden can trudge, humanity eventually finds a way to carve out an abode, be it villages dotting valley floors or transhumance in the higher climes… while in …
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 …