Monochrome Musings

 

I have just come back from a safari-contended aftr a good sighting of a leopard when I was intercepted by this elderly gentleman.
“Fancy gadget huh!!!” he remarked. I stopped to explain about it a bit as our conversation traversed onto several other topics. I never asked his name; he would have been in his mid- 70s and very sophisticated in his being, he sat on a chair, alone, gazing at the river. By this time the monsoon clouds were hovering over the river and few stray egrets strutted along the bank..
After a while he asked me a very simple question- “do you know what I am doing here?’. I didn’t have much of an answer and replied incredulously, “gazing at the river”.
Then comes one of the simplest answers that touched me immensely (I don’t know why).
He said, “I am trying to absorb as much as I can, because I know, I will never come back and this scene right now will live with me forever-even on my death bed.” He didn’t have a phone is his hand neither indulged in any other distractions. He came to visit Kabini with his daughter and her family who were then busy packing in the room.
I sought his blessing as he stood up clutching his walking stick a bit more tightly and hugged me, saying “This breaks barriersJ”. We bid each other goodbye – as I left for the comfort of my room, he left an imagery that shall never return in his life (Hope he absorbed lifetime’s memory of a pale yet beautiful afternoon).
Kabini is one special place for many of us. Each one of us have our own romanticism attached to it-so did he. He comes from an era when colors didn’t fill pictures, yet it never lost its vibrancy. That is when the thought of having an album on Kabini in monochrome set in. This is dedicated to that anonymous conversation.
This is a series that intends to bring to you a series of pictures taken in Kabini-the land of the river.
Let this set of monochrome pictures colour your thoughts.
A work in progress