Mumbai - the last leg...

A recall of one the significant events in my last 2 weeks in Mumbai...

As I neared my flying off dates, I was constantly reminded of my bond with this city. 26yrs and I had never before felt so attached to the city.
I was again going away - from my home, my friends and most of all my city... Mumbai


Initially, I had started off writing this blog, trying to cover the Kala Ghoda festival, later only to realize that Kala Ghoda was just one of the colours of this city.

There were several others which needed to be captured... The last time I tried to do that, I found one blog to be not enough...

Being a photography enthusiast, I thought that it would be nice to capture some moments to be carried on as memories.


Places which had been long forgotten or hadn't been visited for the lack of time this city offered; I thought it would be a nice idea to revisit them.


So I gathered some friends; organised a get together and to be a bit formal and look serious, came up with a detailed itinerary about the event I called a photo-walk. Some 30 odd people - known and unknown alike, registered for it. It was unexpected and till the day of the "photo-walk", I was worried as to how would I control such a crowd and carryout the "event" as planned rather than have a chaos.

Fortunately or unfortunately, on the day, only my known friends turned out (whichever way you want to look at it). The crowd was controllable and soon the small group of mine were roaming about, around Churchgate and Fort and clicking whatever was in sight.


Finally after a lot of loitering around, we finally had a quick McD brunch and were joined by another group. This one was roaming since 6 in the morning and so some of them went home while others stayed back. Soon it seemed that long lost friends had met.I cut the itinerary short and started for Elephanta caves immediately.


The ride on the ferry was a mini photo-walk in itself. People posed, everyone of us wanted to prove to ourselves that yes we could click. But yes we all could photograph. Whether we had a camera or not, it didn't matter; what mattered was that we all were full of ideas to relish upon.


Elephanta had its own charm - a small toy train, hell lot of steps and finally the sight of the caves; not that its divine, but the sight from the top of the small island hill is breath taking.


Small shops lined the both sides of the stairs, that led up to the caves, giving the young photography enthusiasts millions of opportunities to test the skill and capture the sight in the most mesmerizing way it could have been possible.




The cave had its own charisma; provided us with the window to the rich ancient culture. I had been to Ajanta and Ellora, late last year. But every time I saw these caves, it always left me with a very intriguing question - how on earth did they manage this feat in those days??? Back of my mind I knew that there weren't any answers.




PDA is now common in my city. It shows the unique bonding one had for the other even if life has been too fast for us to even look at each other; so we just find time to bond, whenever life throws an opportunity.


After roaming around for hours in the caves, the group gathered again and we had the much needed group photograph.


Tired as we were, after the entire days ordeal, we scavenged the hilltop for a restaurant. We finally gorged upon the food that the lone hotel on the hilltop served and rushed back to the "last" ferry for the day from the island.


Our ride back on the steamer was unlike the one we had while going to the caves. Anyone hardly spoke; the day seemed to had drained our energy. But the surprise guests who visited us injected life back into us - the beautiful aerial friends of the sea; seagulls.


As the sun began to set we had a wonderful view in front of us - the island city. The sun began to dive into the city's skyline; it seemed it bade farewell to all of us in the ferry, specially to me and we let the mesmerizing sight sink deep into us.


As we neared the city, another wonderful sight awaited us - The Gateway of India. I would like to credit the British for having thought of such an ecstatic name for the stone monument. After some good captures, we settled down to disembark from the ferry.


Everyone was tired, but the faint glimpse of smile was enough to convince me that the things were in place and everyone would have cherished the day as I had planned.

I reeled through my days catch and was filled with a strange sentiment looking at the photographs - something perhaps that just cant be described in black and white.

It just can be felt - in my city, my Mumbai....

Mumbai Diaries - A Day in the Life of Mumbai...

When I received this invitation for the Dhobhighaat photoshoot, I was excited since it would mean big if I could win. My spirits were dampened first by seeing the number of people participating in the shoot online and then by actually seeing the people present onsite!!!!


God played tricks with me all the time...


Anyways... I refurbished my dreams of winning and I went ahead to shoot the life of an average Mumbaikar...for that matter even a below average guy.

I started with finding someone who wanted to freshen up. I mean on a holiday, I wouldn't freshen up so early in the morning. But when I tried to find one... I found several.
Okie moving forward, I tried to capture the next instant after one freshens up - morning tea. Today wasn't my lucky day I guess. Throughout those 5 hours I couldn't grab a single brother drinking the morning beverage...tough-luck for me I guess.
I had decided to not take my car today.... wherever I would have gone, it would be either on foot or by train or bus.... not even rickshaws or taxis.

So I fought my way into the train and finally when I was comfortably placed (read got space for both feet), I started to look around for something interesting. What I found was overwhelming!!!!

Dreams of every kind were floating around the eyes of every shape; some covered, some sleepy, but all of them hanging on to make it to their destinations... ahem... too heavy

I had googled for the location of the dhobhighaats in Mumbai and landed finally in Mahalaxmi. I had never been before here; I mean being at the race-course is one thing but definitely not at the dhobhighaat...

Its an experience in itself; this washing clothes industry is huge and I can vouch for it. In around just 5000 sqft at least 50 Tonnes of fabric of all kinds were being washed - doctors gown, towels, sarees, regular clothes and an array of white shirts (didnt shoot that cos how much ever I tried, the photograph was overexposed)...



The place seemed to be packed with emotions... thoughtful, controller, agnostic.... every kind of them



Mandarin, mauve and harvest green seemed to be the colours of the day.... an array of each of these colours spread over several lines...


Content with what I had shot for sometime and dampened by the number of people trying to shoot, I moved ahead... this time to VT....



The first one to for me to encounter there was the symbol of peace.... hard to make out, however, was the fact that the dove herself was frightened of something....

My long time friend had suggested that I should cover the Fashion Street once; today perhaps was the day... maybe not the right time however....

Colours, however, were awesome... they can just captivate you and anchor you at your place, untill you are woken from your slumber by the nudge at your elbow from a potential seller....

Collection of the junk jewelery was something that bowled me over... my friend was right.... she has hell lot of experience I guess...

Here too, I managed to pull out the emotions in the air... perhaps friendship was the cue here....

Walking through the complete fashion street (which seemed impossible in the beginning), I finally reached the place which I had heard about in many movies during casualties... Bombay Hospital...my photography spree would have ended here, but for these 2 gentlemen...

Finally on my way back home, I got the essence of the practical mood of Mumbai too... Survival...

So as I finally wind up with emotions from my previous walks around Mumbai and this one, I was at loss of words to describe this city..... my friends from my firm-to-be helped me out on this..... this is what they gave me in 50 words from my collection comprising of, by and for Mumbai...


"Bound together by a strong undercurrent to survive and outperform - Yes, this is Mumbai. City, that steps forward and meets every morning with a 'salaam', regardless of what fate brings along. Running through the day with its vintage charm, it pauses only to ponder 'Can I make it large?'"


Aastalavista....
Abhishek

Weekend @ Rajmachi

Give a man a good photograph and he admires it.... teach him how to click one and he keeps shooting the rest of his life.....

He he... was just trying to be a bit insightful. Anyways, my last team of Aurangabad had almost done nothing for several weekends together. So we finally decided that we go on a trek this weekend, though we knew that one of us had to go for an official trip abroad. So this time we asked some more of the folks. My last trip's photographs had created quite a stir among the otherwise boring folk, who just believed to come and go to office on weekdays and sleep on weekends.

So this time, we pooled in more people; 6 of us - 4 guys and two girls. How I roped in the girls this time, its for them to write and already one of them has written about it; http://aditionly.blogspot.com/2010/12/lights-silence-camerassss-action.html

So there we were at Thane station at 5 in the morning, shivering with my old team-mate searching for something to eat and drink. Anyways we boarded the train from Thane and the girls had already boarded from Dadar much earlier. Finally we got down after about an hour and half at Karjat. It was a sleepy place with sleepy people and only people awake at 7 in the morning were the auto-rickshaw fellows and this guy wading through the cold river.

Base camp for Rajmachi was Kondive village located about 14 kms from Karjat. A simple breakfast of poha and tea was all that was necessary to get us back on track for the next 4-5 hrs journey.

The village was a perfect location for the photographers and we could have spent the whole day there itself... but then we had to reach Rajmachi.

Well about Rajmachi - 3000 ft above MSL, medium difficulty climb and book says 3hrs climb-time (bullshit). But if are packed up well for 2 days or so, you will be taking much longer and if you are a first timer then even much more.

So, we begin marching for towards our target and the only guides to the place were some arrows marked by some perhaps very good people and some locals who knew nothing but Marathi.



After some posing and some photography we kept marching ahead towards our pit-stop of Kondana caves.

Kondana caves had the beauty of their own. Dating back to 6th century, I always kept wondering (one)why the hell these Buddhist guys build the caves and monasteries this high, and (second) how did they keep climbing every time they wanted to pray...

Anyways, we kept climbing further, lefts and rights going up, guided further by the arrows. I took a wrong path ones and got entangled in a spider web... for the first time I felt how the poor fly must have felt...

With every passing hour the climb became steeper and much more difficult... at some point it seemed like we were lost, just when a local arrived and we tried following him. He just disappeared at the next turn...seemed more of a ghost to me...

At a flat piece of land I gave a signal to all to sit down for some snacks; whatever was left the ants feasted on them...

Tired as we were, we three photographers kept nudging ahead... partly because of the distinct flora and fauna around us; majorly because of the spirits that these two girls had...hats off to you both...

After a grueling 5hrs of climb with our unnecessarily heavy bags, shouts from one my fellow trekkers gave us a sigh of relief...the village was in sight!!!

The village was small, 15huts maybe... simple people, no electricity and very simple food, which we devoured down in matter of minutes...

Our place for the night was a simple "pukka" home.... the sun was about to set and we had little time left to capture the surrounds in the golden light of the sun

Night started to fall and our caretaker brought in the evening snacks of tea and onion bhajiya and also fire-wood for a bonfire...

The cold night and the tired bodies slowly dragged our conversations towards weird topics ranging from the IT industry to ghosts and spirits...the spirits in Rajmachi were interested too... notice that white dot in the black region above the girl in the centre....

The next day was superb.... I had planned it the last night itself and I wanted to climb the smaller of the two forts Manoranjan. I even started on foot at 5.30 in the morning towards; pitch black and I got totally lost in the jungle and so I gave up....

By the time everyone got up (9 am) i was thoroughly bored. But then it was sometimes gr8 to be alone, and in the lap of nature...

So finally we set out after a simple breakfast towards the higher of the two forts Srivardhan...

Difficult as it seemed, but it took just about 30 mins to reach the top...

The pit stop in between was modern day temple decorated with ancient architecture to add to the beauty



The view from the top was gr8... we could count almost all the houses in our village...

The way downward was as awesome as going up... it seemed like we were moving in through dense foliage...

After reaching down we sat down for a simple lunch and started on our way back. This time we took the longer route to Lonavala, about 20kms from our minuscule village... we had read that sumos and other strong off road vehicles could make it through that path..... we preferred it on foot....

One of my fellow campers had already developed cramps; rather had got a pulled hamstring... she had already quit the Srivardhan trail before.... but she happily agreed to this walk.... hats off to her

13kms down and totally devoid of any energy that was left in us... we were resting near a bridge and still deciding the right way to go.... when I suddenly heard an unusual sound... no it wasn't a sumo or for that matter any other car... it was a TRUCK!!!!

One shout and we were abode the truck... it dropped us at Lonavala... this was really an icing on the gr8 trekking cake that we had all this while... for the last 2 days....

At this point I would like to invite more people before I take a break from the treks for sometime with my good old fellow campers.... I have a visit to Sindhudurg left for the new years weekend....and i guess one or two more to some other places that we had planned including Gir sanctuary.... anyone interested may want to call up and join in.... I am sure you would enjoy....leaving for now....

Aastalavista....
Abhi