At The Edge

Sun's chariot atop Shani Temple at Chandni Chowk, Delhi -0-

On the peripheral walls on Red Fort and the red walled flyover in front  of it. -0- Unrelated post: Arundhati's Beast

And while we are are on the subject of Heroines and print technology: A man at Daryaganj showing a neat little cut and paste technique. video link

And while we are still in Old Delhi...

June 27, 2011 A trip to Sunday Kitab Market at Daryaganj is always a delight, but this Sunday I was surprised to see a new stall. The kid as the shop told me it has only been there since last couple of weeks. I went thorough the stuff, quite impressed, there were even Raj era letters, Rs.10 a piece. This was obviously just the sample. And the rates are great. Certainly better than what one pays online for such stuff. Hundred rupees for the theater brochure of 'Bombay to Goa' isn't too bad. The kid said he father will be back soon. An old man asked the kid how much for the whole bunch of those old letter. The man said he wants all, how much. The kid started flipping through the album in which the letters were kept, counting under his breath. 'Are you calculating?' The old man looked at me and then at the boy and gave a benevolent. The father was there when I returned, he introduced himself as Shenky [ real name  Suleiman ] and in the same breath asked me if I ha...

All I heard was a heavy Droff somewhere in the background. The distinct sound of a body hitting the ground. As I turned around,  a woman from somewhere inside the womb of an auto-rickshaw shouted out to no one in particular and perhaps to herself, ' Uthao usay! ' After many Sundays, I felt like going out. There had been a nice drizzle in the morning, I felt like going to Chandni Chowk and Daryaganj, at Daryaganj you can make the best bargains when the sky is cloudy and the road is wet. And its narrow, busy lanes remind me of the place where I grew up. I felt like going. I talked a friend into coming along, which turned out to be a good things as I felt like not going soon after I well sold the idea to him with lines: 'you can get your fat M.Tech books real cheap. When were you last there? Twelve years! Too long .'But then I started having second thoughts.  It is going to get humid. I can stay here and finish that damn book.  It was a good thing...

The exact chronology of events isn't clear. What is known  is that by the end of October 1972, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of British rock band Led Zeppelin, who were not yet the legends that they were eventually going to be, along with their manager Richard Cole had one night walked into a small pub named  'Slip Disc' in Bombay  and before a dazed Indian audience gave an impromptu performance with support from local musicians. The re-telling by these local rock musicians was going to become the primary source of  this lesser known, lesser documented story involving one of the greatest rock band ever. [Check ' One Muggy Night in Mumbai ... '( Published in Times of India Pune, on 7th July, 2001 ) by Nandu Bhende, one of the musicians who performed with the band.] All evidence suggests that this was in fact their third visit to the city. But for Indian fans of the band, it proved to be the most memorab...

Or that may explain a lot. -0-

Aesthetically, if there was a muse backing them up, instead of Satyagrah it ought to be Andolan . But then this is about stealing iconography of protest . And the only super heroes missing: -0-

Finally got myself a book with lots of pictures. And some readable lines, here and there. 'Bollywood Posters' (2008) is a meditation on things like significance of gun in a heroine's hand, so obvious: reversal of phallic symbolism and castration, the birth of 'A frame', the poor man's practice of 'optimum' use of space in a hand-painted movie poster where the directions seem to be simple: never leave a curve out, create one where there is none, never leave a knife, a gun, a gun-thing-like-knife, a train, a plane, a gorilla, anything that moves the audience out, squeeze it all in even if it distorts the whole picture, the significance of hero showing his back in a poster, he is standing up against the society, the value of 'action' in North India, the runs, the mills, the coming of photoshop generation, the death of poster art, an art now economically inviable. Here it would be fair to say, given the cost of these fat arty books in India, even ...

And so the madness continues. video link

On a gate of a temple near Gurgaon's HUDA city center. -0-