Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

Nothing is as fleeting as a concert

You book your concert tickets months in advance. Every time the band plays on your iPod your heart beats faster in excitement. A month ahead of time, you start a countdown, it’s been your dream for years to watch this band live. A week before, it’s all you can think about. On the day, nothing else matters. You arrive at the venue and the first note sounds, you are elated, and the rest of the concert passes in a fleeting moment. Always.

An Encounter at the Greyhound Station

I was told pretty often to not travel by Greyhound. I travelled by Greyhound from Houston to New York City eventually. It wasn’t to spite these people or prove myself, but for the simple reason of cost. Besides, Greyhound buses these days have power sockets and free wifi, how bad could it be? I had rides for as long as twenty three hours. Instead of looking at it as torture to be endured or boredom to be dealt with, I viewed it as an opportunity, an opportunity to lose myself in my thoughts, write, sleep, organize my photos, etc. In fact, I looked forward to it. Such time is precious. Don’t people always complain how they have no time to write their journals or caption their photographs?

New Orleans, a city of music

About fifteen minutes after I arrived in New Orleans, I witnessed an accident. A scooter crashed head on into a car that had just turned onto the road, and the rider was thrown a long way forward. It seemed like the city was living up to its reputation, at least the reputation I had heard of, like:

“New Orleans? Be safe, it’s a dodgy city.”

“Oh, NOLA? Doesn’t it have one of the highest crime rates?”

“Hey, be careful! Don’t walk around just anywhere.”

All these comments made me a little uneasy before I went, but I have to say, New Orleans just requires the same minimal precaution that every traveler must take being in a new, alien place. One can’t eliminate all risk, or he can’t afford to travel.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

What is up? Is it what is really up or what we know should be up?

Is everything not a matter of perspective? Is the glass half full or half empty? Have we completed half our journey or do we have half of it left? Are we being partially pessimistic or largely optimistic?

In the photo, the trashcans are up, but in reality, they are down. So is up up? Or is up down?

California through a windshield (4: San Francisco and Napa)

View from the tiny roomed Adante Hotel, Geary Street

San Francisco is a great walking city. I loved strolling around downtown SF as opposed to LA or San Diego. It seemed to me as if the city had more character. Maybe it’s because I’m from India, but a little less cleanliness seems a little better. There’s something about that little scrap of paper flying about that makes walking on the road that much more mysterious and exciting somehow.

What is to be done with Farokh?

Mr. Daruwala was an interesting man. He was now forty, and he didn’t really do anything in particular. Well, he collected cuckoo clocks, cats, and carpets. He also liked playing the Wii with his cats watching, and teaching the kids in the neighbourhood how to do origami about once a week. Occasionally he cooked an elaborate meal but, for the most part, cereal, sandwiches and eggs constituted the ideal compromise between laziness and taste. He also spent a significant amount of time reading as many different kinds of books as he could, and with the recent acquisition of a Kindle, that was going very well indeed. Yes, he did all these things, but he didn’t earn money, support (or even have) a family, or watch the news, and he didn’t quite understand why having friends was something that everyone around him seemed to need to do. Luckily for him, he had a smart, driven and successful sister who happened to love him, and made his life that much easier. She sent him some money every month, and admittedly, he didn’t need that much, and both of them knew that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to get him onto his own feet. It was easier said than done. He loved his life.

He wasn’t at all unpleasant, nosy, annoying, intrusive, noisy, abusive, arrogant, or any such thing. However, he was incredibly, incredibly, incredibly forgetful and absent minded.

The World Passport

I dream to be in large cities and small villages. I dream to be on islands of sand and islands of ice. I dream to be in plains and deserts. I dream to summit peaks. I dream to explore rainforests and canyons. I dream to behold coral and be engulfed in caves. I dream to be on a cycle and in a ship, in live concerts and museums, in pubs and playgrounds, with people and without. I want to know what it’s like out there. But there’s one problem, a problem that has arisen because of how complicatedly structured we’ve made the world today.