In Rohtang...
that’s when I saw them first, the wild horses..
I must learn to keep some things safe in my mind, away from words, away from film. Away.
That's what I thought when I saw them..
.
. I walked up to this beautiful brown muscled mare and sat on the ground reaching my hand out.
I sat and kept the hand out.
She was grazing by a little stream.
She stopped and looked at me and stood still too.
She walked up.
She came a foot away from my hand and looked at me, raising her head to my eye level.
We stared for a bit.
She touched my hand with her muzzle, and stepped back. A second later ,she leaned it into my palm. I could feel her weight in the push.
We could have ridden, I know.
We could have ridden.
There will be time soon.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
the Pang bowl
We reached the Pang bowl today, 40 kms of land stretched out greenish purple in between the watching, immovable,.. almost merciless mountains.
Aditya and I walked far into the open.
There was a strange vacuous feeling in my throat.
I felt like running.
In the middle of these unnamed, opaque entities.
You know those parallel streams of consciousness running at the back of your head? They lurk around in your head a lot here, this land seems to invoke them. Siddhartha and I have developed a method to deal with them..we let them out into the mountains for some air, then we take them back in when we’ve had enough time on our own.
It works.
The mountains seem to be able to take a lot.
It was my grandfather’s death anniversary today,We’re in the middle of the clouds.
I can feel him around.
Aditya and I walked far into the open.
There was a strange vacuous feeling in my throat.
I felt like running.
In the middle of these unnamed, opaque entities.
You know those parallel streams of consciousness running at the back of your head? They lurk around in your head a lot here, this land seems to invoke them. Siddhartha and I have developed a method to deal with them..we let them out into the mountains for some air, then we take them back in when we’ve had enough time on our own.
It works.
The mountains seem to be able to take a lot.
It was my grandfather’s death anniversary today,We’re in the middle of the clouds.
I can feel him around.
En route to Leh
We reached Surajtal late in the morning
the air was getting chillier,
lighters find no combustible air to combust, the oxygen levels are very low..
the air was getting chillier,
lighters find no combustible air to combust, the oxygen levels are very low..
Manali,Himachal Pradesh
We stayed at Pachan at the Army transit camp, ten kilometers from Manali(Himachal Pradesh). Pachan is a village by the Beas,the river that strings all the people of this region together.
It has been only a day in the valley and Aditya and Siddhartha want to live here.Siddhartha imagines a studio and Aditya says all he’ll need is a net connection. Distances seem large. We walk a short distance and are out of breath.After a brief spell of headaches,a little sleep and an ink pen breaking open in Siddhatha’s pen box again, order seems to be restored for the time being. We stopped at a little tea stall by the river, the little tin roofs are dripping from the rain and huge highway trucks thunder past,the diesel fumes seem unbearable for some reason in this aseptic air. We sat on wooden benches facing each other, Siddhartha got out his sketch book and I set to cleaning his stained pens.
That’s when I saw the carpet weaving looms inside the shop, and got talking to Khila, the lady who ran the tea shop.
Khila sells ski suits to tourists, has a running kitchen and teaches girls from surrounding areas weaving in the evenings. She says it doesn’t earn her much, and there’s no use for rich people to learn how to weave a carpet, but it does become useful for young girls from the surrounding areas who are from struggling families. We spoke to her about why she wove carpets,and she said it was a way to remember where she is from.She said her sons studied in English medium schools,because it was needed to survive today,to be taken seriously, but culture was ‘something like child birth’. When a child is born, she is attached to the mother by the umbilical cord. It must be cut, … but the memory of it will pull the child back. It must.
If it doesn’t, then no mother can do anything.
The child must remember to remember.I’ll upload our conversation through a short clip soon.
It has been only a day in the valley and Aditya and Siddhartha want to live here.Siddhartha imagines a studio and Aditya says all he’ll need is a net connection. Distances seem large. We walk a short distance and are out of breath.After a brief spell of headaches,a little sleep and an ink pen breaking open in Siddhatha’s pen box again, order seems to be restored for the time being. We stopped at a little tea stall by the river, the little tin roofs are dripping from the rain and huge highway trucks thunder past,the diesel fumes seem unbearable for some reason in this aseptic air. We sat on wooden benches facing each other, Siddhartha got out his sketch book and I set to cleaning his stained pens.
That’s when I saw the carpet weaving looms inside the shop, and got talking to Khila, the lady who ran the tea shop.
Khila sells ski suits to tourists, has a running kitchen and teaches girls from surrounding areas weaving in the evenings. She says it doesn’t earn her much, and there’s no use for rich people to learn how to weave a carpet, but it does become useful for young girls from the surrounding areas who are from struggling families. We spoke to her about why she wove carpets,and she said it was a way to remember where she is from.She said her sons studied in English medium schools,because it was needed to survive today,to be taken seriously, but culture was ‘something like child birth’. When a child is born, she is attached to the mother by the umbilical cord. It must be cut, … but the memory of it will pull the child back. It must.
If it doesn’t, then no mother can do anything.
The child must remember to remember.I’ll upload our conversation through a short clip soon.
Monday, July 27, 2009
we've got a brand new video up here
the journey til Manali,part of the crew coming together for the recce!!
we need pledges everybody!!
the journey til Manali,part of the crew coming together for the recce!!
we need pledges everybody!!
sarchu
we landed at the army transit camp at sarchu,
that's our hut,far in the distance at the right.
wait till you see the videos of this place.
blotted
siddhartha's pens can't handle altitude change.
i seem to be the only one getting my hand stained.
black ink all the time.every time.
manali
we reached manali after spending a night with a joint family which somehow managed to focus the whole night on eating.
children were wailing.
uncles were staring
siddhartha amused himself with the blue night lights
Aditya kept seeing his mother.
In Manali,we offloaded 2 very wet rucksacks from the base of the bus.
Sid obviously had wrapped his clothes neatly in plastic.That's him jumping around in the background.with mirth.
BL*$%& $ell.
lesson learnt:
blankets soak lots of water.
don't carry them.ever.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Siddhartha
...and this is one of our fugitive artists furiously at work, at his desk at the National Institute of Design,as we speak,..as you read :)
Siddhartha,who's going to help piece together the puzzle in Ladakh...and who has created the caricatures of the team,down below, for a start
gogogo!
Z
This is how education used to be in Ladakh
By the side of a hand dug irrigation canal
a mani wall running through the fields...
I'd have loved to be taught how to write a story here..
or even engineering graphics for that matter!
By the side of a hand dug irrigation canal
a mani wall running through the fields...
I'd have loved to be taught how to write a story here..
or even engineering graphics for that matter!
a pity education everywhere is becoming like this.
A school in Ladakh,in 2009,looks like the image above.
from Milann's posterous
elementary
I believe the one thing that gets me about exploring Ladakh is the absolute evidence of us not being able to get anywhere without the elements
earth
wind
fire
water
ether
imagine a place where you see the people living by the forces
bowing before it
embracing it
writing their songs on the elements
on rocks over which the water can flow and push the song ahead
writing the stories on flags,so the wind can sing it to the mountain sides
it's all about the motion,isn't it?
writing it on the divine circle,the prayer wheels in natural motion singing singing through their natural course
round and round
it's our responsibility to remember the song
to sing it out and let others know
to remember what we are,and what our origins are.
earth
wind
fire
water
ether
imagine a place where you see the people living by the forces
bowing before it
embracing it
writing their songs on the elements
on rocks over which the water can flow and push the song ahead
writing the stories on flags,so the wind can sing it to the mountain sides
it's all about the motion,isn't it?
writing it on the divine circle,the prayer wheels in natural motion singing singing through their natural course
round and round
it's our responsibility to remember the song
to sing it out and let others know
to remember what we are,and what our origins are.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
and hopping :)
We just went from 5% to 13% in 3 days here :)
We're going to keep the steam! So people really know that if a couple of people really believe in something,it can happen!
Every 5$ counts.
Thank you for all the support!
A big thank you to all the people who've seen me through a lot already over the years and who have joined in here as well :)
and to all the people who don't know me but still believed in the idea,welcome aboard, we will make sure this is worth it!
I'm excited to announce a new addition to our team since this project kickstarted, Siddhartha Tripathi, an animation film maker and fluid illustrator, who has decided to collaborate with our explorations in Ladakh!
AND
with Siddhartha on board, we've decided to get all people interested in a little more detail on board as well.
So for a 100$ Pledge, Siddhartha will tinker to make caricatures of you,something to maybe catch the essence of the person you are!
We plan to couple these sketches with the artwork we will produce in Ladakh, in our showcase event.
Bringing all the faces of the people who made it possible,together :)
Presenting the first set of caricatures in till now, of the team
.
.
.
Friday, July 3, 2009
stepping it up. 5% and looking.
I have been absolutely blown away by the number of people coming forward to support . But we still need more pledges!!
.
.
over the last couple of days we've gotten offering to play the guitar for children
from a potter
from film production workers who still wonder at the super lack of a purely 'entertaining' objective in this project and hence want all the more to be a part(!)
from a graphic artist
from an installation artist,a product designer and close accomplice
from an artist who became an animator
a textile artist who's worked with the Indian Army
a songwriter
350.org
from a native who feels the organizations working in Ladakh, work only for themselves
from 2 people who have served in the Indian Army in the region
from a senior from engineering school who might bring forward the film projectors his company makes
from a loaned DSLR
from my favorite resident poet preparing to skip in whenever she wants
to my mother who is the most excited, about us reaching Zoji la Pass
I have no words to communicate my feelings for these who have given of themselves so selflessly.
I read this line today which I found fitting,
'
Everyone who is honest,is interesting
'
So it seems. :)
The problems seem to be how to get the foundations in top shop shape before letting people in or figuring a way of doing this inspite of all those of corporate origins craning their necks to look for the source of these thoughts.
:):)
Some people have not known how to react.
They've called me and have wanted to just talk.
I've been talking.
:)
More in a bit,I'm on the road..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)