Best of Art & Culture Pics, 2011

The digital camera and my frequent journeys mean that I have lot of opportunities to click pictures. A very small part of those pictures end up in a blog-post about the journey or on my photoblog, but most of the time, they are for my personal pleasure.

Thus, this year I have decided to present a few samples of those additional images, by selecting those images that have a special meaning for me or that I like a lot. Thus, yesterday, I presented the my Best of Nature and Wildlife pics from 2011. Today I am presenting my Best of Art and Culture pics of 2011.

(1) Images from Prague in Czech Republic: I want to start with a few pictures from Prague. The city is incredibly rich for appreciating wonderful examples of art, culture, history and architecture.

This first image is of the monument to the victims of communist regime. The broken up human beings on the stairs, surrounded by lush green gardens is very powerful.

(2) The second image from Prague is that of a group of socialist or Soviet style statues from the opera building in centre of the city. I have seen similar statues of healthy and happy looking peasants in different countries of ex-Soviet union and in countries like China and Mongolia.

(3) The next three pictures are all of sculptures by Anna Chromy from the city of Prague. It was love at first sight for me, on a rainy afternoon when I had seen her blind-folded musicians dancing to a silent music.

(6) This last image from Prague is from the Kampa museum.

Even with these six pictures from Prague, actually I feel that I am not doing justice to Prague and I could have added so many other images of sculptures and buildings.

(7) The next image is from the old city of Goias Velho in Brazil. I find the statue and the city square very Portuguese in its conception, and yet the presence of Amerindians living here and the black slaves brought here from Africa contributed something intangible and at the same time, concrete, to the character of this city.

(8) 2011 was for me, the year of discovery of Bidar in Karnataka. In terms of architecture, art and culture, I think that Bidar is a jewel of a city with the wonderful fort. The pictures below are of the other two special heritage sites that I liked - Khwaja Gawan madrassa and the beautiful Bareed Shahi park.

(10) In 2011, finally I could satisfy another of my long standing wish, to visit the Hampi ruins. It was a brief visit under a scorching sun and I didn't get the time to go down to Tungabhadra river. Still I am glad that I had this opportunity. It is a magical place.

(11) In 2011, I had 3 brief visits to London (UK). However, even though the visits were brief, I was determined to visit those parts of the city that I had not seen before. The next five pictures are from those visits - from Greenwich metro station, maritime museum, the women in the second world war monument, a statue near covent garden and the Victoria and Albert museum.

London is another incredibly rich city for art and culture lovers and I have so many wonderful memories from its museums and parks.

(16) The next picture is from Geneva in Switzerland. I also visited Geneva three times in 2011 and they were all short visits. Yet, in spite of the briefness of my stay, I used every small opportunity to explore the city. The combination of art installations and an extraordinary variety of flowers along the left bank of Le Man lake, made for a very pleasant experience.

(17) In 2011, I also discovered the Bologna's master sculpture Nicola Zamboni. The next picture presents one of his terracotta statues from Villa Spada in Bologna. I absolutely love these statues and can gaze at them spellbound for hours. In my opinion, they are pure magic.

(18) The next picture presents an exhibition of bronze and metallic statues with medieval warriors and women from Europe and Middle East by Nicola Zamboni and Sara Bolzani. It was another unforgettable art experience of this year for me.

(19) Sculptures by Mirella Guasti: I had seen works of Mirella Guasti for many years but somehow they did not make that impression on me till this year. Suddenly in 2011, I started looking at her work with new eyes and found them very beautiful. You can admire her work in the next picture.

(20) This last image is by another Italian artist called Ericailcane. A rebel artist who became known by his graffiti art on the Bologna city walls, he uses giant figures of animals to provoke new sensations. The sculpture of the giant cat looking hungrily at a big box of fish is called "Cor Dubbium Habbeo" (My heart has doubts).

I hope that you have liked my selection of my best images from 2011 on art and culture.

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You can see more of my images at Kalpana Image Archives.

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Best of Nature & Wildlife Pics 2011

This was a wonderful year for my photography. My main interest is in taking pictures of ordinary people and daily lives. However, whenever I get a chance, I also like taking pictures of nature, flowers, plants, animals and birds.

I have a simple Nikon SLR D40 and I don't use any special macro lenses.

My two key moments in 2011 regarding nature-wild life photography were a visit to Mangal Das Graças in Belem (Brazil) and a visit to Delhi zoo (India). Actually zoos with caged animals and birds are the opposite of wild life but I like Delhi zoo, as it has so many open areas with huge spaces, and lot of migratory birds that come here in the winters.

From all the nature and wild life pictures that I clicked in 2011, here is a selection of 20 images that I really like.

(1) Curcuma in Kanakpura, India: I was at TRDC, a vocational training centre for disabled guys where they learn about agriculture and animal husbandry. It is run by Sri Ramana Maharishi Academy for Blind of Bangalore. Students here grow different crops. I was there for a meeting.

During the lunch break, I was walking in the fields, when I saw Chander following me. He is deaf and thus, we talked through gestures. He dug out a piece of the root of curcuma (haldi) to show it to me and I was really thrilled. I had never seen fresh curcuma before.

(2) Flowers and the butterfly: The next picture is also from TRDC in Kanakpura. During a coffee break, I saw two butterflies around some salmon pink colured flowers (called Ixora - name courtsey, Gughuni Basuti :)). Part of the wings of the butterflies were of a similar colour. I cautiously crept closer and managed to click the picture of one of them.

(3) Orchid gardens of Manila: The third image is from Manila (Philippines). We were staying in the middle of the city and I was busy in running a workshop and then coordinating different meetings. Thus there was little time to go out and explore the city. Still one morning I managed to visit an orchid garden. Though I didn't see any orchid flowers, the views of placid water in the canal were beautiful.

(4) Wild life from Amazon: The next 6 pictures are all from Mangal Das Graças, a beautiful wildlife oasis on Amazon river in Belem (Parà state, Brazil). Pheasants, herons, scarlett ibis, iguanas, colourful macaws, etc., there was so much to admire in this place. I was especially fascinated by the macaws, who seemed to have specific personalities and looked at me disdainfully.

(10) Monkey and the ancient tomb: The next image is from Tughlakabad in Delhi. It was a foggy morning and we were visiting the tomb of the Tughlak emperor from 13th century, when through a slit in the tower, I saw this monkey sitting on a tree outside.

(11) Autumn in Bologna: For nature and wild life photography, there are so many opportunities closer to our home, like this picture of yellowing autumn leaves. I took this picture one morning in the garden next to our home when I had taken our dog out for his morning walk.

(12) Moss and lichen: One of the wonderful experiences in 2011 was to go out for a nature discovery walk with Marco Colombari, who explained about inter-connections between plants, trees, birds, animals and human beings, and took us to discover an old sacred forest in the middle of the city. I love the bright colours of moss and lichen of this picture.

(13) Libelia Sifilitica: During a visit to Geneva (Switzerland) I went to visit the botanical gardens. Some ten years ago, I had lived in Geneva for a few months and at that time I had been to visit these botanical gardens many times. Going back to the gardens after ten years was wonderful for discovering so many medicinal plants like Libelia Sifilitica that was used for treating Syphilis before the antibiotics.

(14) Wild life from Delhi zoo: Next five images are from a visit to Delhi zoo. The images are of black necked stork, kite, great hornbill, lion and painted stork. I love painted storks and can look at them for hours without getting tired, and I had gone to the zoo especially, to look at them.

(19) Migratory birds in Kakkere Bellur: While coming back from Mandya, someone proposed that we visit the Kakkere Bellur village in Maddur sub-district. Here migratory birds come and live in the village trees, in harmony with people living there. Villagers are very protective towards the birds and say proudly that their daughters have come home for child-birth.

(20) Sun flowers: This last image is of a variety of sun-flowers from a park in Geneva. I loved their beautiful colours and their satiny look.

So what do you think of my selection of the best nature and wild-life clicks of 2011? Which one do you like more?

If you want to see more of my photographs, take a look at my picture archives on Kalpana.

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Mindscapes of sexuality

"Why don't you make a film on the issue of disability and sexuality?", I had asked Arun while we were out on a walk. After so many years, Arun has finally answered my question with his new film - "Mindscapes of love and longing".

I had done my thesis on this subject and felt really passionate about it. I think that disability is a tabù area, something to be hidden and forgotten, pretending that it is not there. Sexuality is another tabù area. Though it is one of the most fundamental part of our lives, we hardly ever talk about it. Joining together the two tabù issues, disability and sexuality, means even greater tabù. Some thing to be hidden behind closed doors and closed minds. Acting as if the issue does not exist.

While Arun was making it, I knew that he was working on a film about disability and sexuality, but I had no other information about it. Thus when I finally had the opportunity to watch the film, I was not sure about what to expect.

After seeing it, I think that it is beautiful film and should be seen widely. That is because I feel that the film is not just about issues related to persons with disabilities. It also has so much for all of us, as human beings, as men, as women, as mothers and fathers, as siblings and as friends, to think about and to reflect upon.

The film - Mindscapes of love and longing

The film has five stories, starting with that of an adolescent girl Trisha. Like all adolescents, Trisha has crushes, she has started to dream of intimacy and become grown-up. She likes dressing up and giggling with her friends. Her mother Sangeeta Khandelwal can see her daughter growing up and like all mothers, tries to find a balance between her own desire to protect her daughter and yet support her in her growing up.

The second story is about a young man Alok Sikka. Alok also has his crushes and dreams. He would like a girl friend and a loving wife. And like all young men, he tries to weigh the pros and cons of getting married. "Can I really look after a wife? What would it mean for me and my life to have this responsibility?" And what about the desires he feels in his body?

The third story is of Sujata Goenka. She would like you to think that she has resolved her dilemmas. "I never wanted marriage", she says. Even if she grew up in a traditional family, she has fought for her own spaces. I can party, I can drink and I have had sex, she says defiantly. Intimacy? Companionship? Some questions are left unanswered.

The fourth story is of Sam and Meenu. Their's is an inter-religious marriage. She was his junior in school and it was love at first sight for him. It took him some time to convince her that they could think of love and marriage. They are not sure if they can have a child, but they would like to try.

The last story is of Vipul, Sangeeta, their son and their dog. It is like any other family with its share of ups and downs. "I liked his honesty, he didn't try to hide anything", she says. "In school and in college, I tried not to show but inside me, I knew that I was different and with time it would have become worse", he says.

The five stories are connected by a dance by Jyoti Gupta. She dances to the words of a poem that expresses the desire of love and longing. All the five stories are also connected by the different disabilities and the different barriers, inside themselves and outside in the world surrounding them, that all of them must grapple with constantly as part of their daily lives.

Comments

I liked the rich details of everyday ordinary events of people's lives in the film. There are no "experts" trying to explain anything. I think that our sexuality is not just about having sex, it is about relationships - our relationship with our own bodies, with our families, with our friends and with those whom we love. The film touches all those different parts of our sexuality.

Thus, I appreciated that the film does not try to categorize or explain anything, rather it gently touches on the complexities of all these relationships, weaving a tapestery of emotions that are not always easy to express in words.

I felt that this film is like a storm, where we experience different emotions briefly and at the end, we may not really understand all those emotions. Yet they can set a deeper process of reflection in our minds, not just about sexuality in the lives of persons shown in the film, but also in our own lives, about our own fears and insecurities, about our own desires and needs, about our fragility and complexity as human beings.

Some of the issues that I was thinking about after watching the film were:

(1) How much of our lives are linked to and influenced by different media - magazines, films and TV: Almost all stories have some references to films and TV. Trisha had a crush on Vivek Oberoi, Alok had a crush on Amisha Patel, all of them watch the mushy dramas on the TV. Watching these scenes, I was asking myself, what kind of images and desires, these films and TV provoke in us?

During my research on disability and sexuality in Italy, many of the persons had said that TV and films present ideals of beauty and perfection, that make us feel ugly, inadequate and unattractive.

I think that this area of relationship between our real lives and the stories of the lives projected in films and TV, is an interesting and complex area of research. Except for a rare "Guzarish" or "Koshish", films do not talk about persons with disabilities, and even less frequently as heroes and heroines.

(2) Issues of intimacy and privacy: Even though issues of intimacy and privacy have their own challenges in traditional joint families, yet most of us now associate love and sexuality as a relationship between two persons. What would it mean if you need a third or fourth person to assist you during your intimacy?

Watching the two couples, I felt complex and confused emotions about this issue. Like when Sam, one of the guys in the film, talks about his honeymoon in Mumbai, where they were always accompanied by their two assistants and there was no privacy.

(3) Setting of the film: The film is about urban India, about persons who can afford to have personal assistants and access to services. In this sense, the film is more universal, it touches on issues that other persons in US or Europe or another part of the world face in similar ways.

After watching the film I was thinking if persons with disabilities living in a poor area or a rural area of India, with uneducated or less educated parents, would face these issues differently and in which ways?

(4) Model of sexuality: The film is only about heterosexual relationships and does not touch on more complex areas of alternate sexualities. That can be another big area of research and reflection.

Conclusions

I think that it is brave film that touches on uncharted areas in a sensitive way. It is true that the film is about a subject about which I am passionate, and thus my opinion is biased. However, I do hope that the full film can be subtitled so that it is accessible to deaf persons and to persons from other countries.

I also hope that it can be subtitled in other Indian languages and used for promoting reflection among organisations and federations of persons with disabilities. Government of India has signed the international convention on rights of persons with disabilities and is working on a new national law on disability. Thus it would be worthwhile for many more persons to watch this film, since sexuality is an integral part of human rights.

I would like to conclude with a few lines of the poem that Jyoti Gupta expresses with her dance in the film:

I wish, I could
slide down the eyelashes
and turning into a drop dwell
in your eyes
or through your eyes
to your aching heart I go
in its recesses, as relief to reside
I wish
that you, as you shiver in the winter
of your solitary life
like a warm quilt, drape me over yourself
and, in giving your body my warmth, I melt.

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Credits: Director: Arun Chadha, Script: Vineeta Deepak, Poems: Anshu Gupta and Manglesh Dabral, Translation: Ranjana Srivastava and Shobha Menon, Production assistant: Ankit Sharma and Ramesh Ram, Editing assistant: Ganesh Prasad, Camera: Joshua Prabhu, Sound: Sunder, Anurag Gupta and Shiv Das, Editing K. Manish, Music: Arvinder Singh, Producer: Rajiv Mehrotra, Executive producer: Tulika Srivastava and Ridhima Mehra, Subject consultant: Dr Anita Ghai; A Cine Pulse production, PSBT presentation supported by Films Division of India.

The film is available from PSBT (India).

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Chocolate Passion

Do you like chocolates? I love chocolates, though I try to control myself because once I start eating them, I find it very hard to stop!

Our city Bologna has an annual chocolate fair. It is not for those who produce chocolate at industrial levels but it is for small businesses and shops who are passionate about chocolate and make special varieties of chocolate.

Every year, for the chocolate fair, each chocolatier tries to come up with something novel. A couple of years ago, a chocolatier had created sensation by presenting chocolates in the shape of penis and adolescent boys and girls had loved getting themselves clicked doing all kind of things to those chocolates. In the end the lady owner of the shop was asked to remove those chocolates from her stall as they were considered unsuitable for children visiting the fair.

This year the chocolate fair started on Thursday and will be on till tomorrow. Today morning I went to the fair. Here are some of the strange chocolate creations from the fair for you.

I really liked the chocolates made like instruments used by mechannics and carpenters - nails, hammers, screw-drivers, scissors, etc. They looked so real.

Making cups and saucers of chocolate is nothing new but still I liked the special care that had gone into making the cup with white chocolate.

Chocolate sandals, shoes and purses were nice. They gave a completely new meaning to the phrase "joota khaoge?"

Making animals and birds out of chocolate is also common. Still I liked the chocolate owls and tapirs of this stall. Also their chocolate moca (used in Italy for making filter coffee at home) was nice, it looked real with a metallic sheen.

I thought that this chocolate guy was cute with his nice big red tongue and blue eyes.

The chocolate buggy is accompanied by a chocolate parchment saying "Once upon a time there was ..", so you can guess for whom they have made it.

This was another chocolate moca, used for the Italian coffee making, that I liked because of its wonderful rusted, broken and old look.

There were persons selling all kind of fruit jams and honeys mixed with chocolate.

This shop had chocolate shirts, belts, shoes, etc. apart from the more "normal" varieties of chocolates mixed with nuts and fruits.

And finally, the chocolates that I liked most. The chocolate Nikon cameras were fantastic, they looked so real with leathery texture and the opaque glass kind of lenses.

I didn't buy lot of chocolate, just a few things. I have bought some extra bitter chocolate, that I like very much. However, I tasted a lot of different varieties and by the time I reached home, I was feeling full and happy.

So which of these chocolates do you like most?

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Zen of Photography

I think that for some persons, photography can be a way to come in contact with deeper part of themselves. It can be similar to what other persons try to achieve with deep meditation. At least on me photography has that effect.

Jill Bolte Taylor, the Harvard neuroscientist has this wonderful TED video talk that she made in March 2008, where she told about her stroke experience ten years earlier and how it made her understand the complementary and yet different ways in which the two sides of the human brain work.

Jill had a cerebro-vascular problem - a blood clot on the left side of her brain. It happened slowly over a period of a few hours. While that was occuring, there was some moments when she was conscious and could think coherently, and there were other moments, when she knew that she was not in control and her brain was working in a different way. From that experience she came to think certain ideas about how the left and right parts of our brains work.

Our brains are made of two similar looking halves, that are joined together by an area called corpus collosum where millions of neurons connect between the two sides. These similar looking halves of the brain work in very different ways.

Jills says that the left side of our brain functions with words, voices, thoughts and logic. It makes plans, thinks of the past and the future, it studies and understands the world, rationally and logically. It is also the part of the brain that looks at "I" and the "rest of the world", it is about our egos, our needs, and makes us the individual human beings that we are.

The right side of our brain, according to Jill, thinks in images, emotions and intuitions. It does not care about rational thoughts, plans, past or future. It has emotions and it connects us to every thing else in the world, living and non-living. It does not separate between "I" and the "rest of the world". For the right side of our brain, it is all "one world".

Normally, left side of brain dominates in most of us. It is this part of brain that keeps on "thinking and talking" in our heads all the time. It is very difficult to stop it from "making the thoughts noise". And it covers and hides the input from the right side of our brain, it does not allow us to feel the world from the right side.

Thus, talking about her experience, as the blood clot formed in the left side of Jill's brain, there were moments when the control of the mind from the left brain was interrupted and she could feel the world from the right side of her brain. In those moments she felt her thoughts become silent. There were no more continuous thoughts filling her head. Instead, she felt filled with bliss. The boundaries between her body and the rest of the world, like the walls of her bathroom, disappeared, so that "she could not see where was her arm and where was the wall of the bathroom. It was all one, a continuous one."

When I heard Jill explain it, I thought that this experience sounded very similar to some experiences of meditation that I had heard and read about.

I had tried meditation many times.

I see myself in this description of Jill, as a person very strongly controlled by my left brain. Always planning, thinking about all kinds of things, with a voice going on talking all the time inside my head.

And, I think that with age, this left-brain domination, the desire to plan and be rational, has become stronger. I think that as a child, when I had greater interest in paintings and designing, I was less obsessed with details and plans. Then probably my studies in medical college and my profession pushed me deeper into the rational logical world of the left brain.

A couple of decades ago, I went to a meditation class for the first time. A priest had come to Italy from Varanasi and was conducting meditation classes. He explained to me about meditation techniques by focusing the mind on my breathing or on a central point in my forehead or on the image of a god.

"You have to become silent, stop the incessant thoughts in your head", he had said.

I tried but I never really managed to stop the voices in my head. I could never feel meditation, in the sense of "stopping my thoughts and focusing them on nothingness". Often, when I tried to meditate, I ended up feeling frustrated. Once I decided that I couldn't do meditation sitting up and I had to lie down to meditate. After that every time, I tried to meditate, I drifted off to sleep. Finally I had concluded that I was destined to never really experience the feelings of meditation.

And then 5-6 years ago I discovered photography.

I bought my first digital camera in 2005. The 1 Gigabyte memory card freed me from worrying about number of pictures I could click. I clicked pictures all the time and every where. It was a kodak camera with a preview screen, so I held the camera in front of me and clicked images all the time.

When this kodak camera was stolen in Ecuador in August 2005, it was not the financial loss that mattered to me, but the enormous emptiness of not clicking pictures. I immediately bought another kodak digital camera.

In 2009, I bought my first SLR camera with a 4 Giga memory card, suddenly the whole expereince changed. It was a low end SLR (Nikon D 40) in which there was no preview  of the images on the screen and I had to put my eye in the viewfinder to see what I wanted to photograph.

Listening to Jill made me understand something about the joy I feel when click pictures. I feel that when I am taking pictures, the voices in my brain stop and the right side of my brain takes over. The images speak directly to the right side of my brain, strengthen it, make it more powerful, and make me feel connected to the world.

As I start taking pictures, slowly I can see my brain changing gears. I start focusing on small things.

Textures, colours and details that are normally a blur, that hardly register in my head normally, they all come into focus. I can see the rough bark of the trees, the intricate patterns on its surface and the subtle variations in the colours. The insects buzzing over the flowers, the shades of green in the grass, the different shapes of flowers, the angles of people's smiles, the way light skids off their faces, the wrinkles on the corners of their eyes. As I click pictures, life rushing past, slows down.

And when I stop clicking for some time, the life continues to flow slowly.

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Does it make any sense to you? Or do you think that I have gone bonkers? Actually I don't think it matters. It makes sense to me and that is all that really matters. I can understand that once again I am trying to make a logical sense of my feelings about photography.

It is my left brain that wants to understand why I feel the way I do about taking pictures. Understanding it is important for me, because it makes me understand its value to me.

BTW, if you have not seen Jill Bolte Taylor's talk on TED, watch it now, it is truely wonderful.

 To celebrate, here are a few images I took yesterday evening at Durga Puja and today morning at a canal near our home.

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