April 16, 2006

Flash from an SLR past

This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.

Last Sunday, we suddenly realized that the one-year old, passport-sized photos of our fast-growing, six-years old twins, would not do for some visas that we were applying for. They already look different.

So, just before our biweekly Sunday Udipi ritual, we trooped to Foto Circle, which we have been frequenting for the last God-knows how many years and with a brief nod to the owners, mouthing the words “passport photos”, we promptly walked out through the rear entrance, onto the landing of the building that Foto Circle belongs to, and then climbed up to the first floor to their studio. Why didn’t we go directly up to the studio? I have no answer…I guess, just force of habit.

In today’s day and age of 5 and 6 mega pixel cameras and other fancy digital photography equipment, photo studios may seem anachronistic. But, as long as we need visas and as long as the visa people insist on 35mmx35mm or 45mmx35mm or 2”x2” or some such rubbish size, with a white background and blue shirt with the ears seen and shoulders straight, and teeth brushed with only Colgate and not Pepsodent, photo studios will live.

But there are photo studios and there are photo studios.

As long as I can remember, Ramesh Kandari (and I bothered to learn his name only this time), has been around shooting faces on his SLR. He exemplifies the saying “whatever you do, do it well”. Ramesh does not just click photos as if for a passport. He clicks photos to be treasured.

I have been to a few other studios and identity-photo shoots. You come in front of the camera, the photographer says “smile” and sometimes not even that, you hear a click and see the flash and you’re out.

Ramesh takes his own time. He first adjusts the bulbs and flash-stands for about a minute. He then fusses over your posture, making sure your shoulders are straight. Your chin has to be upright just so. He then looks through the view-finder to check whether everything is fine. Invariably, he is not satisfied and he makes a few more adjustments. Then comes the “please smile” followed by the click and flash. And just to be sure, he clicks once more.

He doesn’t have to do all this. But he takes pride in his work and that’s what counts. To the extent that he repeated the entire session with the kids, once again, when he found that one of the flash-bulbs had not been triggering properly.

This is the reason why, despite being personally reasonably photo-savvy, we’ve been going to him for other photographs as well. When the kids were six months old, we took them for a photo-shoot in their cribs. Then, when they were around three years old, and dressed to the hilt for a Navratri evening, we took them for a photo-session.

And this time, after the passport photos were done, we did another session to record my son’s first fallen left upper central incisor, which had been moving for the last six months, but finally came out, just four days ago, And since the tooth fairy had anyway left him a video-game in exchange for his tooth, we realized we needed to record for posterity his one-tooth-less grin as well. With a professional photo-shoot to boot.

And like the other photos shot by Ramesh, this one will also take pride of place in the photo-collage in the kids’ room.

Posted by bhavinj at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

Ganpati Hopping

This is my new piece for Mumbai Mirror, that appeared today.

Saturday before last, we made a big mistake. We decided to take the kids out for Ganpati darshan, and unfortunately, we started first with the GSB Ganpati at the Cosmopolitan grounds. It was like starting an Agatha Christie book from the last page – every pandal we saw later that day seemed a little disappointing.

There were people everywhere, queuing up for long periods of time, just to be able to get a short glimpse of their favorite God. Ravi gave us a guided tour and some of the numbers he reeled out were mind-boggling - jewellery and gold valued at almost Rs 6 crores adorning the idol, more than 20 lakhs of people visiting in the five days that the Ganpati is kept for and more than 15,000 people fed every afternoon and evening. Maybe, if we ran our disaster management with the same logistics, the city would be far better off.

We then took a cab to the crossroad before Matunga Gymkhana and started our Ganpati hopping. Most of these were located in building compounds or on the roads and in a short 100 meter area upto the market, there must have been at least eight or so. The kids were excited with the first two or three, especially since they could see the idols from a close distance, but after that, Ganpati fatigue took over. In the end there are just so many museums, towers or monuments that you can visit when you are touring, just so many bars that you can crawl into at night and just so many chocolates that you can eat at one time.

Last Sunday, on Anant Chaturthi, we again took the kids out for Ganpati darshan, this time onto the main road. The entire place resembled a “mela” from an old 70s film with road-side stalls selling every thing from vada-pav to toys and even multi-colored bangles. Except for a small lane for cars, the entire stretch from Sion to Dadar was just filled with people. We clung to the kids hoping not to repeat a “lost and found” scene.

This is probably the only time when you see so many people at one time in Matunga. There were old ladies sitting on the road on their own plastic chairs, kids from the BJ Home sitting quietly in three rows on the kerbside, parents holding their kids up Ganpati style on their shoulders so that they could get a better view of the idols, bystanders breaking spontaneously into shuffle-dances when the idols came near, people scrambling behind the trucks trying to pick up some “prasad” and some people just circumambulating, trying not to miss any sight or a single idol.

Unlike a cricket match, this atmosphere can never be captured by live coverage on TV. Though it’s pretty hilarious when the commentators keep saying things like “See that Ganpati is going (or coming)” or “Now everyone is dancing” or “Now everyone is happy”, etc.

Finally after having had our fill of Ganpatis and the noise and the crowds, we went for dinner. At the table, seriously in thought, my son, whose current favorite superhero is Hanuman, turned to me. “Who is stronger, Bheem or Hanuman?”. I said, “Hanuman”. He continued, “Then who is stronger, Hanuman or Ganpati?”. I said, “Ganpati”. He slowly shook his head in disagreement and till we finished dinner, there was nothing I could say that would convince him. Can anyone tell for sure?

Posted by bhavinj at 05:39 PM | Comments (4)

August 06, 2005

Kids Find The Darndest Thing Funny...About "24" and Time Bomb 9/11

We are great fans of "24" and have already seen Seasons 1-3 on DVD, not wanting to wait till the show aired in India. In fact, my season 4 DVD set has just been posted by Amazon UK to my sister's place in London and I should probably get it by next week. "24" airs as 24 one-hour episodes where the action unfolds in real-time. It is a little difficult to explain the show...many people think it is a reality show, which it isn't...but one viewing of one episode is enough to make the concept understandable. "24" is basically a thriller and chronicles the story of a single day of importance (averting the assassination of the President, preventing a nuclear bomb exploding over LAD, etc) and stars Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer. The scripting and filming are terrific. I think AXN India has been airing "24" episodes, but at weird hours at night.

Zee has just started airing a show called Time Bomb 9/11, which is a complete rip-off of "24". Even the music that plays during the display of the time and the multi-frame shots just before the commerical breaks have been copied. Apparently Fox has sued Zee TV over this, though the show continues to air.

I saw 10 minutes of one episode on Monday and I was describing to my wife and niece, a scene that I had found particularly funny. This is how I described the scene to them. "There are two wan, pale-faced whites, probably Brits, playing a secret agent and the President of the United States, respectively. The agent draws up to the White House, in a stretch limo and goes to meet the President in his office. He enters saying "Mr. President, Mr. President, congratulations. You will be pleased to know that Osama has been killed." The President gets up and shakes the agent's hands saying "Wow! Thank you, thank you."" As I finished saying this, the twins (who I had not noticed, but were listening to me rapturously) burst out laughing. It must have been the way that I described the scene, because it is unlikely that they were laughing at the ludicrousness of the scene itself, but nevertheless they found it so funny, that they have made me narrate this "joke" at least five times in the last two days. Moreover, they have also started narrating the incident in their own way to others in the house.

Go figure!

Posted by bhavinj at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)