lightadjustments-blog

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Seaside Textures

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A boat ride on the choppy Arabian Sea at Daman

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Coffee and Conversations

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Glimpses from my life

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From trips

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For Home and Freedom. 

There comes a point in all of our lives when we leave the comfort of home and head into the big bad world. This point comes at different junctures for every individual, but comes for everyone nevertheless. For me, this separation from home came in two stages. I left home in my 11th grade only to go live with my grandparents an hour away from home. It was a change indeed, but not such a daunting one. With college, my life experienced an upheaval of sorts. I found myself in a new city, living by myself and studying something no one else among my family or friends had ever even HEARD of. That kind of freedom is a heady thing. It seems more exciting than scary and that excitement helps you survive initially.

I was in-charge of me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I paid my electricity bill, did the dishes and took care of my petrol and cell phone balance needs. I felt like a big girl in a big city. The first two years of college flew by without me feeling even remotely homesick. Come third year, I moved to a new area and a new house (something I had done for every single year of my college life). Something felt different about this time though. I did not have my aunt, or one of my big sisters around to help me and this time I was truly by myself.

Living on your own is liberating as it is exhausting. You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want provided that you are able to muster up the energy to cook after a long day at school. (Ordering in is not an option unless being broke is a state one personally enjoys) For the longest time I felt bad about not feeling homesick enough and about enjoying my independent life a bit too much. But like anything else, ‘homesick’ too comes in waves. The first time I truly felt a raw longing for home was when the mother of one of my flat-mates came to stay over. I was walking home from a dull, uneventful day at college and looking forward to settling in bed with a steaming bowl of packet noodles and a chick-flick to watch. I arrived at my doorstep and a familiar smell wafting out of the kitchen window hit me, right in the feels. My flat-mate’s mother had prepared daal and chaawal. That beautiful aroma of cooking toor daal had spread throughout the house and there was that familiar sound of the rice cooker whistle going off time and again. I felt a raw ache in my gut, something that could not be healed by infinite packets of ramen, chocolate-caramel bars, mugs of coffee or tea, or magic potions.

I fell asleep that night to a conversation about the comforts of home with my roommate and woke up the next morning feeling perfectly fine, keyed up to begin my day. Over time I realized that feeling homesick was a part of life. It is a feeling that could come to you anywhere, triggered by smells, emotions, sounds, sights, déjà vu even. It paralyzes you for a moment, with an inestimable longing for home but passes soon. You are left with beautiful memories of home, energized to take on the excitements and exhaustions of life and freedom.

This post is for all those living away from home, enjoying it (guiltily so) and feeling homesick time and again (inducing often-in-vain-efforts to prepare a home-like meal). Photographs from that same corner of beautiful light in my kitchen, mirchi pakodas, daal, bhindi, chapati dough and perhaps, memories of home.

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For the love of light.

Light, in the simplest of terms is that natural agent which stimulates sight and makes things visible. It 'illuminates' its subject, while allowing the viewer the privilege to view it in a myriad of different ways. Light is that which enables and empowers humankind to experience by sight the glorious beauty of the natural world that we inhabit.

Essentially, light forms the most core of the art of photography. George Eastman, the legendary inventor of the Kodak camera, has famously said- "Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography." Photography is not simply capturing images. It is going beyond the camera and capturing moments. Photography, like dance, is an art of storytelling. You make images with your heart, mind and soul. Each photograph you create speaks differently to each person. And since light is so fundamental to photography, it is also to the art of storytelling via the photographic image.

I have often been asked what my thought process is when I take a photograph. I have always maintained that a good photograph is not a picture of a special thing, but a special photograph of an ordinary thing. That is the power of any art; it takes something out of the ordinary and makes it glorious, beautiful. This very idea is constantly buzzing in my head, and is also the root of my deep interest in photographing people, culture and the vitality of life itself.

Light Adjustments is a small effort on my part to put my pictures out there; instead of just storing them in my computer's close-to-full storage drive. I hope to be able to tell very simple stories, stories of people, food, seasons, relationships, places and moments that often go unnoticed in the chaos of life. 'For the love of light;' is from a time when I chanced upon a beautifully lit corner in my kitchen and decided to photograph that light using different objects. Since I love a lot of photos that I took in this series, I will split these photographs into many small posts.

For now, enjoy !