Somehow not very satisfied with this photo but I like the central line going up the stones and the girl alone among all that. The stones, or to use the correct word-stelae, are part of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate. (I cropped the image slightly at the top and applied some color enhancement to let the girl stand out better).

Salted beans
Swirling in the green
Liquid, like
Submerged elephant-gods

I dip my finger
Into the verdant concoction
Parting the colliding
Waters, like a modern Moses

A delicate softness
A sweaty embrace
Steamy yet sublime
Wet yet velvety

I lick my finger
A twang of lime
A breath of garlic
A whisper of coriander

An invisible explosion
A subliminal movement
A steady flow of
Sensual sensations

I took this while looking into the strange, futuristic looking yet beautiful structure, which tapers down from top to bottom inside the Norman Foster designed roof of the Reichstag, Berlin.

Is this for real? Do countries still exist, which will allow only “healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress”? And this is the same country with which the world is bending backwards to do business with? The engine driving global growth, subject of innumerable economic encomiums and the standard bearer of globalisation. What ever happened to the endless posturing on human rights and democracy, espoused especially by Western media?

Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair (and others of their ilk) are you listening? What happened to your noble sentiments of standing up for democracy and even defending it with war? But I forget. This is a world built on the twin pillars of hypocrisy and capitalism. Idealists, go drown in a glass of whiskey.

One of my favorite pics! This might seem quite mysterious but in reality it is the result of blue light falling on water (lit from below) flowing in a groove set in the wall of a restaurant in Hyderabad, India.

That, of course, is the Big Ben from the South Bank of the River Thames near the Jubilee Gardens, shot was taken towards evening and the bird in the frame, I tell you, was a happy coincidence!

Not a terribly good photo I feel, taken in the rush of passing people near the London Eye, but I like the colors of the Fish and the way it seems to swim out of the frame.

In the black light
Of night
I want to merge
The acme of my emotion
In your fervent receptacle

—–

The warm afternoon
Sunlight
Plays hide and seek
With our shadows
As we stare
At each other
And wonder
How many years
Have gone by
In the outside world

—–

We walked
Through the silent leaves
Crackling
In our heads

We talked
Through our thoughts
Making patterns
In our eyes

We united
Through the limpid waters
Collected from
Our frazzled souls

—–

And I looked
At the sky
To see
Dark clouds
Form your face
Distant, unperturbed
By my fears
And desires

—–

We talked
Through the night
About old loves
And new wants
Holding hands
Watching the dew settle
On the tired grass

—–

In your ears
I whisper
Sublime sounds
Making you
Squirm with
Repressed passion

—–

You sleep
Beside me
Golden dust-motes
Hovering-
Around your head
I look at you
And wonder
Why you love me

—–

I lie
In you arms
Day-dreaming
You ask me
“Is there love dear?”
I smile
“Look at me?”, I say
Question answered

—–

In the shade
We sit
Back to back
Watching the sunlight
Create warm patterns
On the fallen leaves
The slow breeze
Flowing through us
Like a brook of bliss

—–

I sit here
Counting the snowflakes
In your wet hair
Drops of water
Drip down your cheeks
I lean forward
And lick them off
Colored waters of love, from
The depths of your pensive soul

—–

Oh!
At the end
Are we?
Scaling our thoughts
But not the feelings

Do we really understand
Each other?
Or is it a masked dance
Of decaying deceit?

—–

Enough now
Of this hide and seek
Let’s lift the blindfold
And see
Everything as it is

My love
Spread like used color
On the floor
Your love
Curling into corners
Each scared
Of the other’s
Iron grasp

—–

I was
A fool
To believe
Your fingers
As they traced
The outlines
Of our hollow love

—–

Our stream
Has come
To a stop

Reading this made me think about the effectiveness of imposing a dress code by an educational institution, particularly on female students. More importantly, is it right for an educational institution to impose such restrictions, which smack of sexism? The arguments most often given to support such a stand are about how ‘proper’ dressing prevents sexual harassment of women and leads to less distraction of their male counterparts. But this, once again, is looking at things from a typically paternalistic viewpoint.

To argue that a woman who dresses in modern clothes will serve as a distraction or make her more prone to sexual attacks is forgetting one important point here. It is the male who is essentially a problem here. The Indian male, for the most part is still caught in a time-warp where a woman dressing in, say a sleeve-less or low waist jeans, would make him automatically assume that she is loose and not to be respected. It is a problem which stems from a society that has taught men that only women dressed conservatively are to be considered respectable. So for an educational insitution to attempt to ‘protect’ female students from this essentially male problem reeks of hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness.

This begs another question, touched upon nicely by the above article. Is it right for a place of learning, meant to promote egalitarian values, to impose such cultural mores? Who is right here? One does not attend a college to learn how to dress. On such potentially divisive issues it is best, I feel, to leave the matter to the students and their parents. Let them regulate themselves. Externally imposed restrictive orders will only make matters worse.

From under the London Eye.