Category Archives: Photos

Highway to heaven

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Highway signs from Ladakh:

        

Himank is responsible for construction of GS roads and other related infrastructure for Army, Air Force and government organisations located within the Ladakh region consisting of Leh and Kargil districts. Project Himank looks after the famous areas of Drass, Kargil, Batalik, Siachen Glacier and Chushul. The project sector encompasses world’s second coldest region of Drass, world’s highest motorable road astride Khardung La, world’s highest battle-ground of Siachen Glacier and Pangong Tso Lake at 14500 ft located across India-China border. [Link]

(thanks, Ankush)

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Midnight’s towers

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The Empire State Building is lit green and white this weekend in honor of Pakistan’s independence. Manhattan’s parade starts at 12:30 pm today and goes down Madison Ave. from 41st to 26th Sts.

The 23rd St. tower’s lighting is still on IST. Maybe it’s reactionary political commentary; maybe it’s a statement of solidarity; maybe, like vegetables and viceroys, it only morphs at the stroke of midnight.

 

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Checkered translation

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Seen atop a NYC cab: ‘Hum vahan vyavsaya ke liye jaathe hain,’ ‘we go there for business’ (thanks, skk).

I love the non-translation. It’s like the out-joke in Lost in Translation when the enfant terrible director rants at length in Japanese:

Ms. Kawasaki: He want you to turn and look in camera. Okay?
Bob (Bill Murray): Is that all he said? [Link]

On the other hand, they skipped the obvious alliteration: ‘Don’t dilly-dally, Delhi daily.’

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India daze

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On IST as always, NYC’s India Day parade was held on August 21 this year. I couldn’t attend, but I hear one of our readers played the nauch girl on stage. Perhaps you’ll chime in with incriminating photos.

Like the Poe toaster, only sans macabre, some mystery soul always garlands the Gandhi statue in Union Square with fresh flowers:

For over 50 years since 1949, on the night marking the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, a mysterious man-in-black has entered the cemetery where the master of the macabre lies buried, and, making his way through the dark shadows to Poe’s grave, he places a partial bottle of expensive French cognac and three blood-red roses there, presumably as tokens of admiration and in tribute to the great author. This ritual completed, he then slips away into the night as quietly and as mysteriously as he came…

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Public service announcement

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Kingfisher Beer has put its ‘swimsuit’ calendar online. It’s just like the CNN site which annoys me daily (‘we interrupt you with breaking news: Model of the Day!’), but with lotus pads: zen cheesecake, if you will. There are so many floating flowers in the frame, you’d think it was pitching feminine products instead of beer.

The launch party attained this pinnacle of cheese: Salman Khan (1) in a muscle shirt (2) ripping cheetah print (3) off a bikini calendar (4). Behind him are a large contingent of underfed (5), blue-eyed Anglo-Indians, those ubiquitous khakhi-suited, pot-bellied sipahis (6), and Vijay Mallya (7), who’s way too old to be playing Richard Branson.

Beat that, Hasselhoff.

From the same photographer, here’s Aamir Khan whoring out timepieces in Mangal Pandey attire and cornrows, and a very funny wireless campaign with Javed Jaffrey.

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An update on those Kids

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The New York Times follows up (tip from Angana) on those Kids with their Cameras [see previous posts 1,2,3]:

The children’s story is by now well known, thanks to the sad, beautiful film that Ms. Briski and Ross Kauffman made about the youngsters’ pinched lives in Sonagachi, the largest red-light district in Calcutta. Their world opened up when Ms. Briski, a photojournalist struck by the children’s plight, decided to give them cameras and teach them photography.

Avijit actually makes his observation in “Born Into Brothels: Reconnecting,” a short three-years-after addendum to the original film that shows the ecstatic reunion of Ms. Briski and most of the children. They were between 8 and 12 when “Born Into Brothels” was shot; they are entering adolescence now, taller, more mature and, thanks to her efforts, attending boarding schools. They appear to have been rescued.

Ms. Briski’s life has changed, too. In 2002, she founded Kids With Cameras, an international nonprofit organization that is building a school for the children of Sonagachi, partly with money from the sales of her students’ photographs. (Kids With Cameras has also established programs in Haiti, Jerusalem and Cairo.)

There were several comments following one of our previous entries that didn’t quite like the message this movie sent or the idea that Briski was “rescuing” these kids.  Most comments however were positive.  Anyone who has seen the movie can attest to the fact that their story is powerful.  If you live in New York then you can decide for yourself this weekend at an exhibit of their work.  I’m curious as to what became of the children:

Open to the public, Kids with Cameras: Calcutta will be presented at ICP, 1114 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd St., Aug. 10 through 14 from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm. The CINEMAX Reel Life presentation Born Into Brothels debuts TUESDAY, AUG. 16 (7:00-8:30 pm ET/PT), exclusively on CINEMAX. In tandem with the premiere, Born into Brothels: Reconnecting, a short update on the children featured in the documentary, will be available on CINEMAX On Demand beginning Aug. 11; Born Into Brothels will also be available on CINEMAX On Demand beginning that day, in advance of its CINEMAX debut.
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Say Cheese

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All day Manish has been foto-blogging (floging) highlights from the Indian State visit. He updated with this picture just a few hours ago:

This isn’t so much a post from me as it is a question to our Indian American readers. As an Indian-American, something with this picture just doesn’t sit right with me. I appreciate what the Administration might have been trying to do but…if the German Chancellor visited the U.S. would all the German American appointees be invited to pose for a picture with him? This picture (to me) smells of the unstated belief that Indian Americans somehow have a divided loyalty and are not simply American. Why the assumption that we would want to pose with “our” Prime Minister? I think I would have a hard time accepting such an invitation until I understood the logic of it. Why would I want to pose with him? Just because he is from India and so were my parents? I would most certainly want to meet and talk with him, but not in this manner. I wonder if a picture exists where the Indian American appointees were all called in to pose with just our President Bush?

I realize that I am probably over-reacting to this, but I am just curious as to what some of you think. Continue reading →

President Singh

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Manmohan Singh and Dubya are frolicking together like puppies. Bush even matched his tie to Singh’s turban, although G. Kaur couldn’t talk Laur into a sari. It’s all happening right now.

Bush rolled out full pomp and pageantry for Singh’s visit, with a bewigged fife and drum corps marching across the South Lawn during the welcome ceremony…

Administration officials say the pomp was designed to emphasize the growing importance to the United States of India, a rising economic and military power whose newfound affinity for the United States is something Bush considers a major foreign policy success. [Link]

An American army band played the Indian and American anthems, and Singh will address Congress tomorrow. In return, Singh promised Bush a reenactment of the Salt March, with be-lungi’d freedom fighters marching across the lawn to a fountain at Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Elapsed time: 30 seconds.)

  

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Selling dreams, door to door

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For many in India, their first movie wasn’t in an air-conditioned, terraced, multiplex, or on a TV screen hooked up to a VCR. It was shown to them by a travelling cinema, a truck with multiple aging film projectors bolted to its floor, and a team of projectionists who lived in it.

This was the opposite of a drive-in theater; instead of driving to the screen and watching from your car, the film came to you, but stayed in its vehicle.

Shashwati fondly remembers her experiences with this dying breed of entrepreneurs:

These companies were commercial ventures with ancient 35 mm projectors, they would go to where the audience was, set up a screen and show a movie. When I was in school, that is how films used to be shown to us. Mr. Movie Man (we actually called him that) would come with a projector and usually an ancient Tarzan movie. We would re-arrange our chairs, and take down the partition between the classrooms … 

Once, by mistake, Mr. Movie Man put in a French film, it was fading and probably from 1960. It wasn’t anything special. A woman in a long coat and sunglasses walked into a beach cabin. She sat there, and then a man came in. And he kissed her, on the mouth! After that first kiss, there was either deadly silence or a collective gasp, then the lady took off her clothes, not all of them, but enough for the film to be stopped and reel yanked out. Then we were back to seeing “savages” and a full grown man leaping through trees, something much more salubrious for our tender psyches. [Shashwati]

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