Time on the rooftop of a haveli.
Time is the blackest evil, a disease worse than tuberculosis. It runs around the eternal havelis of Mandawa, and—
eats and eats and eats.
Dot by black dot, it envelops the haveli like a cosmic plague of black spots.
In this photograph taken during the lab-made COVID-19 pandemic, I witnessed a natural pandemic of time on the haveli walls, from the ground to the rooftop.
Rooftop of a timeless haveli. Mandawa, Rajasthan, India. January 2021.
This is what it looks like when time is on the rooftop of a haveli, eating it carelessly. In the presence of the departing sun and the moon that has arrived too soon.
I stood on the rooftop, not moving, as if I was frozen in time to a time that now looks too ancient and false. Frozen to a time of Maharajas and splendid life, which is what the present time is eating before my eyes.
The Ghibli bus at night.
Past midnight, humid and boring night, five days ago. I’m on my balcony in Bhadrash village in Himachal Pradesh, looking at the road going across on the other side of the valley.
Suddenly, a local bus passes on the road, decorated with colourful blinking lights and blaring that old-style, musical horn.
It is actually a bus from a Studio Ghibli film, jumping and twisting itself while running, and gobbling down vehicles randomly.
Birds of the Ana Sagar lake.
Suddenly, I remembered Rajasthan and thought of sharing a photographed instant with you.
Migratory birds at the Ana Sagar lake. Ajmer, Rajasthan, India. January 2021.
Kali in the dog’s mouth.
It’s a blue day, sunny, after the rains and everything is shining. And it is hot.
From my balcony on the first floor that is high enough to feel like the second floor, I see a beautiful black dog pass by on the grassy road underneath. His tongue is out as if he is carrying it somewhere. And the tongue, the glittering wet tongue, it is incredibly red—
—it reminds me of the goddess Kali, in her angry incarnation of Durga. She is dark blue and her tongue red like blood.
I saw Kali in the black dog’s mouth as he walked past my house.
Goals for the next two years.
- exercise every day — get fit and get ripped
- make a blue book out of this blog
- don’t be a lousy idiot, no bad habits
Bleeding mountains.
The mountains of the Himalaya are sliced without their permission to make roads upon which ugly vehicles will pass. Where they are cut, sand along with little rocks spill out continuously.
Those who sliced the mountains are also tasked with keeping the roads clean. The sand is cleaned off every day, and every day more sand arrives on the road quietly.
The sand is not sand but blood — golden-yellow and rough. The mountains that have stood here for centuries are now wounded and bleeding. They are no longer themselves.
Desperado.
I surrender myself to women who perhaps don’t desire me in the slightest.
I must choke this desperation for a woman before it chokes me out of existence.
Can I ever? Can I make myself be who I am not?
Excessive individualism is ruinous for both self and society.
Hello, Tso Moriri.
I’m on my way to the cold desert of the Spiti valley and thinking of my trip to another cold desert last year: Ladakh.
Look at her beautiful lake. Look and keep looking.
Tso Moriri lake, Ladakh, India. September 2021.