The Crescent

The Crescent
Originally uploaded by Hansraj Mishra

Another shot at the moon. Strange as it may seem, the moon is usually yellowish here. No idea why. But anyways, I don't complain as long as its cool to look at. Meanwhile, life seems to have come to terms with me here. (Or is it the other way round?). I don't quite have any further qualms I suppose... at least not as of now! Aage aage dekho hota hai kya :)

Of Snooker Balls

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Originally uploaded by hansraj1

Clicked this one late yesterday night... I've really made good use of this weekend I suppose! :) The heat shall catch on tomorrow onwards... lets see what's in store. :D

Night Grabs

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Originally uploaded by hansraj1

Took a nice loong expose yesterday night; what you see in this picture is the faculty block at IIM Lucknow. Peole have been asking me several questions about the red tinge in the sky. Without any intent of getting nasty, here goes the explanation: This is night time, and the radiations that rayleigh's scattering is entertaining as of now are infrared in nature and are emitted by earth's surface. With a long enough exposure, you can grab all of it on film, and you get the beautiful red.

Okay, it might all actually be wrong too, but the color's there naturally. No off-cam edits to bring out the red!

Musings of an idle mind

I am idle right now. Mid term papers got over yesterday; ate like a lousy animal @ KFC; went to theatre; strains of music and liqueur flowed through the night; had a photo session today - formals n all; represented my hostel in TT league matches(ask not the result!); attended a focus group discussion for a marketing research project; updated my to-do-list; and I'm idle finally.

We got over with our mid-term papers yesterday. As one with scant regard for academics but a notoriously stiff head, I did fairly well. Tried to keep silly mistakes to the minimum (though not zero: and they can be crucial). I had vowed to go on a full-on mugging spree here; and I did so. I mugged a lot, But then you can't compete with certain species of muggers at all. Such as people with photographic memories and extremely mechanical precision in answering examination question papers. (My previous post relates to them). And I decided I wouldn't lower myself enough to trade off an extra wikipedia read with a silly glance at last-year-question-paper-shit. Even though that might compromise a grade here or there.

But anyways, I'm loving it all. Love the new subjects out here. Love the profs, love the people I associate with. And I'm particularly excited about learning how to make solid presentations. Given four already in a span of a month, which included one where I spoke my entire slides without looking at the PPT at all. It was beautiful. I speak first, and the point drops on the slide later.

Let us see how do things shape up here. I went and watched a film yesterday. Usually I am not film-friendly. I sleep through them most of the time. To me they're more like 125 rupee sleeping passes in an air-conditioned enclosure with crying kids in one corner, boring old women in another, and lots of flashy lights shining on a big silver screen. But this one managed to keep me awake for quite some time. It was called Love-aajkal. Was on contemporary love affairs. And I liked the theme. To a certain extent, I thought it relates to all of us -- somewhat. Go watch it, and you'll know why I said so.

You know what's the best thing that has happened to me in all my life? It is the cumulative summation of all events that has landed me precisely at my current space-time-emotion co-ordinates. Things could have been better, no doubt. But then they could as well have been much worse! Guess what guys, its the same with all of us. Take cues. Smile today, for tomorrow may be worse.

Pictures we took after the photo session -

From Formals n all

From Formals n all

From Formals n all

From Formals n all

Arthur the artist

Arthur was an artist. Arthur loved painting pictures. He could sense the colors on the pallette by sheer experience. He never needed vials to measure out precise quantities of any colors to come up with the perfect vermillion red or ochre yellow. It was in his blood. And ever so frequently would he come across those one or two instances when the measurement would fail. But his piece of art wouldn't go bad because of this mis-measurement. It would acquire a new hue. A new enigma. A new vibrance about it. And the crowds loved it.

Then Arthur landed into the New World. People here were machines. They weren't artists. They were more of chemists. They knew not what worth a bright maroon carried; they simply knew how to concoct it. They knew how to fill in the borders, they knew not how to sketch the borders. But the sketches and the colors were given to them by the Great Lord of the New World in a blueprint manual. They merely followed their instructions.

And lets give it to them. They were good at executing the pieces of art flawlessly. They came up with wonderful compositions. But the compositions didn't have a soul. Their soul was what had been defined by the Great Lord of the New World. But they were duly rewarded for following the blueprints. This was a world where art was merely a mechanical device meant to be done for the sake of doing. No one knew to what end their pictures were.

Arthur tried his skills to beat these People. He tried compositions that would have awed his older world. People there would have loved him for his experiments with colors, and his sheer disbelief in modernist art. But people here thought differently. They knew he was a different blood. But they knew him as one with little respect for order. They thought Arthur was not one amongst them.

Arthur still lives in the New World. He still loves his art. And he still continues to do without vials to measure out precise quantities of ochre and indigo. His art is respected in a select community of other Old-World dwellers. And he simply laughs at The People of The New World who follow the Blueprints of the Great Lord. For he knows, that in the end, its The Skill he carries, his legacy from the Old World... which will win him the pie.