BANARAS : Diary Of An Atheist

from sunrise to sunset at the dashaswamedh ghats in banaras!

mountain of a mole-hill

Well, am not really the writing kind, as you (those who've wandered through my domain) figured out by now. And it might seem like am making a mountain of a mole-hill, but i'd rather make a mountain, a mountain of a mole-hill and anything else, than spend my life mountainless, in lands where the only thing that rise higher than your self esteem are the glittering malls (they should be spelt MAULS) and not the lofty peaks, devoid of glass and steel.

Its been a little more than a week now that i've been battling my way through ceaseless traffic of expensive cars, blaring horns, mule and bullock trains, one green and yellow CNG motif in more than 5000 gasoline breathing supposedly-aesthetic mechanical wonders, all in approximately 5 square kilometers of concrete canvas. And it's not at all pretty i tell you. Maybe they are, and i just dont have the eyes for it, or the heart for it, lungs for it rather!

Places where an evening walk should be called a smog-walk, where driving and riding is not exactly the means to relax and where the only locality called Green Park is nothing but an extension of a car-park built to accomodate the shoppers that throng the diamond store near it - a diamond is forever! Try breathing diamond!

And where do I come from u ask??? I hail from the land of the mountains! That should suffice. Mountains with rivers. Mountains of snow. Mountains! Mountains that dont 'maul' you, mountains where you can be yourself, mountains where there's nobody honking from behind you, mountains where you dont need rear-view-mirrors for navigation, mountains that let you live! Mountains with snow flakes!

down Aminabad, the grand old Lucknow!

They're only faces, do you still have to have a caption for them???

Portraits from Kanpur

The myriad of colours at the famous Shivalay Chudi Bazaar.

Visitors at the fountain in front of the J.K. Temple