People have been paying me to design things for over a decade now. During the first few years of this adventure, I visited clients with my printed portfolio in hand, my book, as the people in advertising would call it. As design work diversified beyond print, and computers and the internet became ubiquitous in every home and office, I stopped carrying around that little folder of designs. A digital portfolio was the way forward, not because it was the cool new thing to do, but because it simply made more sense.

As the artist’s and designer’s portfolio of work has moved into the digital realm, there has also been an on going evolution of what a portfolio needs to be and do. With the variety of technology, structure and style at your disposal, creating a digital showcase of your work is not as straight forward as sticking a few sheets into a folder any more. But, what we might have lost in simplicity we have gained in convenience and capability, so here is an overview of digital portfolios for you, the creative animal.

The old portfolio monologue

Before we dive into the specific choices involved in creating a digital portfolio, let’s take a quick recap of the portfolio that was, to better understand what has changed. In the old days (a decade ago) you had almost total control over how your work was presented and how it would be seen. Back then your portfolio was a lecture you were laying down on the wiling, and sometimes not so willing, audience, your clients and your peers. There was little they could do about it other than to nod or leave. Sure, there could have been the odd dissenting voice who booed you when you showed that particularly bad piece in the middle of your performance, but largely it was your show, and what others said of you mattered less.

The new portfolio conversation

Since the birth of the internet, what others have to say now matters a lot more. Not because others have suddenly become more knowledgeable about your craft, or because thy are all now more important, but because anything they say about you or your work, anywhere on-line, sticks around forever for anyone to find. That changes everything. You can’t continue giving your boring lectures and hope for the audience to keep quiet any more.

The new portfolio is not just your book, it’s not just that careful collection of material you’ve pruned and tended to like a artful gardener over the years. Your new digital portfolio is a many headed hydra that will grow new heads if you try to cut them off. In stead, befriend the beast and make the most of it, because your new digital portfolio is chatty, and you might as well include yourself in the conversation.

Digital Portfolio Formats

Every day the possibilities for what your portfolio could look like, or how you present it, keeps expanding with the march of technology. But let’s narrow things down to some universal basics. If you’re a creative person and your work can be represented in visuals of any sort, there are generally three possible formats your digital portfolio can take:

1. Executable Portfolios
2. PDF Portlios
3. Website Portfolios

Executable Portfolios

Your portfolio could be packaged into its own piece of software, its own little self-running programme that you can double click on and run on a computer. On the PC it would have an extension of .EXE. These sort of multimedia portfolios were very popular when computers first started getting powerful enough to handle high-quality graphics and sound, and before the advent of the internet as a significant force.

Back then these would be stuck on to CDs as animated presentations made in Macromedia Director or some other multimedia software. You will still find these today, as corporate presentations on publicity CDs, digital brochures on fancy DVDs, or as the interface on magazine cover discs. Today the weapon of choice is often Flash, which can also spit out an executable programme in addition to its other on-line output formats.

Do I recommend this way of creating a digital portfolio? The short answer is no, and there are various reasons why you don’t want an executable portfolio:

1. Executable files are usually specific to a particular operating system. One made for a PC will not run on a Mac, Linux, iPhone or other smart-phones, and vice-versa. In a world where the number of different devices and systems we all use to look at digital content is increasing all the time, forcing the viewer to use only one is not a good idea.
2. Executable files are a computer virus’s best friend. Viruses spread by attaching themselves to executable files, because they have real code to latch on to, which can be hijacked to cause havoc on your computer. It’s because of this that the idea of putting an executable portfolio on-line for download is also not a good one. Most people will avoid it, and their virus checkers will throw out a million warnings when they try to get at your portfolio. Do you like the prospect of your portfolio wrecking havoc on a potential client or employer’s systems? I don’t think so.
3. Executable portfolios are more difficult to maintain. Like the old print portfolio that took some extra effort to update, the executable file portfolio usually requires you to make updates within the software you originally created it in (say Flash), and then export new versions of the files to be put on new version of your CD or DVD to give people.

So, I would stay away from executable portfolios unless you have some very strong reasons for selecting one.

PDF Portfolios

Since executable files are a bad idea, your digital portfolio could be presented as various different document or media formats, but the one with the most universal appeal has to be Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). It’s a single file that can contain multiple pages, very much like the old days of physical portfolio books. It’s also readable across operating systems and platforms, and even on some mobile phones, which makes it very flexible to work with. Best of all is that you can create a PDF file using any of the word-processing or presentation software you are familiar with without having to pick up many new skills.

How to create a PDF portfolio

It comes down to two main options. You can either use familiar office software to create your document and then export it to a PDF file, or you can use a dedicated design software which will often come with more elaborate features and the ability to spit out a PDF document.

1. PDFs from Office Software

   Whatever knowledge you have of using Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint, is usually enough to throw together a decent looking portfolio document, using all the images and information you need. Then it comes down to creating a PDF version of this digital book. The simplest way is to use a PDF creator/exporter software. What this does is behave like a virtual printer. Once the software is installed, you print your document and choose the virtual printer as your printer rather than the physical one you have on your desktop. It asks for a file name, and as long as page sizes and other settings were correct, you end up with a nice new PDF file. A great way to package your portfolio.

   There are literally hundreds of PDF creators out there, I suggest the free and simple PdfCreator. You can find the software and usage instruction at http://www.pdfforge.org

   If you want to make things even simpler, I highly recommend OpenOffice.org, available at the obvious http://www.openoffice.org. It’s a free and open source office software suite which has a fair amount of compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. It comes with it’s own equivalents of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and even a very admirable vector graphics and diagramming software called Draw. What makes this easier is that all parts of this suite can export to PDF without any additional software. A great convenience to have. I use it for all my invoicing and documents.

2. PDF from Design Software

   If you want to get more elaborate with the design of your portfolio, and if you’re a graphic or web designer, it’s possible some of the more professional design software you have already allows you to create PDF files. They will also have many advanced graphic features to add that extra visual finesse that may not be possible with your office software. Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXpress and many others will let you export to PDFs in most cases, but versions and packages vary in their features, so I’d check to confirm.

   Desktop publishing and page layout software is ideally suited to PDF document creation because it allows for so much more control over the document, and saves you time with style sheets, master pages and other niceties. I personally use the open source Scribus, available at http://www.scribus.net. It’s a great piece of page layout software with everything you’d need to setup complex layouts; I’ve used it to produce magazines for years. If you’d like to make a fancy PDF and are willing to put in the time to learn a professional level page layout package, Scribus is the way to go.

The PDF Advantage

I’ve already told you how PDF files can be read across a variety of platforms. In a similar vein, a major advantage to PDF files is that they are equally comfortable both on-line and off-line. PDF files can easily be put on to CD or other disc to give clients, but if they are small enough, they can just as easily be emailed, or even stuck on a website. If your computer has the appropriate Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, your browser will often open up PDF files on websites and display them within the browser window, almost like a regular web page. This flexibility is a great feature of PDF when it comes to digital portfolios.

Website Portfolios

HTML, the basic document format that makes up websites, has almost all the benefits of a PDF document while being even more universal. Every computer may or may not have a PDF reader, but you can be certain almost every computer or device you come across now has some sort of web browser. As long as you have a web browser, you can look at your HTML based portfolio. When done right, your HTML portfolio can just as easily be put on to a CD for distribution, as it can be put on-line to be accessible by everyone 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Imagine the power of that. We’ve gone from a book that you had to carry around with you to client meetings to a format that people from all around the world can see even if you’ve never heard of them.

There are really two major types of website or HTML portfolios you need to consider. A static website, or a dynamic system.

Static HTML Portfolios

Static HTML portfolios are very much like PDF portfolios in that they are just a bunch of pages and images that are meant to display your work. They cannot do much on their own other than display what you have laid out. That can be a good thing because it is the static sort of website portfolio that can work off-line on a CD, if that is a requirement.

Like PDF files, there are special software packages to create HTML pages and sites. One simple one you can try your hand at, without needing to be a web designer or a HTML coder, is KompoZer at http://kompozer.net. This used to be part of the Netscape browser and shares a lot of DNA with the popular Mozilla Firefox browser. KompoZer acts as a HTML creator and behaves very much like a word processor. You type in text, insert images, create links and you can then save an HTML page. You can even create entire sites by linking the various pages together. It takes some getting used to to think of documents as connected in this way, but it really isn’t all that hard once you try it out.

Another possibility to create static HTML portfolios for visual heavy work is to use one of the several HTML gallery creators to create thumbnails and album pages for the collection of images of your work. Some image browsing programmes already come with this ability, but how elaborate a page they produce can vary. A wonderful piece of software that really makes this process simple is JAlbum at http://jalbum.net. This software lets you organise your images into a structure and then spits out fairly accomplished looking gallery sites in HTML, which serve very well as web or CD based HTML portfolios.

Dynamic Web Portfolios

If you’re looking for a long term solution to maintaining an on-line portfolio, without having to recreate the entire thing and upload it every time you update your work, you need to look into Content Management Systems. CMSs are actually simpler than they sound. A CMS is a piece of software that sits on your web server, where your web site is hosted, and lets you make changes and add material to your website simply by logging in from within your browser. Think of it as being very similar to logging into your GMail, Yahoo or Hotmail account, and adding a new message. Only in this case you can make changes to your website, and the changes are immediately visible to the entire world. Now that’s the ultimate portfolio convenience.

A popular kind of CMS system is a blog (like what you’re reading now), which most people today are familiar with. If you’re looking to set up your own portfolio and blog, look no further than WordPress at http://wordpress.org. This is the most popular blogging software and for good reason. It’s easy to use once you learn the basics, it has millions of people who use it on a daily basis, so there’s plenty of help available, and it has hundreds of plug-ins that can make your WordPress blog or web site do pretty much anything you can imagine.

Creating a dynamic web portfolio if you are completely ignorant about web technologies is not something I’d recommend, but if you’re not afraid to tinker and have web designer friends you can turn to for advice when you need it, it’s a great thing to learn. Your infinitely updateable web portfolio will thank you for it.

Your On-line Presence

I’ve already touched upon how the internet has destroyed the idea of your well crafted portfolio being the only source of information about you and your work. Today, people get an impression of you by much more than that. Put in your name into Google and do what they call a vanity search. What do you see? If you have a very common name, most likely you won’t see anything about yourself at all, but just some other guy or girl who happens to share your name. If you’re lucky enough to show up on the first page of Google for your name, is that a good thing? What shows up first? A nice professional web site with your name on it? Or is it a gallery of mad photos put up by your friends after that party, or a really bad joke you shared on that on-line forum you have stopped frequenting for years now? Anything is possible, because most things on the internet last forever.

This is why making a digital portfolio in today’s reality is not just about choosing a format and sticking your work into it. It’s about inserting yourself into that conversation about you that’s already going on out there on the world wide web, and possibly controlling that conversation to say what you’d like to say about yourself. If you want to be know for your deep thought on your subject of interest, make sure you share some of these thoughts on your blog, on other websites, in comments on forums, on Facebook. Anywhere where people of similar interests exist on-line is a place to make your mark.

People don’t just wait for a look at your portfolio any more, I certainly don’t. They search the internet, they look on Facebook, they follow you on Twitter, they browse your Flickr photos. There are a million places most of us are on-line today, and all those places are potential things that the people you want to talk to or work with will be looking at. If you’re not OK with these people reading your juvenile jokes about farm animals, make sure you don’t make those jokes on the internet, and if you do, definitely don’t make them using your official account with your name on it.

Be aware that every thing you do on-line that has your name on it, IS part of your digital portfolio. Very often people will find those things before they see your well presented work, or they might see them after. Either way, it is a major factor in how seriously or otherwise they take you, so make sure you take it seriously. Does this mean you need to be boring and afraid on-line? No, but know that what you do is public and don’t do anything which you’re not OK with your friends, clients and peers knowing about. For things you’d like to keep private, have separate personal accounts on-line and don’t use your full name!

Know What You Want

This really is just a overview of what you need to consider when making a digital portfolio. Specific decisions and methods will vary wildly depending on what you do, and how you want to present yourself and your work.

I can’t remember where I read this, but it seems like an appropriate model to follow when thinking about a strategy for your digital portfolio and how to choose the right way and the right mood. It’s called the KFC method and consists of three steps indicated by the acronym:

1. Know what you want.
2. Find out what you’re getting.
3. Change what you’re doing to get what you want.

Know what you want your portfolio to get you. What is the job you’re after, or what is the kind of work your looking for, or what are the kind of people you’re targeting? Let those choices decide what type of portfolio you make. Are you trying to get to a client who is fairly low-tech and not website savvy? Maybe an emailed PDF file would work. Are you trying to impress the very web savvy crowd? Perhaps you should pay extra attention to your presence on Twitter and Facebook, and the state of your website. Let your goal make the choices for you, and keep re-evaluating because there isn’t always one right answer. If you’re not getting the kind of responses or interest you want, change what you’re doing.

Portfolios are as much a personal art as they are a science. There is only so much you can predict about the effect your portfolio will have in getting you where you want to go, but with the digital portfolio, adapting to changes and re-inventing yourself for new opportunities is now easier, and even expected. Just make sure you keep your ears open, the conversation going, and you’ll be the talk of the town soon enough.

Samir

This is based on a presentation I gave some final year Interior Design students a few years ago at my old University.

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Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a brash, old-fashioned fantasy adventure, with a subtle heart. Having chosen to take the original adventures of Alice forward into new territory, Burton has preserved the essence of a classic while also creating fresh facets for a wider audience to enjoy.

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by telling you that this isn’t quite the Alice in Wonderland you have grown accustomed to. It is not a faithful remake of the original story, nor is it a complete reinvention; It’s more of a natural progression. The story tells of a 19-year-old Alice who had her dreams of Wonderland as a child, and is now on the cusp of adulthood and marriage. This is her return to Wonderland, now tackled by a young woman rather than a fascinated child being lead around by the madness of it all. This makes for a far more relateable character for the majority of the audience.

The original Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, elements of both of which are used in this film, still remain works aimed at children. While there are generous undertones of darkness provided by Lewis Carroll’s able imagination, the majority of the events and characters are iconic cyphers to add colour to the stage. Tim Burton exploits some of that darkness, and while he can’t let loose his usual flamboyance(this is still a PG rated movie from Disney), he adds a surprising depth to the characters, taking them beyond stray pantomime figures. Just as Alice is a thinking woman and not just a naive little girl here, the Red Queen is not just an over-the-top villain, but a character with a coherent personality. The Mad Hatter is a real human being with a past, and not just a nut-job.

Also, the Blue Caterpillar is not just a smoking caterpillar, but also Alan Rickman! The computer imagery that depicts most of Wonderland and its characters is helped in no small measure by the able cast. Like the Blue Caterpillar, of special note is Stephen Fry voicing the Cheshire Cat, Barbara Windsor speaking as the Dormouse and many others.

Those who appear without CG-garb deserve no less praise for fleshing out their mythic roles. Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway are brilliantly camp as The Red Queen and The White Queen. While the Red Queen’s spoilt-tyrant personality is played with shrill finesse, the White Queen’s extra-sweet goodness is hilarious to watch, over-done admirably by Anne Hathaway channelling everything from children’s show presenters to TV chefs. Johnny Depp, a Tim Burton staple, is almost unrecognisable as the carefully nuanced Mad Hatter, and perfectly capping this great cast is Alice herself. While I haven’t seen Mia Wasikowska’s previous work, she seems immediately familiar and is very effortless on screen. She plays the grown-up Alice with a quiet self-assuredness that holds this entire story together and takes it beyond a simple child’s tale.

Wonderland is appropriately wonderful. It has been given a welcome dark streak that makes it a real place and less of a stage set. While grand in scale and colour, the graphics for the entire world are surprisingly understated, with a lot of subtle detail put into the major locations where the story unfolds. Wonderland plays as much of an important role in this tale as the characters, and the visual execution of the realm is very seamless with the great performances by the actors, and the rousing background score.

The story itself is a streamlined version of the original gallivantings of little Alice though Wonderland. Where the original was a series of unfortunate adventures, this version makes it a rediscovery of a forgotten youth, tempered with a mythical quest. This particular treatment of the story results in a good old-fashioned fantasy adventure, the kind they don’t often make any more. As I’ve said about fairy tales before, this movie gives me hope that we can return to the workman-like simplicity of old fantasy movies, while still celebrating the freedom provided by new techniques in film-making.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland takes what was a fantastic children’s story and makes it mythical, while also pairing it down to its essentials. Here we see a return to the good old quest, where fantasy heroes are people too, a departure from more recent fantasy films where every player has been an angsty theatrical icon. While there is a place for that school of fantasy, I yearn for the return of this kind, where the stories were simple, where the characters were not trying to be worthy subjects for doctoral theses in Psychology, and where magic was magical.

Samir

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Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is a fun, action-packed frolic through the gritty chaos of Victorian London, with a frantic pace and a fabulous sense of humour. Whether by design or by coincidence, by breaking away from the conventions of previous outings, Ritche has created the definitive on-screen version of the world’s most famous fictional detective.

That might be a lot of superlatives to put into a single paragraph, but a can’t stress how well this film is put together, and how much of a pleasure it is to watch. The credit for this goes in no small part to the actors on screen. On the surface, Robert Downey Jr. might seem like strange choice to play Sherlock Holmes, but he brings to it the right amount of eccentricity and, most importantly, vitality that no one has gotten right before. Holmes was never a boring prude in the books and here we finally see that addressed. Jude Law as Dr. John Watson is heroic and beautifully nuanced, another save from the bumbling idiot view of Watson made popular by previous screen versions, far removed from the character in the original stories. As in the books, Watson is here a dashing figure as he should be.

The supporting characters is also well fleshed out. Rachel McAdams brings a welcome brashness to her version of Irene Addler, and Kelly Reilly puts on a simmering formality for her role as Watson’s fiance. It’s a clever little injection of our stereotypical view of the Victorian Era, amidst the colourful street-view seen through the eyes of Holmes and Watson. Mark Strong plays Lord Blackwood, the villain of the piece, with adequate menace and mystery. And Eddie Marsan brings a fitting humanity to Inspector Lestrade. Lestrade, like Watson, is a character who has always been portrayed as either more stupid or more menacing in screen versions, and it’s nice to see him played more human here.

That really is the strength of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes; It’s more human and down-to-earth than the under-graduate Shakespearean fantasy that previous people have chosen to put on film. This film has gorgeous CG special effects, with old London re-created in great detail, but it recedes pleasingly into the background of the cacophony of human drama. And the rich visual atmosphere is raised to a crescendo by the wonderful background score. In popular entertainment, the Victorian era is often punctuated with stuffy operatic melodies and stilted classical compositions. But that was the Victorian England of a certain class of people, and Sherlock Holmes is more concerned with the streets than royal music halls. The music here is rousing and rustic, ribald and heart-felt. A cascade of squeaky fiddles, broken pianos, and various unrefined instruments that sound just a bit out of tune, provide a beautiful bouquet of what Victorian London must have felt like, not in the rarefied air at the tops of towers, but in the mud and muck of the bylanes. Hans Zimmer deserves a round of rowdy applause for this achievement.

Including costumes and art direction, Sherlock Holmes shines in too many minute and great ways to mention individually, but what makes the film beautiful is that it gets the big picture right. All involved have, for the first time, really immersed themselves in the original books and stories, spotted little nuances, and then exploited them to make this a very real and accurate portrayal of the spirit of Sherlock Holmes. Here Dr. Watson is not a bumbling idiot, Holmes is not a dry professor, and their relationship is not a cold and perfunctory exchange of pleasantries off a theatrical stage. These are real people with real feelings, with a real life in a real place.

The original Sherlock Holmes stories were printed in the Strand Magazine, and Conan Doyle wrote them as if they were an edited account of the detective’s adventures by Dr. Watson, as printed in that magazine for public consumption. This was the conceit that made the detective such a sensation during his time, and why many believed he was a real person. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes takes the hints in the original material and tries to recreate the reality behind them. It fills in the gaps remarkably well while keeping true to the times as they more likely were, rather than by our stilted estimate of bourgeois Victorian society.

Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant achievement of both comprehensive story-telling and of shameless entertainment with a heart, much like Conan Doyle’s original works. All I can say is, bring on the sequel!

Samir

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I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Sherlock Holmes. There has to have been a first time. Maybe someone mentioned it, or perhaps I picked it up in a movie or a comic book. The details of our first encounter remain shrouded in the mists of my early childhood memory. But, however it is that I got to know of the illustrious detective, I do know that at some point I read a small story in school about the doctor who Arthur Conan Doyle used as inspiration for his creation. It was that description of the mental prowess of a Doctor Joseph Bell that made me want to read about Holmes.

At the time, I remember not being able to find an original unabridged Sherlock Holmes book in the sparse bookshops of Muscat, so I turned elsewhere. One of my father’s business contacts in the UK was put on the job and when he visited next, he brought with him three pristine Penguin paperbacks starring the detective. They were The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. I remember getting a tin gift box of Cadbury chocolates along with the books, but I kept it aside and stared at the books instead. They were my treasures. At the time, I used to have no trouble finishing a small book within a day, so my treasures were read and devoured in no time, and I loved every syllable. To this day, The Lions Mane, The Veiled Lodger, and The Sussex Vampire remain dear to my heart because of the deep impact they made on me at the time.

Penguin books, like many books by large publishers, have a helpful little marketing section at the back where they inform you of other books in the series. I knew I had to have more, and there were so many tantalising Sherlock Holmes titles that I had never read. Then I turned the last page, and there in crisp black print was announced the ultimate prize. “The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes“, it said, and went on to list all the novels and short story collections it contained. That was the one I had to have. With no straightforward way of getting it at that moment, I waited. I re-read what I had, especially the short stories, several times. One weekend I even sat down with a bit of playdough and crafted a rough 3-inch-high black bust of Sherlock Holmes in his classic deerstalker hat from the illustrations, and his pipe, with a bit of white stuff for his collar. That remains my sole attempt at sculpture to this day.

In a few months it was summer and the schools closed for the holidays. We would often spend two of the three months of our summer vacations in Bombay, and my mission was to make every attempt I could to lay my hands on The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. Keep in mind that this was a time long before the internet. In fact, my Grandmother’s place in Bombay, where we stayed, didn’t even have a telephone. So, tracking things down was not as easy. I believe it the search began with a Penguin India address from one of the books, and then moved on to more tradional footwork. Our local raddhi-walla (Small shops that are part private paper recycling depot and part second-hand book store) was usually good at giving us tips on books, even the ones he didn’t have. He told us that Rupa publishers had one of those big books of Sherlock Holmes stories. After some directory queries over public phones, and talking to various receptioninsts, we finally got our hands on a number which was said to be the final word on whether or not a Rupa & Co book was available in the city.

The call was made, and the voice on the other end casually said, “Yes. We have that.” The very next day, or maybe it was the same day, we set off on a quest. The number we had been given was the central Rupa & Co. warehouse of sorts in Bombay, somewhere near Grant Road. I wasn’t as familiar with those parts of the city as I am now, so I couldn’t pin point where this place is now. All I remember is my Father and me getting off a bus near a large flyover, and after much asking around and walking, we ended up in a side lane that was a dead end. It was the start of the monsoons and though the day was dry, puddles of water dotted the tar. The neighbourhood kids were taking the chance to play some cricket, and we navigated around them seeking our temple. Somewhere towards the end of the cul-de-sac was a small structure with Rupa & Co. printed unglamourously on a metal sign board. We entered.

The place was organised chaos. It appeared to quite literally be a large storage space, filled with row after row of slotted metal shelving from floor to ceiling. And on that shelving, as far as the eye could see, were books of every size, shape and colour. Mountains of them! The man at the rudimentary office desk near the door looked up at us quizically, wondering if the man and the boy had taken a wrong turn and were asking directions. He remembered our call when we mentioned the book and got up to find it. We followed him through the maze, left and right along the grey shelves and the unending stacks of literature. I thought I was in paradise, because even our school libarary didn’t have so many books. After a short walk we came to another identical shelf and the man reached up for what he had been looking for. He pulled down a large hard cover tome with a yellow and red dust jacket, and on the cover in old-style ink illustration were the figures of Holmes and Watson sitting across each other at a train window. We asked how much. The man stated the princely sum of 150 Rupees. We walked back to his desk at the entrace, paid and walked out with large smiles on our faces. In spite of the treasure trove of books I’d just left behind, I couldn’t wait to get home.

That very evening I began to read A Study in Scarlet, and went on to read the entire collection from cover to cover over the following six weeks. Having absorbed a lot of books before reading Sherlock Holmes, and having read even more since it should come as no surprise that books have been a very important influence in my life, my thinking, and the person I have become. But, I can’t emphasise enough the impact Sherlock Holmes had on me. If I had to ascribe my character and my viewpoint on the world to any one book, it would have to be that collected tome of Holmes stories. That book changed me in ways even I might not realise yet.

For one, it cemented in me an appreciation of good writing, and an ambition to write myself someday. While all and sundry celebrate “the classics” of literature I was never one to put much stock in them. From the very beginning, I chose to read whatever drew my interest, irrespective of how credible or not the book might have been in common view. Sherlock Holmes showed me that excellent writing can come out of pulp entertainment. We must remember that Sherlock Holmes, at the time of its writing, was popular fiction, pulp really. The stories appeared as seriasations in a magazine. This was never considered high-art and yet it was better written, more engaging, and had more intelligent things to say about the World and humanity than many of the classics I did choose to skim through in later years. That combination of complete entertainment with depth of thought was one of the major lessons that stuck with me from my encounter with Holmes. To date, I always hope my work can be even half as succesful at striking that balance as those stories were.

More impactful than the effect Sherlock Holmes had on my appreciation of the written word, however, is the impact he had on the boy that read about him. Sherlock Holmes changed me by consolidating parts of me that were already there. Many aspects of Holmes’s character were familiar because their kernel existed in me, and after reading of Holmes, they grew. From the almost laid back observation that he was so good at, to other quirks like him knowing a lot about some things, and almost nothing about other things, so as to not waste his attention on things he didn’t need to know about. My complete lack of insight into sports and English pop-music surely falls under this category. I became Holmes, because I realised that it was ok to do so. Because, in spite of his shortcomings and his excentricities, Holmes was an admirable character. He didn’t have some of the pleasures and comforts of “normal” life which others did, but he liked what he did, he enjoyed his life, and was utterly good at it. He also helped people. How could that be a bad thing?

That’s not to say I took on the character of Holmes without censorship. My lack of addiction to cocaine should be sufficient proof of that. After all, he was a fictional character, and I was impressionable, not stupid. When I read the cases of Sherlock Holmes, I always identified with both the main characters. To me Holmes and Watson were a single unit, like two aspects to a complete personality. Holmes might have been the authority figure and main driving force, but he was nothing without Watson as a balance, and as a foil to work off. If anything their relationship instilled in me an appreciation of the importance of moderation and balance in all things.

I would go on to see many films and adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. Some like Young Sherlock Holmes and the recent Sherlock Holmes movie I enjoyed, while others like the utterly baroque BBC TV series, I didn’t appreciate. I had seen in the original stories a spirit that few were able to capture, because all they were seeing were the horse carriages and a language that was on the fringes of their comprehension. For me it was always about the spirit. Which is why the original books have always remained, for me, the dearest glimpse into the life and times of my favourite detective.

And that, dear reader, is how I met Sherlock Holmes, how I got to know him, and how he became my constant companion, even when I have gone many years without reading his stories. While I can’t claim his mental prowess, in many ways I have come to think like him, or perhaps just see like him.

We all chose heroes and idols to emulate throughout our lives, people we identify with, or people who we aspire to be like. When I first met Holmes, I didn’t decide to be like him, but instead he simply taught me that it was a perfectly valid option to be like me. While that confidence can be attributed in buckets to seemingly more important things in life, such as my wonderful parents, the times I grew up in, an interesting childhood, and a freedom to think, I can’t help but think that I would have never turned out to be quite the person I have become if it had not been for my friend, Sherlock Holmes.

Samir

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Chance Pe Dance is a Hindi movie by director Ken Ghosh, starring Shahid Kapur and Genelia D’Souza. It’s the story of a struggling actor in the Mumbai film industry, and the people he meets on his journey. If you saw last year’s Luck By Chance, you’d be forgiven for thinking this will be more of the same, but it managed to surprise me on several levels, and left me smiling.

In recent years the Meta-Hindi-Movie, i.e., the Hindi movie about the making of Hindi movies, has become a rampant genre of its own. Not only does it allow for the airing of a ready repertoire of movie in-jokes and the requisite humour at the expense of India’s most popular industry, it also provides a safe excuse to insert more ludicrous song and dance sequences, in the name of realism. Chance Pe Dance could have been the next one in that long line of contenders, but it chooses not. Except for the song and dance sequences, all the other staples I mentioned are pleasingly muted.

Ken Ghosh was a maverick music video drector during that short time in the mid 90s when it seemed India would grow itself an indegenous pop-music scene, free of films. That never came to be, but I still remember the videos by Ken Ghosh with great fondness. In 2003 he presented his debut feature, Ishq Vishk, which was a standard bubble-gum high school romance with every cliché in the book, but executed with a level of polish that was fresh and likable. Unfortunately in 2004 followed Fida, a thriller which was a disaster on too many levels to mention. Now finally he returns with Chance Pe Dance and his constant hero from all his outings as director, Shahid Kapur.

Over time, Shahid Kapur has grown into a very confident actor. His performances are now effortless, which is a rare talent. He did a wonderful job in Jab We Met, and brings the same amount of maturity to his role here as Sameer Behl, which on the surface seems more frivolous. What Shahid Kapur is most popular for is his dancing and that is on full show here as well. I wouldn’t call it his best work, but there’s no arguing the fact that the boy can dance almost anyone else into the ground given the right material to work with. There are also plenty of shots of sleeveless Shahid, and shirtless Shahid, but then you didn’t expect this to be a documentary, did you? Shirt or no shirt, he is a pleasure to watch and a wonderful talent.

Genelia D’Souza is always a surprise package. She shouldn’t work. All the logical signs you look for to mark a brilliant new actress, or even a mere on-screen glamour-doll aren’t quite there. Yet, she manages to hold your attention like no one else could. Like her performance in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, you come out of this not imagining anyone else being able to assay her role as Tina. Similar to Shahid Kapur in some ways, but to an even greater degeree, Genelia comes across as a normal human being, the type you walk by on the street without giving them more than a passing glance, the kind you have as friends, the very same variety that live down your street. At no point do you think of her as an actress, and that is her strength. The female lead in this film was to be played by another actress, before Genelia stepped in as late replacement. I think it’s safe to say that without her, this would be a very different movie, and nowhere as likable.

Genelia’s strengths tie closely into why I like this film. Almost everything about this film is wrong, if you measure it using a checklist of desirable elements. The plot is haphazard, there’s a major plot-twist at least once every 15 minutes, and there are too many struggling-Bollywood-actor-from-out-of-town cliches: the sceptical parents, the hand-to-mouth existence, the lucky breaks, the over-the-top glitz. It’s all there, but it’s also all fairly restrained. The hero of this piece doesn’t just wait around all day for his big break, and has a fairly consistent and mature take on life throughout the story. He does other things, he’s a delivery boy, and a dance teacher at some point in the story. Is a lot of it completely contrived? Absolutely! This is a proper Bollywood movie and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Yet, the only thing I can complain about with no reservation is the music, most of which is by Adnan Sami, and very bad. The film makes up for it with some stunning visuals, an amazing attention to detail from the director, and a very lovable quality that defies explanation. Ken Ghosh gave us some very memorable music videos with the same spirit in the 90s. I didn’t complain about those, and I’m not complaining about this either.

This film gets its title from a popular phrase in colloquial Hindi. Literally translated, Chance Pe Dance means to dance on chance. What it implies is to seize the moment, to make the best of an opportunity. As with the phrase, Chance Pe Dance is a movie that has a lot more to it than the sum of its many imperfect parts. It is very much about seizing the moment, making the best of the opportunities life offers, and generally about working at it relentlessly, even when the path seems unclear. All this, wrapped in a very endearing and human package. Enjoying Chance Pe Dance depends on seeing the forest for the trees, and it succeeded in bypassing my filters for film-trope and flaws by being a likable whole. If you only see the individual trees, you’re in for a disappointment. But I saw the forest, and I loved it.

Samir

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Re-visiting Karnataka’s Capital

Before this hurried sojourn to Bangalore, we hadn’t been there for years, many years. Most of our recent trips to India had been short and we’d never had the chance to drop into Bangalore, where a part of my family lives.

Much had changed since then, including the name of the place. Being the centre of the Indian IT dream, Bangalore had been thrust into cosmopolitanism over the past decade. In some misguided move to stem this tide, they’d renamed themselmes officially to the more traditional Bengaluru. All this translating names of places from one language to another and then considering it renamed is cute, but really must stop in the interest of sanity and the saving of precious resources.

I have visited Bangalore many times over the years. In some distant past, it had earned the title of Garden City, for its green areas, like Lal Bagh, and tree-lined streets, but even in my years of coming here, I had seen the decline of its natural persuations and the growth of a fairly chaotic township, which had too much that was un-city-like for my liking. The Bangalore that I had last seen was stuck in limbo between those two identities. After our visits to natural spots in Mumbai over the previous two weekends, I was not really expecting to equal those experiences in the new Bengaluru. Thankfully, I was mistaken, and we discovered Turhalli.

Kannada Cacophony

One thing I noticed a lot from the moment we landed in Bengaluru was all the signage in Kannada, the local language. What I hadn’t realised is that it had been a while since I had been surrounded by so much text I couldn’t read. I speak Kannada, but never learnt the script. In the other cities I’m familiar with, Bombay and Dubai, all the non-English text, consisting of Hindi, Marathi, or Arabic, I can read (although I don’t actually speak Arabic). With that in mind, I must say it felt quite strange to go though the streets of Bengaluru and see signs everywhere in an alien language, but an alien language that I could speak. A surreal experience to be sure.

Our first morning waking up in Bangalore we were out on the road. A small bus was hired to accomodate our large group and we headed out into the chill morning air on our way to Nandi Hills. Weaving through the relatively quiet city ctreets, we ended up on a street strewn with Ganesha idols along the pavement. We’d arrived in Bangalore just before Ganesh Chaturthi, an annual festival paying homage to the elephant-headed God Ganesha, or Ganapati. It is celebrated the most in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, and this was the first time I was in Karnataka during this time of the year.

In Bombay, Ganesh Chaturthi is big, very big, and the statues of the God in all sizes can be seen on every street corner for weeks. It seemed a little smaller here as a celebration, but quite different, because these statues were all made to the local aesthetic. Ganesh statues back in Bombay are colourful, but these in comparison seemed to have borrowed colour from a much gaudier end of the rainbow. The colours were deeper, the motifs were made to suit local tastes and traditions, and the other startling fact was that all the statues were huge. In Bombay people have small homes, and large statues are only reserved for community affairs, but in Bengaluru, even entry-level Ganesh statues seemed to be large and would have towered over the few-inch-high ones that are the norm in Bombay. In part this was due to the generally larger houses in this city, in part it was overcompensation.

Namma Deepika Padukone

Southern India is renowned for its gaudy exuberance. It is a cultural aesthetic you will find often repeated. Of the cultures of the South, I must say the state of Karnataka is the tamest of the lot when it comes to exuberance, but that’s not to say it is completely free of the effect.

I had already seen an example of this with the Ganesha staues on the street earlier, and then during our sojurn I saw another example on the side of the highway. It was two large billboards for BSNL, a telecom provider, featuring Deepika Padukone, the now famous Bollywood actress. The fact of the matter is, Deepika Padukone grew up in Bangalore. She is the daughter of a famous badminton player, another proud son of this soil. She went into modeling, and over the past few years has become one of the young stars of the Hindi film industry. Needless to say this is a source of great pride and joy to the people of Bengaluru. So it should come as no surprise that she appears on so many billboards there.

The interesting thing though, is the photographs on those billboards. I’ll be the fist one to say that Ms. Padukone is not quite the fine thespian (yet), but even by her standards, those are some of the most outrageously over-acted modeling shots I’ve seen in a long time. They’re practically dripping with syruppy goodness, like many of the ideal-housewife ads we saw come out of America in the 50s. And that’s my point about the aesthetic of the place, because like the US in the 50s, in Bangalore, that overdone smile and over-posed awkwardness, seems to be a good thing. The fact that it is Deepika Padukone is just an added source of salivation for the masses.

In case you were wondering, the Namma in the title above is Kannada for our. This inclination for labling things Ours to make them seem more local and authentic, is quite popular in Bengaluru. They have a large metro rail project in progress at the moment which is officially called Namma Metro, i.e. Our Metro. There is a great pride in what is ours, or at least great PR about what belongs, another unfortunate effect of the sudden cosmopolitain invasion of this city. It’s gone from a sleepy little town to a centre of attention, with people from all over the country and the world living there. As a result it obviously suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. Like all people and places suffering from it, they have chosen the wrong route to strengthen their original culture. Cultures are not preserved by dictating or by forcing them on to people, cultures are preserved by making them so irresistable that the others can’t help but embrace them as their own.

Cumulous Clouds Over Bengaluru

After our magic morning at Turhalli, we said our goodbyes and headed out. We had lunch at a friend’s place and then called for taxis to take us to the airport. This was the first time I was sitting in the new shiny green private taxis that are becoming popular in many Indian cities. For one thing, they were using more contemporary cars than the classic Padmini, and they were much more organised with modern technology. A call centre, digital meters, printed, bills, the works. And as I found out on our trip to Bengaluru International Airport, they are also very comfortable.

The wide windows of the Mahindra Logan afforded me a magnificent view of the landscape, and as we left the city behind, the vistas opened up and the sky displayed its full magnificence. Right from the time we had begun our descent into Bangalore on our flight in, I had noticed how absolutely gorgeous the monsoon clouds were here. They were the usual cumulous clouds, but on a scale that is rarely visible near the coast at Bombay. Bombay is often one of the first ports of call for the full force of the south-westerly monsoons making land-fall, so the skies are usually an impenetrable blanket of clouds and a chaos of winds. I am guessing by the time the remanants of these wind systems make it inland, and over the Western Ghats, they’ve had time to calm down and built these beautiful castles in the sky.

That’s what the clouds over Bengaluru reminded me of, architecture. They were tall and wide, and stepped, and complex. They spoke of other worlds where mere humans could only dream of going. I saw these coulds on our trip to Nandi Hills and it was the very same clouds that now marched along the firmament as we made our way out of the city. The afternoon Sun painted them in million tinged greys and blues, and the occasional pink. As we pulled into the airport parking lot and paid our fares, I was almost sorry that the airport had a roof and that I would have to go without the sights above me. So before the swanky glass, concrete, and chrome enveloped us, I bid farewell to the cloud sculptures in the sky, to the now distant rocks in Turhalli, and headed off to catch our flight.

Samir

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After our day at Nandi Hills and a bit of driving around Bangalore, we thought we were done. Set to leave the following afternoon, we had little to do on the one Sunday morning that remained, besides relax, spend some time with the family, and say our goodbyes. The evening before, we were sitting around the house talking to our cousin, discussing such important world issues as camera equipment, when he mentioned that he was going rock-climbing in the morning. He said his favourite spot was close by, it was a nice bit of wilderness, a decent place to take some photos, and that there are usually plenty of birds to spot. With our trips to Mahim Nature Park and Borivali National Park on the previous two Sundays, we were now on a hat-trick of Sundays spent in nature. It seemed a shame to break a good streak, so plans were made for everyone to take one last sojourn in Bangalore to a little hill in Turhalli.

We were up before dawn, and by the time the sky began to brighten, we had all poured into our ride and were driving towards Turhalli. It was only a few kilometres away, but it was supposed to be a little island of green in the otherwise urbanised city. Bengaluru is laid out in a very splattered and spread out pattern, very different from the coastal cities and towns I know well, so it’s quite easy to be surprised by distances and changes in scenery. It was a slightly chill morning and a light mist hung around the sides of the roads. We were soon out of the small streets of our area and out on bigger roads where out-station busses were roaring into life and starting off down the highway to their distant destinations.

In one or two places the road turned into a make-shift morning market, with vegetable and flower sellers lining both sides of the street. Men dressed up in whites and grays out of habit from their days at a desk rambled between the hawkers with newspaper in hand, waiting for their accompanying wives to make their purchases for the day, so that they could do their duty as the designated driver of their two-wheelers. And as always, some still had to work on a Sunday. A young man in a crisp white shirt, seemingly on his way to an office job, drove his bike down the street. His father, carrying a vegetable-sellers basket carefully balanced on his head, rode pinion. They were having an animated conversation over the roar of the motorbike as they drove by.

After all the activity, the buildings thinned out suddenly, the trees got taller, and while we were still just a few kilometres from the centre of the city, it seemed like we had left it behind. Near a petrol station, our cousin asked the driver to turn off the highway along a narrow road. A few twists and turns, and we were driving through a village. It was a modern village, with brick houses, and even a one computer internet cafe, but a village nonetheless. This was Turhalli. (Halli is village in Kannada)

Curious children stopped and looked up at the new arrivals as we drove through, and we soon left the little village behind and headed off toward higher ground. A large hill was clearly visible a few hundred metres from the settlement. Except for the dark grey line of the road, everywhere was green, with grass and weeds having over run every available square foot of fertile deccan soil after a few showers. Further down, the road hugged the base of the hill and went around it, so we stopped just before it did and walked off the tar.

A muddy path snaked towards a lush grove of trees at the base of the hill, but before that, to the right, a large banyan tree stood as sentry to this landscape, it’s hanging roots intertwited with its ancient trunk forming a sinewy column a few metres wide. Of course, there were the mandatory iconic declarations of love scratched into the bark, to indicate that even this place was not untouched by human hands. But largely, the landscape looked fresh and pristine. The grove of trees loomed large as we walked closer, and it soon became clear they were all some sort of eucalyptus variant. The shedding white bark was quite unmistakable, and the slender curving leaves rustled in the wind. When we entered the shade of the grove, the ground was invisible because it was carpeted with a thick layer of browning sickle-shaped leaves. With the moisture of the season the carpet of leaves had a rubbery quality, my feet seemed to sink in a little with every step, with the mesh of leaves springing back when I passed.

Other shrubs and trees began to make an appearance as the grove began to thin and the ground climbed upward. Small butterflies and insects flitted around in the morning air, and we were soon scaling the side of the hill on a rough path made of equal parts rock and rusty soil. The path was not graded or prepared in any way, but had slowly formed as frequently passing human feet had hewn a line across the less trecherous inclines of the hillside. There were a few tricky areas, more so because of the slippery grass, but in general it was a fairly easy climb, with shrubs and trees to hold on to, and moist mud to dig into when needed. In my childhood I have climbed much drier and more rocky slopes than this one in Oman. Compared to some of those, this was just a stimulating morning walk up a hill.

Karnataka, and especially the region around Bangalore, has a peculiar geology that lends itself to many such hills strewn with megalithic boulders teetering in precarious positions. It is a magnificent sight. The top of the hill we were climbing was clearly rocky even when seen from the base, which is why it was popular with rock climbers. As we neared the higher reaches of the hill, the boulders loomed large. Out of the mud, stones and shrubbery, towering pieces of rock, smoothened by millennia of weathering, thrust themselves skyward, sometimes standing alone, and sometimes in complex balanced piles. Most of them had smooth corners that made them look like giant pebbles, but as you got closer more detail appeared. Their faces were rough, as if chiseled into an even surface, and many of them were brightly coloured by the yellow lichen growing on them.

Navigating around the various rock arrangements, we made our way to the flatter areas at the top of the hill. We had come up almost at the centre along the length of the hill, and its main spine extended to the right and the left, with higher rocks and trees visible in both directions. We continued towards the left and after a few minutes through mostly even ground we walked past a large towering rock into a clearing. In the clearing was a temple. It was one of those modern temples, with an inelegant box of a structure with a mandatory spire to crown it. The materials used reminded me more of a gaudy private bungalow than of a place of worship, and it’s shiny grilled doorway was closed and quiet at this early hour. In front of the main structure some further statuettes and pedestals had been erected, one with a rough likeness of a what looked like a crow in black stone, facing the temple entrance. This temple was a new addition on what had been an untouched bit of nature, after the requisite person in power had seen the requisite vision to build a temple here. As with all religious issues, this invasion had gone largely unchallenged, and thus it always begins.

As I stood in the clearing, I was wondering how anyone came up to this temple, because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt about the faux-spiritual crowd, it is that they are only as spiritual as it is convenient. You can be sure none of them are going to climb up the way I just described unless you were paying them. I was proved right soo enough. As we walked past the clearing a broader path opened up and then snaked to the side into a wide muddy road. It was now gutted by the rains, but it was just wide enough for a car to crawl up to the summit from the back of the hill. Quite tellingly, it was the first patch of mud I had seen since we got off the road which was completely devoid of all vegetation and life. The price of human religious politics is often too high.

From where the make-shift dirt road mounted the summit, you could see other signs of the inevitable human encroachment. We were told the green ruled as far as the eye could see even a decade or so ago, when my cousin first started coming to this place, but now the concrete sentinels of human development could be seen a mere few hundred metres from the base of the hill, and all beyond was a patchwork of houses and settlements, creeping ever closer.

We turned around and went back the way we had come, to explore the other half of the hill-top. Wild flowers grew everywhere between the rocks and even the grass on the path still held healthy reservoirs of dew from the moist morning air. Eventually we ended up in a dense cluster of rocks at the other end of the hill, and skipped and jumped on and around them to make our way to some flat areas which were perfect for sitting on and looking on to the world. It was more of the same, white specks of buildings growing ever closer, and there was even an entire layout of plots, streets and streetlights that was ready and waiting to be built on at the first flat land available beyond the base of the hill.

For now, it was still a beautiful place. The lichened rocks were welcoming and the green that surrounded us imparted that characteristic electricity to the air that is invigorating at all times of the day, but even more so during the pristine hours of dawn. We sat there for a while and enjoyed the breeze. This was nowhere as high as we had been on the summit of Nandi Hills, but once again that calm I have mentioned before, which permeates the higher reaches of the Earth, was there, and I enjoyed it while it lasted.

In all this exploring we’d forgotten that our cousin had come here to do some rock climbing, so while we enjoyed the view, he went off to the other side of this rock formation with the crash pad he’d been carrying all this time, to to do some climbing. After getting our fill of the sights off the edge of Turhalli Gudda (Gudda/Gudde is hill or mountain in Kannada), we made our way over and through the maze of rocks to where he had headed.

The other side of the hill-top faced eastward, and the Sun was peeking through some dense clouds near the horizon, lighting up the rocks to look even more magnificent. We walked onto a wide table of rock 10 or 15 metres wide that over looked the side of the hill. This is where we had initially come from, our waiting vehicle could be seen on the road far below, and the village shimmered in the distance. On this flat rock, there was balanced a much larger boulder that stood tall, leaning against another that formed a small platform about halfway up it’s height. It was on this platform, a few metres above where we stood, that we found our intrepid rock climber standing casually, looking into the sunrise.

He climbed effortlessly down the sheer rocky incline, from the higher platform to where we stood. The large rock that towered above was called Krishna by the climbers, and one sheer vertical face of it was said to be one of the most difficult climbs on this hill, because to reach the summit you had to put your faith in a small gash in the rock a few metres off the ground that was barely an inch thick. The way he had just come down, however, was supposed to be a great beginners climb to try out and he asked if we wanted to give it a go. Never being the ones to step back from climbing anything that will allows us, we said yes.

There was a large gash that separated the tall standing rock from the shorter one with the platform. This line rose up at a steep angle and was the way to get up to the first level. When it was my turn, I took off my slippers, because I’ve always preffered the tactility of bare feet for things like this, stepped up and tried to get the first foothold. Immediately I slipped back down. The rock was smoother than you thought when it came to supporting your entire weight. I was told to wipe the bottom of my feet on the legs of my pants to get rid of the sand. That would give me more grip. I did and it worked, for the first step anyway. After that, the rock still loomed large and it’s at times like this that your mind goes blank in confusion. But, my left hand was holding on to that gash between the rocks, and old memories kicked in at that point. I pushed myself into the gap with my back against the edge, with my hands and feet holding on to other surfaces as best as they could, and before I knew it I was on the platform. That had been both harder and much easier than I had expected but it was exhilarating to stand there.

There was no point coming this far and not trying for the higher summit. It was supposed to be fairly easy if done carefully. From the platform, the rest of Krishna curved upwards to the top, so after the initial boost off the platform, you were basically spread out, precariously hugging the side of a large pebble. Then it was a matter of keeping your arms and legs moving till you went over the edge to the flat portion on the top.

Even compared to the intermediate platform, the top of the rock was quite high and narrower. After a little huffing and puffing, when I reached the top I remained on my haunches for a few seconds, because the effort makes your muscles tremble and you’re not quite ready to stand errect on what, at that point, seems a precariously small bit of flat rock very high in the air. Eventually I did stand, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the best feelings I had had in a long time. It had been too long since I’d felt this rush of getting to the top of a challenging climb, and then looking down on the World through new eyes.

The top had a small depression towards the centre of the rock where dew had collected into a small puddle, and a tuft of grass grew along the edges. The photo above is of that puddle on the highest point. In the distance is a tree on some other rocks towards the centre of the hill, which is probably the only other thing as high as where we stood. Four of our group made it to the very top before we left, and the few minutes we spent there made the entire trip to Bangalore worth it.

Eventually we climbed down from our rocky perch on top of the world, and headed back down the hill. We were still climbing down the same hillside but this was a different path that bypassed the grove of trees we had walked through on our way up. This path was more stepped with rocks, and many more detours into interesting fissures and small thickets were there to be explored. After the excitement on the hill-top we were all quite stoked, so our cameras were active and we noticed more than we normally would have, spotting well camouflaged insects and tiny flowers that were hidden in the midst of this natural cornucopia.

Half way down the slope we came to another collection of standing rocks. One in particular was getting a lot of attention from a group of rock climbers who were practicing on it. Well, one of them was trying to make the climb, while the others encouraged her along and gave her pointers about her next move. I always find it fascinating how a sport creates its own jargon, to the point where the enthusiasts can only understand each other, even when what they are actually saying is just as easy to say in the common tongue. I guess we all like to belong, and part of that belonging involves the exclusion of everyone else. It’s a strange phenomenon, and as we studied and peered at the nature around us, I’m sure nature was peering back at us, the silly human specimens.

The slope became more gradual as it started to level off at the base of the hill. Larger trees were now well spaced around us, and as we made a turn towards the road we were back at the sentinel banyan tree where we had started our journey. Our group was quite spread out, some hanging back to take more pictures while others continued forwards. As I was still a little distance away from the banyan tree, I saw one of the others standing below it, looking up, and for the first time I realised just how tall it was. The human figure was completely dwarfed by a tree that must have been at least a few storeys high, and its canopy was probably just as wide. It was a startling reminder of how much of nature is always more complex, intricate, and vast than we can fathom. Or, in our self-absorbtion, we just fail to see it.

The Sun had started to break through the clouds and it lit up the trees along the path. Just a metre or so from the tar, where our vehicle was waiting, we spotted a huge black and red butterfly basking in the warm sunlight on one of the shrubs. It was close enough to touch and as we carefully approached, always clicking and never knowing when it would decide to fly away, it remained in its place. Most us us managed to get our cameras to an arm’s length away from the insect without spooking it. It was around six inches wide, black, with white, red and yellow markings. It was a tailed butterfly, but the entire tail section of its right wing had been ripped off, probably sacrificed during an escape from a predator. It swayed in the dawn light, bruised, unbeaten, and magnificent.

We took one last look at the little island that was Turhalli Gudda, and drove away. Of all the trips I have ever taken to Bangalore, and all the places I have visited, that one place is the one I would most want to return to, and I pray there is still enough of it left when I see it again. My only hope is that nature is a lot more resilient to human stupidity than we give it credit for.

Samir

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The day after our quick trip to Lal Bagh was our only full day in Bengaluru, so we decided to explore further afield. That morning we set off for that ubiquitous bastion of Bangalore city tourism, Nandi Hills.

Nandi Hills is a small mountain away from the city which is a popular weekend visit amongst the locals, and a common destination for visiting tourists. It has some temples and historical fortifications at the summit, stairs and paths you can climb through the trees, and wonderfully dangerous hairpin bends you can drive through to the top. What’s not to like?

I had been there on some long forgotten previous trip, but it was all fairly fresh for me. Unfortunately, I had underestimated how much I’d used my camera the previous day and forgotten to charge it, so my battery died on me after a few shots of the mountain as we approached it. The perils of modern, electronics-heavy cameras.

Around two thirds of the way up the hill, there is a small parking area with a store. Above this is the fortified area of the peak, and you go through a large stone archway to enter the upper reaches. Cars can go all the way to the top, but we decided to make it on foot and see what sights were available off the ascending tarred road. But before that, we got ourselves some delicious guavas that were being sold at the parking lot. They were served in a popular Indian style, sliced almost completely in four quarters, leaving a bit attached at one end to hold it together, with a mixture of salt and red chilly powder smeared into the cuts to add that extra zing to it. The salt and the spice often makes the guava a dripping jucy mess, but it’s all the better for it, and these particular specimens were truly excellent fruit. We promised ourselves a second round of them on our way back down.

We followed the road up the hill for some distance and then signs indicated there were alternative routes on foot. Our first detour off the road lead us into a small cleared depression where a traditional Indian bath lay hidden. It was a small pool of fresh water encased in a rectangular frame of black stone stairs descended into it. These are a a common sight outside temples in South India and in many places throughout the country, water being an important purifying part of many Hindu rituals. This particular bath was not in regular use, but not completely abandoned. The water was mossy and the monsoons had made everything around it a lush green, including the stone wall that protected it’s periphery. On the other side of it, a canopied path climbed through the lush forest up the mountain. That’s where we headed, treading the wet rusty earth below our feet.

The forest we walked through up steep stone stairs was, unfortunately, not pristine. Everywhere you looked litter decorated the ground and in some cases even the trees. Every manner of snack food packaging and water bottle was on display, which I was quite surprised to see considering the remoteness of this place, as compared to the natural spots we’d visited in the middle of Bombay before. It was obvious many of the visitors were uncouth and the caretakers were not taking a lot of care. A shame.

In spite of that, the forest we walked through was wild and exquisite. It was made all the more beautiful by the fact that it had been raining in recent days, and while no water stood around on the steep slopes, it’s effect could be seen everywhere. The soil was damp, the leaves were washed clean, and the atmosphere was rich with petrichor. The odd bird or insect flew through the canopy, and on tree trunks and barks everywhere, bright red millipedes grazed slowly like miniature cattle. We soon broke out of the trees and into more civilised looking landscapes. The road crossed our route on its way to the top, and signs of structures and paths started to appear as we made our way towards the rocky slopes that lay ahead.

Then, quite suddenly we were at the top, a plateau of bare rock with small patches of grass growing in the accumulated soil in the depressions. The sky was filled with cottony clouds and the wind rushed pleasantly past at this height, a little shy of a thousand metres above the surrounding lands. Over the edge, the world stretched off into the hazy horizon far below our feet. The patchwork pattern of ploughed fields and cultivated plantations created the illusion of an earthen tiled floor with no end.

There were a few small stone shrines at the summit, and monkeys sat around awaiting the inevitable worshippers carrying the inevitable food offerings to the Gods that they could “aquire”. But mostly, a few groups of people took photographs against the windy abyss over the sides, and many simply sat on the warm stone slopes staring quietly into the distance. There is a calm and a peace on the top of mountains that you can’t explain. Yes there is the separation from civilisation, there is the thinner air, the stronger winds, and the more intimate sky, but what makes it unique is something you can never put your finger on. When you’re on top of a mountain, somehow everything makes sense, and you realise none of it really matters, the warm stone comforts your feet and the sky whispers its secrets in the silence.

We went to the very edge of the mountaintop and there in one corner lay a downed windmill. It was a large thing, probably 10 or 15 metres high with a strange vertically rotating aerofoil design. It had been secured to the rock well with metal struts and support wires, but the fierce winds had ripped apart the metal and it now lay on its side, providing another photo-op for visitors. After a while we headed back to the road, this time chosing the more civilised route towards another clutch of shops near the summit. Some hot beverages were had, along with some ice-cream if I remember right, and we drove back down the mountain.

Samir

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After an interesting journey into Bengaluru, we drove homeward. Once reunions were done, and some lunch was had, we made plans to move out. Since we only had a few days to work with, we didn’t want to waste it sitting around. But, we also didn’t want to push ourselves too much, so we chose a safe destination within the heart of city and headed over to Bengaluru’s ubiquitous Lal Bagh botanical gardens.

Stepping out of the snarl of Bangalore traffic on a Friday afternoon, our gang of camera-toting strangers entered the quiet atmosphere of Lal Bagh. The regular walkers, who seemed to ignore the now ancient trees and grounds around them, did not ignore us, a reaction I’ve come to expect when you invade hallowed jogging grounds and dare to look at the scenery rather than hurry along on a mission. The path took us around flower beds at the side of the road and snaked onto the wide expanse of a lake.

Every thing was fenced, and tiled, and organised. There were tottering signs pointing down various paths towards the main attractions in the park, and people sat around on sparse benches or walked by with vigour while birds soared through the air, squirrels scurried across the pathways, and monkeys stared in bored challenge at passersby. This was no untouched natural haven, far from it, but it was certainly a good chage from the traffic out there.

Under the canopy of trees that bordered the lake, I pointed my camera across the water trying to capture the vista as best I could when there was a sudden movement through the air. A large eagle that had been perched on one of the tree-tops, swooped down and banked over the water. I didn’t manage to get a clear shot, but some things are best captured in the mind’s eye.

In the water, formations of ducks and geese floated around like silent ships, going in one direction and then turning to another in effortless synchronisation. Further down, the tiled path split into two, going over a bridge that cut acros the lake on the right, towards groves of tall trees. We had set out late, and the Sun was already getting low in the sky, so we avoided the detour. But not before spending some time on the bridge looking into the water below. There on the stone banks, some duks were splashing around in the shallows and preening themselves at days end. Perhaps they had a busier social calendar that night than we did.

We ventured further along the curving paths, deeper into the parkland. The path we were on was landscaped at a higher level, overlooking lawns and tall tress that stretched out below us to the left. As the Sun drew closer to the horizon, it bathed the lawns in a shimmering golden glow, making dramatic silhouettes of walkers and creatures alike. In the distance, the famous glass house of Lal Bagh became visible through the trees. It is renowned for an annual flower show held there, which we had just missed by a week.

We did, however, get a chance to see the aftermath of the flower show. Elaborate arrangements of flowering plants in cascades and stepped formations stood wilting around the insides of the glass house. In the centre there were the wire shells of dinosaur shapes that still held the remanents of what would have been fresh flowers when the show was still on. Now the dinosaurs stood there dried and sapped of all colour and energy, but somehow I had the feeling they might be looking more interesting in this state than in the state in which they were originally prepared. Either way, it’s not everyday you step into a park expecting to see dried-flower-zombie-dinosaurs, and I’m glad this time I did.

Lal Bagh is a pretty big place, and while our stroll had not covered most of it’s acreage, we were geting a bit tired, and there were the worrying sounds of thunder on the horizon. I must say the clouds in Bangalore were particularly beautiful during our visit When we stepped out of the Glass House, even the dark rolling cloud bank that seemed to be heading our way in the distance was an awesome sight to behold.

We were now quite far from where we had entered. Seeing the clouds as a sign to head back, we cut across the park on new paths to return the quickest way possible. By the time we made it to the gate, it had already started drizzling a steady shower of heavy drops. We protected our cameras as best we could and prepared for the onslaught. Then the onslaught arrived and the ground burst into rainfall.

Unavoidably drenched, we used the one umbrella we had to call ourselves some transport. An autorickshaw pulled up in the downpour, three of us jumped in, and he sped off into the rain. Unlike rickshaws in Bombay, this one didn’t have any temporary enclosure or tarp to close the passenger compartment from the rain, so it beat into the little space from both sides, leaving only a thin sliver of the seat in the centre close to dryness. I was sitting on the left side, and driving through the rivers of mud on the streets, it was a long, invigorating drive home.

Samir

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Can you have too much of a good thing? I hope not, because my first paper cut in ages was definitely a good thing from my viewpoint. It was fun to do, and the results were attractive enough. Now that I’m in the paper cutting zone, so to speak, I thought I might as well exploit it and do something for the dawn of the new year.

This time a got a little more ambitions, and really didn’t even think about the fact that this would have to eventually be cut out in tiny slivers of paper. Instead I just got an image in mind and scribbled until what I had was a base sketch for a decent illustration. Then it was a simple matter of executing this illustration as a paper cut. Not really simple, but hey! I’m allowed my 1st of January bravado just like eveyone else.

After another few hours of careful cutting, hunched over a sheet of paper with a craft knife, this is what I turned out and I am pleasantly surprised. You see, while the christmas paper cut was fairly planned from the beginning as a flat paper cut design, this one had more complex bits that were layerd, so all the decisions of what had to be cut and not cut out, were taken while I was cutting. I’m happy with the result.

What I like about this one is that it’s as non-traditional a paper cutting as you can get. Every art form has its conventional motifs and symbols. Paper cuts, being a fairly traditional craft, usualy feature very classical themes, animals, patterns, and very arts-and-crafts imagery. This one has a ray gun!

A Very Happy New Year to you all. It’s the future! May your days be filled with the interestingly unconventional, and may all your paper cuts have spaceships.

Samir

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