Dhobi Ghat - Sunflowers.

I don't think there's anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that's because of the reason behind its name.Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun.

During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky and help the metaphorphosis coming true.

A metamorphosis of a young washerman becoming a Sunflower! 

Dhobi Ghat - The Wandering Souls

"What are you seeing? Are you able to see our wandering selves out there in the cold blue water, floating like pieces of meteors, within the canvas of our universe? Yes our Universe! 

That Universe where you have left us all alone, cold and frozen, unattended and soiled. And like an unknown sapling we wake up to find us floating. Floating deep, between the chambers of births and deaths. We could feel ourselves half asleep. We could hear the sounds of another world, hidden between the crevices of darkness and light. 

Under the faint light of awakening, could hear you reading out from the Book of Hades. Were you reading or chanting? Chanting a Hymn to awaken the spirit of the Underworld? The whiteness of our living was unsure until we are here. Here, where we are exiled. 

Peculiarly couldn't ask, whether this exile was meant to die or to wake up after we were dead! 


Now, as we are lying without a body, we are no more entwined to the destiny of lives you have gifted us once. Our Souls spread over the planet and leave no mountain unclimbed, no valley undiscovered, no sea unsailed, ventured even into an inner sanctum.

Maybe a Sanctuary! 

Our Souls mingle and leave no relationship unattempted, no emotion unfelt, no pleasure and pain unexplored. Our Souls plunge into their minds and leave no tale untold, no image unpainted, no melody unheard.

For the first time in our entire dissipated and borrowed life, our Souls transcend their fantasies and leave no idea unthought, no natural law undescribed, no wisdom undefined. 
And even pass over the thinkeable and witness ineffable realms of other worlds and their inhabitants. 

Curiously, without any idea of what we are, we have become the embodiment of the purpose of existence.” 

Dhobi Ghat - Rhyme & Rhythms

The thing about Bombay or Mumbai is you go five yards and all of human existence is revealed. It's an incredible cavalcade of life, and I love that.

I love that scent of buzzing human movements and it so much reminds me of the Bees. I can fairly imagine Bombay as The Queen and us acting like bees tending the time as a beehive. We are all moving and at times this movement becomes the metaphor of Stillness.

And maybe if you're staying in Bombay you would have observed that how the city has beautifully carved herself into frames. Frames of life! A life full of renewed life force extinguishing every night and springing up yet again each morning.

Such display of continuous deaths and births are rarely seen in any cities I have ever lived in. Maybe Newyork is such I am being told. But I am sure the waves and textures of human colours are unmatched and unique from everywhere.

And the most remarkable part is the huge mellowed heart of the city.She places the grotesque and the ugly next to the refined and subtle and yet it creates a Rhythm. Her indomitable spirit and desire to exist supercedes every lil' imperfections she carries.

Dhobi Ghat - Blue's Playin

Dhobi Ghat (Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat) is a well known open air laundromat in Mumbai, India.The washers, locally known as Dhobis, work in the open to wash the clothes from Mumbai's hotels and hospitals.

I was always fascinated with the stories of Dhobi Ghat and more so seeing the film with the same title.

It was just 6.30 am in the morning and the scent of Dhobi Ghat with chlorine, dim light, half clad men beating the clothes in a rhythm with splashes of water wrenching the blue's out, was enough to produce a music that could only match with Billy Joel in his saxophone.

I was standing there quietly and watching the clock taking me back to somewhere in between the 60's to 70's.There was this humming sound of the drier, in distant, giving it a feeling of Time Machine. I could feel some curious eyes trying to catch my glance but they were too busy to clean all the mirths of the city than watching me through my lens.

I could see tons of shirts and trousers shedding their blackness and getting whiter. I was thinking how men have learnt to clean the dirts and whiten their lives at the expense of other fellow men.

I was wondering where do all these dirts that are getting cleaned travels to? Does these travels to the inside, within the darkest corners of the city ? How will the city clean itself?

I think too much! Let me watch the Blue's for now...