I’m not completely satisfied with the PP on this. Some essential thing is missing. But I don’t feel like working with it for too long so I post the photo as it is now. Hope you will like it better.

A tropical sun, but without the burning heat, has come calling. I’m taken back in time to hot afternoons; of sweat drenched foreheads, of delicious mangoes, of the sudden stillness after regular electricity cuts, and the beautiful feeling of cool air on hot skin. I breathe in the thick memories of summers bygone, intoxicating in their all-enveloping glory.

Ah, I remember that strand; a sultry Sunday when I roamed through the book market in Abids and found, to my utter delight, that my doors of perception had been cleansed. Here is another memory, of sitting for an entrance exam on a ferocious afternoon in May, half suffering from sunstroke, the questions looming up from the paper and forming surreal shapes. Streaking through my senses, a cool summer morning, the way she felt in my arms among the rocks, the dream like union of hesitant lips, the heavenly vision of half-naked flesh below me and then walking back hand in hand, hesitating to open my mouth and shatter the unbelievable dream. Here is another fragment; a day spent tramping through the hot roads of Pune but with the welcome relief of frequent Neera drinking stops. Suddenly, I taste that chilled beer again traveling down my throat, cold and exciting in a sleepy Delhi fast food joint. And how can I forget the gentle lapping of the waves as I sat on the beach and consumed a book on a lazy Goan afternoon.

I remember escaping in to the icy relief of air-conditioned libraries, of the air hanging still like a guillotine at 1 pm, of mid day roads swept clean of people, of juicy watermelons melting in my mouth, of sweaty bed sheets and howling Westerly winds. An endless succession of summers unfolding behind my eyes.

And there are words as well, from half-forgotten conversations, unwaveringly similar, time after time.

“Hey, who is getting the snacks?”

“Don’t you dare forget the green peas, fucker!”

“Oh boy this is life! Chilled beer hitting the spot, tasty snacks and the whole evening stretching away before you like an empty runway.”

“…Julio and Romiet…shit…damn…I mean Romeo and Juliet of course…cut it out you dickheads, I’m not drunk!”

I’ve been posting at random over the past few days, something new and something old. This is something slightly old. There was something about the way the woman was standing and observing the scene that made me reach for my camera and capture this.

Although I wish both the stems were in focus I still like the way this photo has come out. I find it to be quite surreal.

This is a photo from the same time and place as this [one](http://www.visual.arthedains.com/index.php?showimage=174). This is something of a pseudo-IR photo as I used only the red channel data during conversion to b/w. I think it gives the photo a certain soft mood.

From the rich, saturated colors of the previous photo let us move on to the simplicity of monochrome with today’s photo! This is from a while back. As the title suggests, I like the fluid like quality of the tree’s bark.

This is one of my favorite photos among all that I’ve shot in recent times. I like the way everything came together in this, me waiting, shivering in bone freezing wind for the light to be right and hoping a bird would fly into the frame, the way PP went etc, etc. But I don’t think of all those incoveniences now. All I see is a photo my eyes love to stare at! I hope you will agree with me.

From the intense golden of yesterday to the quiet monochrome of today. But I still have some photos in my archives that I want to finish posting. So here is one.

Even though this started off as a pretty ordinary photo I like the way it has ended up. I think the tone really suits the tree. The original shot was with two trees but I cropped out the other one as I feel it works better with this one tree. If you find the photo to be too big for your screen just press F11 in any browser to to full screen (and press F11 again to exit it).

I know sunsets are done to death by every aspiring photographer as they manage to look good no matter how much one screws them up. But inspite of that cynicism I still like the magic of a sunset, the beautiful golden light making everything appear melancholic and soft. So here goes the first, more to follow in the days ahead.

India is rapidly growing and needs loads of energy soon to fuel that growth. We cannot (and should not) depend on the unstable Middle-East for our oil, not just because they are repressive and thus unstable regimes but also because of the spiraling cost and long-term environmental problems. Wind, solar and tidal energies are still at a nascent stage and need more time before they can be widespread. And there is stiff resistance in India to large scale hydro electric plants. So the only reliable alternative left is nuclear power. The Indian nuclear establishment for all its talent of working under adverse conditions is still using unstable cold-war era technologies. Added to this is the fact that India has very low reserves of Uranium. We do have huge reserves of Thorium but lack the technology to use it as a nuclear fuel as of yet. So we urgently need access to safe and reliable nuclear technologies and fuel. And who controls this? The US (and other Western powers) of course. So if not today tomorrow we would need this deal. And that I think is the raison d’etre for this agreement. Remember, this deal was asked for by the Indians and not the Americans.

Now with this little setting of context out of the way let us come to Mr. Bush. I do not like him and I think he is perhaps the worst US president in history. He is a war mongerer and I seriously think he is in the pocket of big business. But I do give him certain credit. He has had the courage to change decades of anti-India policies by the US. I know he is not doing this out of love for India, he is doing it from a purely strategic and business point of view but he did something which even Clinton was not willing to do.

So it is a purely pragmatic decision on India’s part to deal with him. When we can directly deal with war mongerers and repressive dictators like Musharraf of Pakistan and Wen Jiabao of China what is wrong in dealing with Bush? Musharraf is even worse than Bush I think. He was directly responsible for the killing of hundreds of Indian soldiers during the Kargil episode and indirectly responsible for the thousands of deaths due to terrorism in Kashmir and beyond. For god’s sake, he blatantly ignores terrorists acting from his own soil! And I doubt if even you will support a totalitarian state like China and the immense human rights abuses it’s ruling government has been party to. So why didn’t anyone (apart from perhaps the far right parties) protest their visit to India? Why didn’t the Left come out in full force and protest the Chinese leadership’s visit sometime back or Musharraf’s continuing support for terrorism? Do you really believe that the Indian left cares for the issues on hand? They are making such a noise only because they have elections coming up in key states where they hold power or have influence. So I don’t see anything really wrong in India doing business with Bush.

Finally, that brings us to the question, what is it that the Indian left wants? Do they even have a vision for India’s future or does it change every time they taste power? Do they want to turn India into a totalitarian communist regime like China? I mean these were the very people who apparently opposed nuclear weapons of any kind when India embarked on a such a program first. Now, it is hilarious to see them getting concerned for the military nuclear program!

Even though my politics lie left of center I’ve never been in favor of the Indian Left parties. They have never done anything that has benefited the poor and have only bothered themselves about staying in power as long as possible.

Let not the above words give you the impression that I support nuclear weapons. Far from it, I wish they had never been invented in the first place. But they exist and will continue to do so. I was disappointed to see India soften its long held stand for the complete eradication of nuclear weapons in the world. However, that is a also a shift based on current reality. India is surrounded by hostile and unstable regimes. From Pakistan to Burma, from China to Bangladesh, we have neighbors who refuse to see reason and are willing to continue on the path of violence and/or brutal suppression of human rights. So we do need a credible deterrent, something that will make them think twice before threatening our national and territorial integrity. In spite of this obvious security fear, India is perhaps the only nuclear power in the world who has imposed on herself a no first-strike policy. Did any of the other other nuclear powers follow India’s example? The answer is a resounding no. And this is where India’s need for nuclear weapons comes from.

(A post that was in response to Tushar’s argument that Bush is a war criminal and therefore it was an insult for him to offer respects at Mahatma Gandhi’s samadhi and that India should not do business with him.)