51 photographs...

... is better than 'caption' in the title

~

 

I don't have games on my - wait - 'Samsung S5830', and consciously so. Instead I use up phone memory for storing photos. Same thing with music and movies on comp. Unnecessary, and there are ways around it, yes, I know. I'd rather just remain primitive and allow my photo archives more leg room.

Yesterday, I discovered that the updated version of Picsart, the photo-editing software I use and the one you can download on that droid market place, has a collage mode. And so, in the time I might have spent bettering my games-playing self, (or doing anything less eye-straining and perhaps, more productive, for that matter), I have been squinting, head down, at a screen, trial-ing and error-ing and cocking my head at grids and columns and frames and borders and thinking, na, maybe this one, maybe with just a slight cross process treatment. I'm certain the odd picture could well have been a post by itself, considering I thought them baby stories more than 'aritistic' anythings. But now... you know, too late. Stories, lots of stories, are tucked into the captions. More so in the pictures, I feel, however mediocre.

It's interesting to me that I don't have many mug shots. Plenty shots of people, just not their faces too much. You'll see. It's not such a conscious effort even to protect anyone's privacy. By now, even for that, too late. But here's my fooling around of the last twenty four hours. Most of the pictures though, of course, have lived a little longer, not much.

My bible, the past few months. I've learnt so much. It's given me SO much joy;
The impossibility of taking a decent shot in a diesel car on the Noida expressway of the river below;
Gifted: my friend got these lovely Surgical Steel Earwires, as writ on the box. Who says earrings these days anyway;
Dabur changed their Chyawanprash packaging. I forgot how much I love Chywanprash but seeing my grandad cream a spoonful clean every morning got my cravings going (I was stumped when my father asked me, 'is that sugar free?'); 
Rings, pearl jooda pin bought the beaten gold leaf earring time that will pop up in a later caption, and doodle on newspaper - are key words of another granddad story that I have been meaning to post;
Lenses, Bodyshop, eye pencil tail, ainvi

The Yamuna by night with a building in it, the 'twin tower' hotels;
Lakme, vanilla - coincidence of my cousin and I wearing the shade our grandmother used to favour;
Indoor frangipani besides indoor beer, headshot of wheatgrass by the window sill;
The movie HT city said was directed by Vikram Bhat (you can't see it but Woody Allen would be tickled?);
investing too much time drinking coffee and stuffing face with macarons that look the bakery version of a good man but are just. too. sweet. Think about that, L'Opera.

Naga Kitchen, Green Park. Easy to photograph cane lampshades against easy to keep touching fabric;
Friend's friend's grunting Chou Chou is acclamatised to his constantly airconditioned environs but still goes about believing he's a tiger. Hullo Leo! That IS his name. Poor Muttley.;
The denture soap my friend R and I picked out for my grandfather's birthday because his dentures broke AND he doesn't like to have a bath but maybe it was too DUAL a message and so all that the birthday present stood for was aww soo cute! which is still pretty okay;There is an Oscar Wilde quote, she says, (she is the author/ character in/ of French Milk , about looking with a heart of stone upon the one you loved in your youth, at the hair you madly worshipped and wildly kissed; 
Archery less, zen more;
Purnaa Qila as viewed from the zoo;
Mass of black- my niece's hair in a bun pierced with an invisible jooda pin. She's going through a worship-me phase. Copies everything I do and deem cool. It's the best. May it last.

MG road rain windscreen. Pigeon balcony when it's about to splatter. And him, and this and him saying this

I have that picture of my brother and I in (on?) my phone. Nostalgia is very big on my diet chart. Always, always;
Blanco, R and I , Khan Market and the advancing winter sun;
Recent obsession: ornamental grass, singular blade, outside the house
Coffee. Not black. Not the first cup. Still L'Opera. Good business they got from us lately.

Light. We like to play with light. And I love my hands. And so it is, the self portraits of our limbs continue;
Chameli, cousin's domesticated stray when she does that, my pet niece drops things, my leg stays still;
Jacaranda@Wellington@Nilgiris@sigh;
Rangoon creeper on bathroom ledge in broken milk jug. Think the milk jug motif and shape of rangoon creeper are cousins, if not total twins?;
Ganga on June 23. As it passes Rishikesh. Garland in it, the last of my grandmum's ashes;
And THAT is a print of my eye with all my eye make up transferred on to a wad of cotton.
Puhrrty + cool. And I think overall, my favourite collage attempt.

All three taken this morning. Could've instagrammed squirrel going at it, but then I might've had to, for the sake of thematic unity, tinker with the colours of the flowers of the Karanj;
And, well... just some good sense text. Minus good sense apostrophe.

I'm making hand skeletons, shadows that look like the spiral flower called Chandni. I think I did okay.;
Zoom ant - in fact ON a bush of Chandni;
I like to put bananas in my cornflakes.I had half a banana this morning. That's the ratty part on a plate on a table cloth with lovely rose pattern cross-stitch. Certain convent school traits run in this family;
The switchboard outside the front door has nice light at a morning hour. (Also all taken today. For the sake of Project collage. But also for project archive whatever the hell is a memory trigger because it's important to remember and so, to photograph stuff that evokes something in your gut -- preferably an emotion).

Harshingar. Aka tree of sorrow/sadness. Aka night-blooming jasmine. Aka coral jasmine;
Woman I see on my morning walk sorting vegetables (both those, this morning);
Balcony, other home, 15th floor, where there were once only ferns, there is now a pair of random mulberry saplings. (I like the idea that the mulberry seeds have been dispersion into the fern pots via the pigeons, same ones who shit on my A/C);
Slice of the birthday books loot via self pamper;
Beaten gold, my first 'earwires' of the kind -- arm twisted to buy by a most affable tall Bengali woman whom I got chatting with at Silverline, again, Khan Market, also comes under 'birthday loot via self' (and then the leaf motif agrees with one); Yea, that. Terrible, terrible! photo, I know. But remember some days ago, the newspapers were vibrating because Volkswagen had this campaign called feel the excitement in your hands or watch it tremble or some shit like that, and so they glued on this little biscuit sized black device in the pages of the paper? Well, I tore off the cleverness and tried to drown it in a mug of water but the vibrations didn't stop even with water flooding it's little wiry innards. Volkswagen really is so clever.

And, more earnestly, since today IS Ganesh Chaturthi, I went around the house counting the Ganesh jis we have. Six. I might've missed one or two in the rooms I didn't bother with, when I thought I had enough for a six-grid. I was tempted to put in a series of onyx elephants, but if I'm being unlike me, I best leave the irreverence at the door. For at least this one.

How you like?