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My Photographic Journal of January 2025
Some Thoughts, Feelings and Photographs
One of the best hobbies is photography. Particularly for the retired men like me who have enough time and an uncluttered mind to look at the world with new eyes. (Cataract operations give ‘new eyes’, but we are not discussing it here).
Speaking of operations, I remembered that this year started with an excellent program with my doctor friends (surgeons included, they do not call themselves doctors anymore!). Dr Anurag Mishra, Dr Monty Khajanchi and others lead a group (May God bless them) called ‘Mashaal’ which organizes Leadership Development Programs for the healthcare professionals.
They decided to train a small group of healthcare professionals; they organised training in which each one was trained to cover a specific subject of the leadership program. This is no small a step!
The venue was Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. We reached there in the evening so clicked a few photos while taking walk. Late night photographs show objects so differently!
The Prabodhini is an outstandingly designed campus.
Dr Anand Nadkarni is a well-known Psychiatrist, he has set up Institute for Psychological Health at Thane and has done great work in the field of mental health. He is a poet, a prolific writer, much sought after speaker, and a playwright too. Chances are that he must have done many other things which I may have missed mentioning here; I wonder how he finds time for all these activities!
He invited me for the first reading of his upcoming play on Sister Nivedita and Swami Vivekanand. The audience was all who’s who in Marathi theatre. (The play will be in English). I felt like the odd one out. I thought I must have qualified because my name (as registered in the birth certificate) is not Vivek but it is Vivekanand. And my cousin is Nivedita, but surely Dr Nadkarni must not have known this interesting coincidence.
He made a sketch of how the set should look. Visualization at its best!! Let us await this upcoming play. I will not divulge more details but suffice it to say that it is about ‘The Last Supper’ of Sister Nivedita and Swami Vivekanand.
Creativity springs out suddenly, they say. Like Rajapur Ganga Or maybe like Old Faithful at the Yellowstone National Park. Dr Anand Nadkarni who has studied the life of Swami Vivekanand got the inspiration to write a play on Swamiji and Sister Nivedita while dining in Iceland!
During my morning walk I keep looking for interesting photo opportunities. The roads are empty, and some unique sights come my way. I saw this girl with her father learning cycling.
And a quick ‘morning breakfast’ of Idlis and Vadas.
I started for Jawhar but unprecedented traffic jams on Ahmedabad highway forced me to return home. Five hours wasted, but the gain was this sight! Seagulls were sitting in a row.
So, one more.
I impulsively clicked 80 photographs from my car without getting down to take photos fearing that seagulls will fly away. Looking back, I feel I should have got down and clicked a few photos. I regret I lost some unique opportunities to frame the scene well. Fear and impulsiveness are two enemies which prevent making good photographs.
Life is like that – there is always an ‘if’ hidden in it.
Vivek S Patwardhan
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” All work is copyrighted.
Superb as always sir. We have forgotten to enjoy small pleasures of life
Very interesting as always. Notice how the gulls sit equidistance from each other. You’ll notice the same thing with all perching birds of all kinds. Fascinating.
I am deeply impressed by the way you make such impactful photographic presentations from “seemingly “ mundane scenes. Many of the beauties of the world are invariably brought out by you when most of us would have ignored them. I must say in respectful dissent from your first statement that retired people have often got the most cluttered minds and spend their time ruminating on how life could have been better or they grow inwards and start breaking their heads over petty domestic issues.
You have given a clear message through photography how leisure should be spent and our minds receptive to the joys of living in this planet rather than its pitfalls CONGRATULATIONS
Such a simple yet a powerful message from this blog Sir – “Life is like that – there is always an ‘if’ hidden in it.“
Indeed this year started on awesome front with Mashaal !!! Way to go ….