On And Around Nakhas Street Photography
During Moharam, Nakhas is overcrowded like an arena, this is a main arterial road, no parallel road to rob its prominence or popularity.This is the crown on the head of Old Lucknow.
There are other areas to like Mugtiganj, Aminabad, Thakurganj, but Nakhas is the place you pass once in your lifetime, even if you stay at Aligaj or Kursi Road or Hazratganj or areas beyoong the Gomti and beyond the Pukka Pool, please excuse my lack of the city map knowlege , my Lucknow has and always remained quintessentially Nakhas.
My birth was in a ramshackled ancestral brick home at Pata Nala Imliwali gully , it was called Imliwaly Gully because of the huge monstrous Tamrind tree that has oulived many a generation, seen change that would make you shed tears, the hasty inthe nigh migrations a Train to Pakistan, memories left behind in a hurry, such was the era of the Partition a line drawn as a barbed bleeding wire on the human heart one country divided in a hurry into two, indivisible parts.
I read about the Partition, a blot on the Britis Empire, I mean British Vampire, no cut of period, it was Jungle rule, dacoitys , loot rape, the English in a hurry stole all our heritage and inseminated Hate for two communities that once lived chhek and jowl.
The British did a Palestine here , the repercussions are felt, everysingle night the sniper shooting, the bombings, dreams that for those living on this border scarred with hate a living nightmare.Cross border Hate, fed and fuelled in a hurry , so that a divided nation woud be easy to manipulate in the days to come,a Churchillian ghost haunting the natives even today.
The loin clothed Mahatma, well he is lucky not be alive, his ashes , his Ashram at Sabarmati , all demolished by right wing fanatacism , killing not a community, but Humanity, this is the tragedy of Bapu Land, his legacy killed in a fake encounter, the body of Truth yet to be discovered, burnt beyond recognition..
Well before I am thrown out of the running train of my thoughts I take you back to Nakhas on the wings of my pictures shot on disastrously defective Japanese toy of a camera called the Nikon D70 SLR Sodomized, Lost out Raped , me as an amateur photographer who shoots street pain as pedestrian poetry.
This picture is of a foreigner fascinated with Alams, he told me this Gora white man, that the Alam was a part of holistic healing, I was zapped.I shut my face.
He was standing admiring the alams, the challas at a road side vendor stall, I wish I had the acumen like my I talker city journalist friend Som Kumar to talk to him, take his story, but I am a photo blogger in a hurry, I am immeditely on to my next picture.The Nikon D70 makes you lose control, you can sshoot from arsehole to eternity,on a I gb sandisk card.
I prefer Negs slow 37 frames, carefully hitting the trigger, planning , premedited frame to frame shooting, digital, I will end this now as the guys are waiting for me to shut shop.
My legs with my Indian trousers stretched wide apart, on two boats one as a Blogger the other as man who has a tailors shop, to make ends meet.
My wife keeps telling me give up everything sit outside a Post office write letters for people , who cannot write to their loved ones..the working migrants outside Bandra Post office million years away from Zapak email, the post card a few words of looming heavy monsoonal showers, written by a stranger for another stranger.. the strangeness of not to strange India.
Will continue from home…
Posted by photographerno1 on 01 Jun 2007
Filed Under: nakhas | No Comments »
