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LIVING

Ashok Niyogi


This is what I call a photo-poem. I have taken all photos with a Minolta Dynax 300 Si, in different states of inebriation, on a Richter scale of 8 to 10, with film speeds from 100 to 800, depending on what I got, where. But they are mostly in 100 and 200 in Fuji and Kodak.
The only discipline I kept was to shoot early or late, except for the few dark guys, which I shot with 400 in the Indian noon.
This is not about the Himalayas.
True, they are an integral part of whatever I do and where do you get such ‘photo-ops’; but this series has no snow. No glaciers, no abodes of the Lord Shiva.
They are about a three-month interlude.
And they are about me.
This one is for my nephew, Bunty Singh, last known as Supratik Dutta, who saw my first basin of blood, held his nerve and saved my life.



I



Let me be
Let the clouds cover me
Let the branches darken
Beneath the sun
Let the road snake down
And come up again
To the neighboring mountain
Right now
I am fixed on the sky.



II



My little boy
Is being coy
Publicity he abhors
Except when it is on Mama’s lap
The little girl has
Something against cats
Now if she jumps the camera lens
It is because
She thinks the camera is a cat.



III




Like a wild beast
It comes roaring in
Not really
There’s no sound
Just the impression
That the heavens will fall down.



IV



Mangoes in the mountains
Our ecology is mixed up as I am
Indo-gangetic fruit in mountain dew
So what else is new?



V



Travelators for stone chips
Small small children
With red red lips
Hips
Bent beneath the burden of firewood
Mountain goat
Is what I will be
So that I can see.



VI



Russian blue and Russian white
Why am I reminded of Volgograd,
Of Omsk and Tomsk
And Intourist
In this terrible Delhi heat?



VII



You cross this bridge in Cawnpore
Not isolated I am sure
Like the ropeway over the Beas
Water gurgling over boulders
Lips like petals in the dusk
Sexual almost.



VIII



Unpredictable
Dusk over mountains
Is sudden
Rotten fruit
For damaged monkeys
Little monkeys cling to mother’s breasts
Tests
Of summer homes
With gnomes.



IX



Stratified rock
In wet overhangs
Ominous
The road clings
Each turn brings
Flowers and a bird.



X



When pictures speak in English
I am surely going mad
It’s sad
But Jolly will understand
The meaning
Of an evening in the sky..



XI



Is Haiku grammar
Or is it verse
Just terse
And obtuse
I understand
These feelings in the woods..



XII



No wonder I do not shave
Do the rockslides behave
Goats climb mountaintops
Do goats shave?.



XIII



I read the ‘Waste Land’
And for the first time
Didn’t understand a word
Will they let me serve tea
At Oxford?.



XIV



Tagore wore a different dress
Almost as if he were posturing
If his clouds were not loyal to him
I would have sought redress..



XV



Take it away
Here and now
Let Tolstoy do the balance job
And Hemingway play
At fish and bulls
From Andalusia
And then in your Convent Row flat
Yeats will mist over all that
While Nuns in habits
Scurry to and fro
Go..



XVI



Boris kept filling pages with ink
Roerich splattered ink into mountains
I am a swan in the chorus
On my tip-toes
The roof in the ‘Gum’
Has windows
In the Metropole
Crabs have toes
Stainless-steel cutters
And bibs
Snow-flakes and flutters
Mayakovsky in the dark
Stark.



XVII



Wet in the rain on Pushkinskaya
Burgers in McDonalds
And a walk
Through the park
Pushkin sits
To brave the rain.



XVIII



The Czar built the first wooden ship
But roads were mud and snow
Eta Russia you know
I was reading Lermontov
Now I drink vodka
And read Akhmatova
That is what Zima has done
Yevgeny what fun.








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