Where are you from?

Sun peeps through the trees

Where am I from?

So much is going on. I have about ten blog items in my head but have no time to write.

I am also struggling to keep up with both my written journal and the online journal/blog.

I cannot decide whether I want to let go of my ritual writing that I have been doing in notebooks since I was 16. There is something beautiful about writing on a pretty paper, with a fresh pen.

Something so beautiful about the way we dot our i's and cross our t's.

And writing to me is meditation.

It is the same delimma I faced when I started to use my video camera last year and seriously dropped the number of pictures I was taking. Composing a picture is something very meditative. Taking a video on the other hand different.

Ofcourse, today with picture manipulation we can change anything. But for those who care for the process, is the placement, the angle, the light, the shadows that make a picture.

But as some of you know that I lost my camera about five months ago and since then have felt amputated.

So pardon me no pictures of every other place I visit, post July that should change, I plan on getting myself a really nice camera.

So here is something from March 16, 2010.

And yes, the picture above is a real picture from around early March. This is how it was still on the streets….

Here goes:

Am at a Café in Karlstad, Sweden.

Came to Studio Pan to get pictures taken for some official documents.

The gentleman asked me to wait 45 minutes so he could fix the pics for me.

As I looked around at the photo shop, how could I not smile….

Except a few things it was all the same, quite familiar.

The same chubby kids, bald, smiling, giggling like they’ve found the last place to this jigsaw puzzle called, the Universe.

Newly married people snuggled together in flowers, close ups, kisses, --the only thing that stands out that I may not have seen in a photo shop before is a picture of a pregnant woman, probably in her eighth month, in her undergarments whose partner/husband, shirtless, wraps her with his arm like a fleece cloak. Barely dressed as they are, they still look calm and radiate love.

Another image of affirmation of love, …quite different from the ones I am used to….

The studio owner asked me where I was from?

And as always I say, I grew up in India.

What does that mean. Do people like me, really belong to a place, are we from somewhere? Is there only one answer?

Recently I heard an interview with Salman Rushdie and he said, India is just where I am from and that does not change

And may be he is right but how do I explain—that drumming on a bucket (Botswana), or listenting to This land is my land (US), Isa Lei (Fiji) It’s a Wedding day (South Africa/ Brenda Fassie), or listening to Benediction Chants, makes my heart beat with the same intensity as Govind Bolo, Gopal bolo (a devotional song from India chanting Lord Krishna’s name).

Where am I from?

Probably from the void whence forth everything emerged. I was born when startdust kissed infinite possibility as it pushed away boxes and walls....

I grew up under clouds whose silver lining was thicker and wider than the darkness.

I learnt the language of breath, slow, clam, meaningful, fast unsure, passionate, unenven, despondent, fearful, hopeful….

And all of that brought me to where I am.

In the middle of rainbows---where one mood smoothly fades into another and when I rest all the colors merge---and I am the white light that is formed

That is where I am from!!

And where are you from?

This video is exactly a year old. Just before I was leaving Fiji, the Hungarian twins celebrated their second birthday.

Lorend and Erwin.

For me it was a joy, because when I saw them at barely 6 mths of age, they were just learning to sit down. Not only had the kids started talking by the time I left, they had actually become bilingual--to the best of their ability.

They understood both Magyar and English.