Logbook entry: Pune to Mumbai, shot through a taxi window darkly
First, I must apologize - this post is going to be a bit of an eye irritater. I shot it all through a rather foggy, dusty, taxi-window, often backlit as Murthy, Vasanthi and I headed for the Mumbai airport after the wedding so that we could catch the jet to Ahmedabad - once home to Mahatma Gandhi.
Yes, Sujitha and Manoj have now been formally married in the Hindu tradition of Manoj's family and community in and near Pune. I had been to two Hindu weddings in Bangalore - that of my niece, Khena, to Murthy and Vasanti's son Vivek as well as the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, but this was very different.
It was magnificent, to be certain - wild, fun, hot, chaotic and now Manu and Suji can get on with building their lives. Of course, I have had no time to so much as look at a frame or two..
I am just going to wait until I return to Alaska to blog the wedding - and all the stories from this trip that are most important to me.
There is just no way I can do justice to them as I travel.
So from here out I am just going to keep doing this - posting random little things here and there, catpured as I move along.
Yesterday, I did not get on the net at all. I am on it now, in an internet cafe, which will be closing soon. So, for that reason, I am not going to take the time to put the photos in order or to give you a travelogue - I will simply state that I shot these through the cab window, in between Pune and Mumbai, and in Mumbai.
We stopped for snacks, but not here.
For a time, we entered into darkness, but soon emerged into the light.
A fellow sojourner.
I don't know for certain, but I'll bet he drives one of these rigs.
Everywhere I look in India, someone is putting up a new building. America, knock off all this ignorant, self-detructive, silliness that now passes for politics within your borders. India is catching up to you and might just pass you by.
Same is true with much of the world.
Mumbai.
Brave fellow.
I, of course, cannot look at a crow without thinking of Soundarya. They may not all have known it, but in Soundarya the crows had a friend.
Make of it what you will.
Mumbai.
There's lots of billboards in India - most of them covered with pretty girls.
Really, what are the odds that in the second or two it would take us to pass by, we would come upon this advertisement, in this setting of massive cement just as a cement mixer rolled past between us?
Sometimes, I am a most fortunate man.
Ok. Internate cafe getting ready to close. Typos be damned. This post is done.
By the way, its cheap to hire a cab for a whole day - as little as $10, plus gas and oil.
Update: I did not know it when I took this picture, but this man is the most famous athlete in India, a cricket player, whose status is no less than that of a Michael Jordon, a Steve Young, Joe Montana, or Mohammed Ali: Sachin Tendulkar.