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Photographs and Memories

Illustration By Atri

When was this, Ma? There is no response. It’s not because she's trying to remember. It's the guilt of not being able to remember. I know that face.

I turn the page. It’s not the page of a book---those are light and easy to turn, easy enough for even a breeze to move. These pages are heavy, thicker than chart paper. They are the pages of my parents’ old photo album. Unlike the pages of a book, they are black in colour---greyish black, as if all the light has been eaten by the photos, leaving them bereft of light. The pages, therefore, are not light. I know I’m repeating myself. That might be because I’ve already begun metaphorizing them. I have started seeing in them the weight of time, their resistance to being moved.

On the next page is a photo of my mother with her friends. Two of them---Kumkum mashi [aunt in Bengali]; the name of the second I can’t remember. “Is this Annapurna mashi?” I ask Ma.

Ma takes the album from my hands and brings it close to her face, as if this proximity created by space would help her reach closer to where she wants to be in time. “I wonder where Annapurna is now,” she says.

She can’t say the same about Kumkum mashi. We know where she is now. Beyond our reach, beyond the reach of a camera, where most things in life are now kept trapped, for fear of them being taken away from us. In the brackets that hold the span of our mortal lives when we consign them to the strange code we’ve invented to denote our time on earth, Kumkum mashi’s had been closed, some time in the 1980s, when I was in school.

No one knows about Annapurna anymore. The photo, therefore, seems even more precious---that it’s been able to hold a part of Annapurna that Siliguri, her hometown, or her friends couldn’t, or a part of Kumkum that even life couldn’t.

A friend once told me that looking at old photographs with my mother and asking her for the stories around them will lessen some of the sadness that life has accumulated on her face (which is where I see it). And so I am prepared, as one is, when taking out an aged or ailing person on a walk. There’s a target one sets in the head---to reach the end of the park, for instance; mine is to cover this first album.

We’ve barely started. I’m slightly irritated, though I know it’s without reason---my parents have no sense of chronology: They’ve stuck photos in the album arbitrarily.

I’m surprised to see so many strangers in the album. It doesn’t register that, at this point, even my parents are strangers to me, as I was to them. So many names and so many relations---they all seem fictitious, which is probably true, as all relationships are. I look at my mother’s face from time to time---it is, as if, I’m comparing her to the person who she once was. I feel guilty---I’m not sure which person I like more. I love my mother, I remind myself, as if that was necessary.

That is necessary, sometimes, as she battles everyone, most of all herself. At such moments, there is only confusion. She accuses traditions of reason and rationality that come to her from the voices of those who love her, her husband and her children. I know we don’t quite understand. I suspect we don’t try. We want to convert her, to get her on our side, but we’re unwilling to budge, to move to her side. Will this walk through the album help her move to the other side, to the one she knew once?

There are lots of plants and trees in these photos---my parents’ courtship in Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens, the innocent sophistication of ice cream in cups with wooden spoons in their young hands, where the veins still haven’t risen to smell time; there’s also water---fountains in parks, rivers, the sea, me in a bathing tub, wet floors in a couple of photos. It is as if they were discovering water anew through a camera lens. I’ve never felt any such urge to photograph water. I look at my mother again. But she’s not very much older than me.

Only 22 years separate us. She could’ve been an older sister.

In almost all these photos, she’s looking directly at the camera, the way an infant stares at a ceiling fan, for instance. I look at my mother again. Was she more trusting of the camera than she was of people?

“Did you like being photographed?” I ask her. In my hand is a square photo of her. It has fallen out of the grasp of the album, the glue of the clips loosened by age. Perhaps that is what death is---the loss of glue from life---detachment.

My mother is sleeping in this photo; her hair is deep asleep too. It is long, falling out of the pillow on to the floor. I cannot see its end … its ends. I know the history of this photo: I am inside her womb; my father has come back early from office. He takes out his Yashica camera and shoots her sleeping. I imagine the rest---the sound of the shutter waking her up, her sweet protests. I wonder whether I too was startled by the sound of the shutter inside her. Only in this photo---in this album—she is not looking at the camera. What was she looking at, in her sleep? “Did you like being photographed?” I ask her, again.

“That was the only time anyone looked at me,” she replies.

Stunned, I look at her. The tears are in my eyes. She’s staring at the floor.

“I’ve never taken a photo in my life,” she whispers when I get up from the bed to come and hold her. “I’ve never seen you and your brother and your father through a camera. That is why I keep looking at you---so that I remember, even beyond this life. I’m not intelligent like the camera.”

Photographs and Memories

Windows play an important role in every house. And yet, these essential features are often overlooked when homes are constructed or refurbished. Keep the following tips in mind while building or renovating.

Answer a need: Evaluate rooms to identify what purpose a window would best serve. Bedrooms need natural light and privacy; dining areas should feel airy and spacious; kitchens have practical needs such as easy cleaning and plenty of ventilation.

The right direction: “Check the orientation of your house or plot,” says Delhi-based architect Mallika Kumar. “West-facing windows need protection from summer heat; north-side windows bring in softer light; the east lets in bright morning sunshine.”

Protection first: Window materials determine aesthetics but, more importantly, they should protect your interiors from bad weather, dust, pollution, humidity, pests and ambient noise. So, whether wood, steel, aluminium or uPVC, choose what suits the environment in which you live. 

Manage temperatures: Make energy-efficient choices that will ease up power bills and maintenance costs. Window design, type of glass, glazing, insulation and seals can all greatly help warm or cool your rooms.

Complement interiors: Make windows the focal point of a room through different styles and shapes. They can also frame a great view, which will add to a room’s décor.

Experiment with glass: Have fun with the numerous available glass types, such as textured (frosted, etched or bubbled) to diffuse light, stained or tinted to add a pop of colour or mirrored for privacy

Clandestine In Delhi

• Revealing local legends from hidden monuments, tucked away in unknown corners of the capital. Cover image: Tomb of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaqs Shah
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  Tomb of Mohammad Shah, Lodi Garden: An octagonal tomb built of lime and stone whose dome springs from a 16-side drum, this tomb belonged to the third king of the Saiyyid dynasty, Sultan Mohammad Shah. Locally known as Mubarak Khan Ka Gumbad, there are many graves inside but the identity of those buried in them is unknown.
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  Dadi Poti ka Gumbad, Hauz Khas: Built during the Lodi era (1451-1526 CE), this duo of tombs is known both as Dadi Poti ka Gumbad and Biwi Bandi ka Gumbad. According to local lore, a noble lady built the larger tomb for herself and the smaller one either for her poti (granddaughter) or bandi(serving lady and friend).
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  Chor Minar, Hauz Khas: This 13th-century minaret was built by Alauddin Khilji to strike fear in the hearts of the masses. As per legend, the 225 holes in the tower were used to exhibit the severed heads of thieves.
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  Jami Masjid, Firoz Shah Kotla: The mosque, built in 1354 CE, was so grand that Timur ordered a similar one to be made in Samarqand. Today not much of it remains. The entrance door of the mosque faces north, as the Yamuna flows very close to its eastern walls. Prayers are offered here daily until today

Sunflowers

• The sunflower is not only named after the celestial body, the plant is also heliotropic ...
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  ... meaning it turns, blooms and leaves, towards the sun’s life-giving light as it arches across the sky every day. Although this usually yellow-blooming beauty originates from America, today it is at home all around the globe. With more than 9 m in height, the tallest known sunflower, in fact, came from Germany—so much taller than the flower’s average height of 2 m that it made it into the 2015 Guinness Book of World Records.

A River Runs Through It

• Contemplative images made during morning walks along the Hooghly in Kolkata. Photographs and text by Bandeep Singh

  Like many great cities of the world, Kolkata also flourished on the banks of a river. The Hooghly, a distributary of Ganga, flows about 260 kilometres south through Kolkata before draining into the Bay of Bengal. Image: Riverside parking lot.
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  Image: Customary beginnings and a travelling Ganesha
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  Image: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
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  Image: Birthing a goddess
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  Image: The stand-up saloon
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  Image: The diver among the amateurs
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  Image: Early morning manoeuvres at one of the many akharas
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  Image: Riverside parking lot
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  Image: Finding the solitude within

Quest For The Amrit Kumbh

• Millions of faithful assemble at the Kumbh Mela, the most sacred of Hindu pilgrimages, to bathe in the waters of a holy river and gain redemption from sin

  Kumbh Mela 2019 is being held in Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh. During the two month-long festivities, the city appears transformed by the thousands of colourful tents, temporary halls and makeshift shelters, built to accommodate millions of visitors.
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  Deeply revered and respected, religious gurus and priests arrive riding splendid, golden chariots—a sign of their elevated station in Indian society. They are accompanied by an entourage of followers and security staff, who maintain order amongst the massive, often frenetic crowds.

  Photo credit: Shekhar Soni/India Today
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  According to popular belief, Prayagraj is one of four locations on earth where drops of amrit (the elixir of eternal life) fell while the pitcher (kumbha) it was carried in was being spirited away by the gods to protect it from evil forces trying to acquire it. Made holy by the spilt nectar, the waters of the river are believed to purify and cleanse the souls of all who bathe in it. Traditionally, gurus, who dedicate their lives to their faith, are the first to bathe.

  Photo credit: Pramod Pushkarna/India Today
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  One of the important events of Kumbh Mela involves the arrival, en-masse, of the members of an akhara, a group or sect of Hindu ascetics. The most striking of these are the ash covered Naga sadhus who perform some of the most severe austerities and sacrifice all material things, including clothes, on their path to spiritual absolution.

  Photo credit: Raghu Rai/India Today
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  Before they can participate in the bathing ritual, devotees must reach the Triveni Sangam—the confluence of three holy rivers—Ganga, Yamuna and the invisible Saraswati. To do so, they must make their way across floating bridges specially constructed for the event. Hundreds of labourers work months in advance to build and make ready more than 1,700 hollow metal cylinders known as pontoons to hold 22 bridges aloft the river. Each buoyant bridge is strong enough to bear the daily weight of millions of people, vehicles and animals crossing over it.

  Photo credit: Alamy
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  For the first time in this centuries-old festival, the 2019 Kumbh Mela welcomed the Kinnar Akhara, a religious congregation comprising transgender Hindu ascetics. The group entered the event amidst massive celebrations, joyful laughter and loud cheering from the surrounding crowd. Led by the famed trans-rights activist Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi, members of this akhara took a dip in the Sangam on the opening day of the festival, becoming the first transgender group ever to do so.

  Photo credit: Alamy
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  The Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj is held on dates during which (according to astrological belief) the Ganga is imbued with the power of spiritual immortality. Pilgrims reach this hallowed ground to perform the age-old practice of a shahi snan or royal bath in the sacred waters, which, they believe, leaves them blessed by the divine and closer to the ultimate goal of Hindu belief—moksha, or liberation from the cycle of life and death.