Summer 2021
It may come at the most unexpected of circumstances – this feeling of being enthralled by a moment in time. I remember one summer afternoon while I was walking along one of my usual routes in Central Park. As I turned to glance at the lagoon and the picturesque towers of San Remo to my left, the scene that greeted me seemed almost unreal. I was captivated by how the afternoon sun’s rays gently touched the sunbathers lazing on the grass, creating an image straight out of a Seurat painting.
Or that moment while fellow hikers and I were resting amidst Incan ruins, tired and lost on an ancient trail. As darkness fell and the moonlight and head lamps were all that we had, a pair of llamas quietly ambled by and rested among us, turning our weariness into wonder.
My life as a traveler has been peppered by moments like these, ever since a magical evening in Granada two decades ago. Enjoying vino and tapas in a quiet square as the Alhambra glistened on the hill in front of me, I was transported by the strains of a Spanish guitar to the tales this Moorish castle had to tell.
Awestruck by the experience, I frantically looked for an internet cafe (this was the pre-smart phone era), even though it was almost midnight, and wrote what was to be my first travel essay. These are the moments I love to capture, whether in photographs or in prose, when the world offers me a beautiful scene and I am right there, with open eyes and mind, to welcome it.
Through the years, I have come to realize that capturing these moments has also given me the opportunity to come back to them whenever I wish to or whenever I need to. And when this happens, the same raw streams of emotions flow in my veins as I relive the experience once again. In a way, these essays and photographs offer glimpses of my thoughts and feelings, and taken together, conjure up a pretty good reflection of who I am.
I am fascinated by the lives of artists and writers, who invite us to partake in their world through their works, yet whose most personal aspirations are reserved for the lucky few in the intimacy of their homes. In my travels, I’ve visited the homes of artists, trying to understand the person behind the painting, the soul behind the poem. Often, what I’d find in these intimate settings would reinforce my perceptions of them– Frieda Kahlo’s boldness, Pablo Neruda’s passion.
Once in a while, I’ve had pleasant surprises. At Salvador Dali’s house, I was expecting a most bizarre dwelling but, instead, was ushered into the home of a romantic spirit, whose bedroom window slants at a particular angle such that at daybreak, through a reflection in a large mirror, one wakes up to the first rays of sunlight in the whole of Spain! How wonderful it is to create something of beauty with what the world offers us and be able to share this with people. How beautiful it is that, through stories or images or whatever means suit us, we are able to share ourselves with others.
One of the most poignant scenes I’ve encountered in my travels was in Plaza Santo Domingo in Mexico City, where I saw a line of people amidst the activity in the plaza. As I approached the start of the line, it struck me that these were people who did not know how to write but had lined up to have a letter-writer jot down their stories for them.
I imagine these could have been messages for dear friends, or precepts for sons or daughters, maybe even letters to lost loves. They could have come for many other reasons, but the thread that may perhaps tie them all together was the desire to document that, at one point in time, they were alive and had lived lives that mattered.
(Documenting Life. Originally published in The PearlBook, 2021)