Thought for the day

"If you are not working to either enhance your experience here on earth or making headway for your afterlife everything else really does seem futile"

      Huthuka Chishi

HENRI CARTIER BRESSON

  Hey folks! Hope everyone's doing just fine. Its been pretty hectic lately for a lot of reasons but it involves music and that's one subject that I can virtually never overdose on :-) Anyway I want to share something very interesting with you peeps.

                  Having always been fascinated with the creative arts, and also having dabbled in this particular medium in the past, it was a natural progression of things through which I retrenched myself in it again. I am referring to photography of course. It was always the awe of being able to transfix time onto a sheet of paper, but over time many other aspects of photography came to fascinate me.

               The similies between painting and photography is one area that particularly interests me; I'm constantly trying to either relate or disengage them. The most important similie between them is my conviction that the viewfinder of the camera translates into the canvas of a painter, while the image in the viewfinder translates into the colors of the painter's pallette. How the medium and the means translate into the final product is ultimately left to the weilder's art and skill.

                   If photography is then really akin to painting, in my opinion the Caravaggio of photography is Henri cartier Bresson, one of the pioneers of MAGNUM the premiere photgraphy agency. I have my reasons for thinking so. I  am also a huge fan of Ansel Adams, Jeanloup Sieff, Araki and Leibovitz but for some arcane reason I am more drawn to HCB. Maybe its because I share his same penchant, or rather the belief, that the real without any pre-planning is the most honest. For instance he believes in something he calls the 'definitive moment' that every object or person possesses; the photographer's role being to be observant enough to notice that moment and capture it for posterity and art's sake. 

                  What also fascinates me about him is that he is not only a photographer but a true romantic. I am convinced that every romantic is also a philosopher in certain ways and Henri Cartier Bresson is truly a philosopher. His images speak more than any amount of words.  If you'd like to get a steady foothold in the world of photography look this giant of a person up. Youtube has some very interesting videos on him. I can assure you that you'll not be disappointed. 

               Here's wishing you a beautiful weekend. Be blessed Y'all.

Note: The picture above was shot by Henri cartier Bresson in Srinagar. And also as a side note HCB died in 2007.

MY MIDNIGHT SNACK

Today I just have this desire to write about something silly and just because I can I will! LOL. I am nocturnal in a very literal sense of the word. Having no classes to attend or office to report to ( hopefully not for very long...) I have the luxury of deciding when I wake up and when I go to sleep. And so I find myself gradually turning into a creature of the night, not that I am complaining- I love the night. Whatever, I want to tell you about the one thing that punctuates my nights unfailingly: My midnight snack.

I usually watch a movie or am on Youtube watching everything from the hilariously horny puppy( humping furiously at its owners legs I may add) to the beautiful pictures taken by Henri Cartier Bresson. And the perfect accompaniment to my escapades is a yummy bowl of noodles with a whole swamp of tomato sauce splattered on it. And to top it off the cursory glass of milk follows; did I mention that I love milk too?

So here is how I prepare the noodles. My noodle of choice is 'Top Ramen'. I like it because it is instantaneous but not pukeish smelling like some other varieties. This is how I usually prepare it;
First goes some carrots into the dish, then a small piece of ginger, a clove of garlic, one green chilly, half a tomato, half an onion, a stalk of spring onion, diced french beans and coriander whenever its lying around. The way to prepare it is super simple. Put all the ingredients into a dish; next pour in 1 and a half cups of water; bring it to boil now; add the noodles and let it boil for a minute; finally put in the seasoning and bring it down after two minutes. And there you have it- yummy noodles that will do any Michelin starred restaurant proud... well, at least in my book! And then after I have had an almost mystical experience the glass of skimmed milk follows like the proverbial icing on the cake.

Thats how my nights go but occasionally the odd toast with cheese replaces the noodles. If and when I start working( which I will eventually have to do despite my strongest aversion to it) I will miss these nightly crimes more than anything else. Its simply a matter of habit like they say... I'll post a picture of this delectable concoction ASAP for your unabashed admiration. Till I do that let these words drive you to a state of salivation!

CASABLANCA AND OTHER CLASSICS

Just a few months ago I considered myself an avant garde connoisseur of movies. I liked to think that I distinguished myself through my taste in movies( read Kurosawa, Ray...etc) but my pretensions were quickly dissipated by a chance encounter with an entirely new genre of movies- the early classics.

What happened is this in a nutshell. A very bored chap, nothing to do but surf the internet, an idea strikes him, why not look for a list of some great movies, and Voila! what else but 'Casablanca' appears like the proverbial mother lode!

At first I was a little disinterested; I did not give enough credit to the movie making abilities of those old chaps. But I watched it anyway and boy! did I dig it! Those people knew how to entertain for sure, but what was more fascinating was the entire stylistic and thematic treatment of the movie.

The legendary Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman played the lead with a very convincing supporting role being eschewed by Paul Henreid. And how can one forget the delightful Tom Foolery of Dooley Wilson as Sam, the confidant and accomplice of the lead hero Rick. One gets the feeling that a lot of thinking went into the assemblage of the entire cast, and testifying to it's success is the incredible way in which everything comes together! At the end I was as equally enamored with the characters as with the plot and the era itself. I always hate to be the spoil sport so beyond this I'll not give anything away.

My encounter with the classics hardly stops there. I went on to watch classic westerns like 'The red river', 'High plains drifter' starring the inimitable and Macho Clint Eastwood, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' and others. But the one I enjoyed the most definitely was 'High Noon' starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly: the mastery of the director Fred Zinnemann is something to be savored rather than described. I'll just second what one critic says about the movie- not a single frame is wasted!

After watching all these great movies I now realize that the movies are one field where people with pretensions of refinement and snootiness, like I was and still am but to a lesser degree, do not belong. They just cannot enjoy movies at all because they are constantly measuring one against the other. The truth is that it is an entire panaroma of sights, sounds and ideas that has to be viewed from different vantage points to be properly grasped. The primary intent of movies after all was, is, and will always be to entertain.