Unleash your Spirit!

Captured at: Rann of Kutch, Gujarat

One final photograph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. 

So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. 

Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

Edward Abbey

Illusions of Faith

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Captured at: Kathmandu, Nepal

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world… Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

– Karl Marx, critique on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Stories Untold

Captured at: Dalai Lama Monastery, HP

​I always used to wonder what leads a person to devote his life to god, sacrificing all the luxuries of life and its attachments be it materialistic or emotional to become a man of robe. 

To answer my doubts, my journeys led me to cross-paths with Lobsang Dhondhen, a senior monk at the Buddhist School of Dialectics Dialogues of Tibetan propaganda and Buddhism over their native speciality butter tea turned intimate with the breaking-of bread, as he unfolded the story if his life. He vaguely tried to remember the faces of his family and kin, who crossed the border carrying a 3 months old kid (Lobsang himself) in 1959 seeking refuge into India after they were exiled from Tibet. I could clearly observed the frowning sadness taking over his face slyly hiding behind the old man’s wrinkles as he was engulfed with the sorrow and longing for what used to be home and his family.

His life completely took a turn at the age of 18, when his mother told him that she would be the luckiest woman to see her son in that “red-robe” before she draws her last breath. Infilliated with the love for his mother, he joined the Buddhist School of Dialects a year later under the patronage of His Holiness Dalai Lama himself. Young Lobsang fulfilled his mother’s wish before she rested in peace, when he was 20. He continued his religious practices and became a propagator of Buddhism in India and abroad. He spent 6month every year in Italy with his Guru, Geshe Yeshe Tobdhen, at the buddhist center in Rome and Milan propagating their cause. 

Traveling has become more of a voyage of learning than just backpacking and roaming around. Its more of a way of living, exploring places and people simultaneously for the world is one big book and every travel unfolds a new chapter and a new vision altogether.

The Forgotten Melodies

Captured at: Bhopal, India

Songs from the past can stir powerful emotions and transport us back in time. This is an experience shared by everyone: hear a piece of music from decades later and you are transported back to that particular moment, like stepping into a time machine. You can feel everything as if you were actually there. The hippocampus and the frontal cortex are two large areas in the brain associated with memory and they take in a great deal of information every minute. Retrieving it is not always easy. 

It doesn’t simply come when you ask it to. Music helps because it provides a rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration which helps to unlock that information with cues. It is the structure of the song that helps us to remember it, as well as the melody and the images the words provoke.

Notably memories stimulated by music often come from particular times in our lives. Classic hits take us back to our teenage years and our twenties, much more than songs of later years. Psychologists have called it the ‘reminiscence bump’. It may work this way because this is an especially important and exciting time in our lives, when we are experience things for the first time and when we become independent. 

Everything is new and meaningful. Later, life becomes a bit of a blur. Music evokes emotion, but the sound and feeling of it, while important ,don’t necessary define your feelings. A sad song could be associated with a happy time, a happy one with a sad one.

Lights Camera Action

Captured at: Udaipur, India

Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how it feels. 

Children of Future

Captured at: Mcloedganj, India

Apart from the splendid scenic beauty and rich Tibetan cultural heritage, Mcleodganj has lot more to offer. Particularly this one place that I’m sure you’ll fall in love with. 
Every child on this planet needs love, warmth and that affection of a family along with a good base of education. And, that’s exactly, the Tibetan Children’s Village has been providing to the refugee orphan kids since half-a century. Working under the directorship of Mrs.Jetsun Pema (the younger sibling of His Holiness Dalai Lama), TCV looks after over 15,000 children. Before visiting the place, I had this apprehension in my mind and kind of pictured it as just another drab orphanage. 

However, much pleased and awe struck at those little 3 year old fingers who acted as my guide and introduced me to the corridors of laughter and smiles all around. I saw walls painted with dreams, of messages of peace to the world from the children of destitute families. I witnessed the children of future. Only a heart full of sorrow can understand the language of love over violence. 

Like H.H. 14th Dalai Lama once said, “If we teach meditation to every 8 yr old, we can end violence in a generation.” They say it’s a village for the orphans, I’d say, it’s a village filled with hopes and dreams.

Flight of Desire

​”The future must not belong to those who bully women. It must be shaped by girls who go to school and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.” – President Barrack Obama, United States, at his speech in United Nations General Assembly

Captured at: Pokhara, Nepal

I was caught in this particular moment when I was returning back from Sarangkot after a long and tiring trek, and i stumbled upon this little girl swinging on the cliff of the mountain at a height of 1682mtrs. Traditionally, its a ritual among many Nepali tribes to swing on these swing-sets, made with four bamboo sticks, atleast once during the dusshera or dashain festival. They believe if you leave the ground swinging in dashain, the swing will take away illl feelings and replace it with new and rejuvination inside oneself and reach closer to the divine .

Twilight at Red Fort, Delhi

Captured at: New Delhi, India

There’s nothing more prettier than a city at 5 am, with its empty streets and cold winds.