Opening a desert memory in the Himalaya.
A year ago I was in Jaisalmer. I took this photograph on January 01 2021 at 16:32 somewhere in the Thar desert. Sun everywhere, desert everywhere.
The Thar desert, near Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India. January 2021.
Currently I’m in the Himalaya, in Manali, where it’s the opposite. Snow everywhere, mountains everywhere, mountains buried in snow, snow on top of snow.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
This photograph is the desert from a year ago.
A frozen hourglass that I took out of my bag in the Himalaya after a year to share with you. It’s broken at a corner and is shedding sand all over my cold room.
This photograph is the desert from the mountains.
Look… Look at the oceanic waves on these gilded dunes, these little mountains of the great Thar made out of thin air.
Look at the footsteps of camels and people, all looking alike for the desert prefers no footprints — footsteps that the little dunes will eat when the new waves rise in profuse wind from all sides, the endless desert sides.
Look at it as if it’s photographed from the moon — the moon that, when full, looks like a delicious, poisonous orange-red fruit from the desert.
Look at it as if it’s photographed from a camel’s fluffy nose — the desert while standing on the desert, as seen by its favourite animal.
Those who manufacture artificial flowers and plants should be jailed and tortured in solitary cells with nothing but their artificial flowers and plants. Same for those who buy them.
—or, shipped to the red planet via India Post, with nothing but their artificial flowers and plants.
This is punishment #1 from the series Reasonable Punishments.
About Reasonable Punishments
Posts in this series provide punishment recommendations for true crimes. The aim is to recommend reasonable and appropriate punishments that everyone would agree with, punishments that are harsh, but not too harsh.
There may be occasional punishments that everyone would not agree with, but that’s ok. What others think is in reality ignored by the sole writer of Ultramarine Diaries who is dishing out these punishments when he is bored and has absolutely nothing to do.
It’s twenty twenty-two.
It’s a new year but barely feels new. I suspect that’s because the world is still run by the same powerful, greedy, and incompetent morons who were running it just last night and for the last two incredibly fucked-up years, in which they ruined not only two precious years of our lives, but literally our lives forever. The life before the pandemic was life, the normal life — life as it should be, life as it was. Life that will never be again. You’d be a fool to think that life will again be normal. The pandemic-stricken life is a lens through which you see and live it, a filter for your memories of life during and after the pandemic. Whether you are a kid or in your nineties, if you experienced life in the pandemic, the life before it is now an irredeemable past. This is a truth, which I hope most of you still prefer.
It’s 2022, but it’s still 2020. This is not over until it’s over. And when it’ll be over, it’ll still not be over. It’s been 2020 since 2020 — one long, tedious year to say the least.
Anyway. My warm wishes to all of you for the new year. May you find ways to live life, always and no matter what.
Gajar ka halwa.
What can I say about the gajar ka halwa from Manali Sweets in Manali that will ever do justice to its taste. Nothing I’ll say will ever, but here I go anyway.
I had it tonight with my friend Yash in what has become a post-dinner ritual since a week. And I’m blown away every night.
Imagine me lounging in chair, happy — remembering every crush of the halwa in my mouth — when I felt I could see through the concrete ceiling above: a sky of stars and vague clouds in low moonlight.
Imagine me thinking I had some stars with moonlit clouds for dessert, not the halwa.
Imagine me trying to argue that the halwa is better than starry skies, better than moonlit nights.
My tongue is inadequate against the full spectrum of the halwa’s taste, which lurks and lingers for hours and days after leaving the tongue. This is why I never drink water after the halwa, even if it means going to sleep thirsty. Drinking water would mean inviting a more troublesome thirst, that of the halwa.
It is never enough no matter how much I eat it. I’m the hungriest person in the world after having had the halwa.
PS: I wanted to add a photograph of the halwa and it was on my mind earlier today to take one before I eat it. By the time I remembered to take the photograph, I was staring at the white bottom of the bowl.
To memorise and be possessed by Satyajit Ray’s music.
I dream of memorising the marvellous music and songs from Satyajit Ray’s films. I dream of being possessed by it. No other filmmaker in the world has made films so musical, with such singing music. Even speech (dialogues) in Ray’s films have music, even silence.
Consider the swing scene from the film Teen Kanya. The joy on her face is the joy I find in Ray’s music.
Screenshot of the swing scene from Teen Kanya.
I mention this scene because the film’s theme/title song plays during the scene. No words can say how lovely this song is.
Stop reading this post and listen to it 4 times on repeat: Teen Kanya theme song (YouTube)
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
I want to have Ray’s music kanthasth (कंठस्थ) — a beautiful Hindi word with two meanings:
- something stuck in the throat
- learned by heart; memorised
I want to memorise his music and songs so well that they get stuck in my throat for life, so that I can sing them all the time and without mistakes. Like the atmosphere that his music creates in my heart is how I will memorise them — in my heart, at my throat.
… the pleasure of finding out that the music sounds as you had imagined it would, more that compensates for the hard work that goes into it. The final pleasure, of course, is in finding out that it not only sounds right but is also right for the scene for which it was meant.
— Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray with Ravi Shankar, recording music for the 1955 film Pather Panchali. What a beautiful, powerful photograph.
There’s a wonderful documentary film called Music of Satyajit Ray by Utpalendu Chakrabarty that you should see to see the genius, Satyajit Ray, at work and for his thoughts on his music, along with beautiful stories around it.
From the documentary:
There’s no getting away from the fact that no other film director in India has demonstrated the same command of film music as Ray. Ray’s music is imaginative, not melodramatic. Balanced, not exuberant. Functional, not decorative. It is music that grows from the film itself. It seems that Indian cinema is not prepared yet to adopt the language of Ray’s music.
Sadly, this is still the case: that Indian cinema is not prepared yet to adopt the language of Ray’s music. And it’s actually much worse. There’s no Indian cinema. The music sucks. And art is long dead. Our degradation and decline is nowhere as evident as in the art of this cursed century of tech, comfort, and absolute mediocrity and its acceptance.
Agha Shahid Ali on vanished love.
There was only the desert below
The moon touched my shoulder
and I longed for a vanished love
— Agha Shahid Ali
Break your pride, be the Consoler for once—
Bring roses, let my love-illusion remain.
— Agha Shahid Ali
Kahlo on how to live.
because I want to die at noon
when the colours are hottest.
— Frida Kahlo, from What The Water Gave Me: Self-Portrait With Dog And Sun
Summer noon in Pune, Maharashtra, India. April 2019.
Snow on the moon.
Something very ripe in the sky beyond all trees of the world beyond the mountains rose the fruit of night —
— so clear and white. So white and wonderfully exposed. A little foggy ball, a little snowball in the sky, a single white cherry. I’m convinced that it recently snowed over there. I stare and stare, and try to convince those around me that it indeed snowed over there —
— I’ll dream of being unfathomably hungry tonight. I’ll sleep with my eyes wide open so that I don’t forget my late dinner: one ripe fruit with snow all over.
Past midnight, full moon, December 19/20, moonlit snow on the mountains, -10ºC, starry sky, upper-Manali valley, and the chilly breath in my nose.
Life is beautiful.
