Frank Herbert on truth.
The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Nathdwara, Rajasthan, December 2020.
The whole day I kept my eyes open, sat up, and worked in a blue shirt made of sleep. It’s night again.
The whole day I’ll have to keep my eyes open, sit up, and work in a blue shirt made of sleep. Insomnia.
Coincidences.
As if everything is coincidental. One coincidence after another. Like, me writing this post that, coincidentally, you are reading currently. Coincidentally, flowers keep blooming. Coincidentally, we’re all here, still. So much is coincidental but appears not so, or is reduced to something else, something that makes sense— as if coincidences don’t.
The magnificent blue lake.
Pangong lake, September 2021.
Pangong Tso, Ladakh, India. Taken with my Fujifilm on September 10, 2021 at 10:10, this is one of the 54 photographs I took of this very view, my last glimpse of the lake.
Look how still are its stunning blue waters, how unaware to the conflict between two neighbouring countries that has divided it, how unconcerned about the armies deployed all around it. A soldier or a gun was the last thing I wanted to see in a place as heavenly as this, but this is the “real” world, which we think is ours and can do to it whatever we like but as Frank Herbert put it so wonderfully in his novel Dune:
Do we own this planet or does it own us?
There are consequences — from the planet, you know, the mighty Nature with a capital fucking N — for anything we do against her, even if it’s just drawing invisible borders on one of its most beautiful lakes. There always are.
When I think of this lake, its waters don’t stop flowing at the India-China border, which is actually the India-Tibet border and the other share of the lake belongs to Tibet, not China, just as Tibet is Tibet, not China. So in my mind, just as in reality, it is one whole lake. I think and dream of it wholly, the whole blue lake.
I spent two incredible days living next to it. It was wonderful to see how its colours changed depending on light, sunlight, and time. The many moods of Pangong.
The blue towel.
I wrap, after shower, the wet blue towel over my face and head, a cocoon, and dream of monsoon, and dream until the towel dries and smells of the first rain.
I dreamt of a dream where I wrap my blue towel, wet after a shower, over my face and head, and in the dream dream of monsoon, and only when the towel dries would I come out of the dream within the dream, when it would smell of the first rain — the towel and my dreams.
Workers on a break.
Moonlit snow leopard.
Moonrise.
The moon is rising from behind the mountains here in the Himalaya, plump and heavy-looking. As I’m taking photographs through my window at the base of two mountains, I spot a snow leopard on a western peak. He is sitting on layers of undisturbed snow — so soft in the moonlight, alluring me to throw my arm into the dark night and come up with a fistful. Soft moonlit snow.
I say I spotted him but it feels like he wanted to be seen. The greyish fur stood out enough against the snow in my viewfinder. A small miracle that brought my first-ever sighting. His eyes and fur glowing in the moonlight falling on him. I had made no noise to let him know of my presence but he knew I was there, as if he always knew. And so we stared eye to eye for many minutes. Gazing into his eyes, I felt as if I had come to know why this animal is so elusive.
My dreams converse with the reality. I will always remember his eyes.
My first snow leopard sighting is not unlike my dreams. I will always remember this night.
Whatever.
It’s almost midnight on November 4 2021. 23:47 to be precise. It’s Diwali night. It’s the start of my blog — Ultramarine Diaries — for I once again have the desire to create. To continue to write and take photographs, and now to blog it.