a winter afternoon on move

how about enjoying a winter afternoon on the move ? sounds difficult or weird ? well, i was traveling longest journey in india … and the 2nd afternoon came though west bengal … this topography is well known to me … this rural west bengal was very much known to me… those fishermen were searching for fish from almost dried pond next to the railway track… and the fog at the horizon tells me that, evening is in the backdrop … just about to come…

i made this photograph with the camera phone n85 while the train was moving … i certainly missed the sharp focus … i mean when you yourself are moving it become difficult to get any sharp photograph from a camera … ( only SLR does justice ).. so a camera phone is beyond consideration.. but however, for me, key is not the focus in this image but the mood …

this photograph predominantly tells me a sunny winter afternoon… which i always wanted to enjoy… a lot … mostly in this kind rural area, where you don’t get the bright sunshine through out the season… one sunny afternoon is something people would be waiting for …

i was having my afternoon coffee with my wife and enjoying this eternal scene through the window of our compartment…

howrah-kharagpur local at 13:35

this scene was not new to me … i have been traveling in local train for a long time when i was studying at kolkata … it was 16 years back… i was staying at belgharia and coming to dumdum everyday to reach at my college … if you are a daily commuter in local train at office hours, you must know how difficult it is to get in and going to your work place … but yet we did, everyday we did the same exercise … local trains are always overcrowded… we try hard to just get in and then submit ourselves to the crowd … and then it is like a flow in every station to get down and get in … once you are there in the queue , you don’t have to worry about getting in and getting down… crowd will push yourself to your destination…

though it is risky but for us it was kind of enjoy and fun… we used to travel in a group … group of students … and most of the time without ticket … we code named as WT … and when the destination comes we used to hide ourselves from TTEs ..

it become a part of our lives …

just yesterday , i saw in a bengali channel in TV, a group of commuter did some damage in a local train at howrah… because the train was stopped for a long at tikia para station just before entering howrah station… there was no power inside the train … kolkata mercury reached at 43 degree Celsius temperature for sometime now… if you are a commuter you can imagine how difficult it is to stay in this crowd, … without having fan moving inside in this hot and humid season… i certainly condemn the damage what happened, but i also can imagine their condition…

mumbai junta knows how the local train become a life line for them… i don’t have to explain at all …

while on move this time i came across this scene which reminded me my old college days … this compartment was less crowded as it was afternoon and a down train…

now i must say, this nokia n85 was very helpful for me as i could capture the scene effectively … thanks to the camera … oops , the phone !!!

ipod and a boring day

and all the day, he was sitting just like that in front of his window and listening music ... i wonder how many songs he have in his ipod ... after seeing this photo, one of my friend told he knew him... he might be a friend of him... i was sitting diagonally opposite to him... watching him... what he was looking at ... running behind landscapes ? seing girls waving their hands from an unknown village ? looking at some small village which does not appear in any map of india .. not even google map ? or just simply seeing the clouds in the open clear and blue sky ?

who knows ? i was watching him ... reading his thought for sometime ... i remembered my days when i used to travel alone ... no one to talk to ... reading novels from magazines ... and looking at outside ... there was no ipod culture that time ... no cellphones ... a good novel or a magazine would be best companion those days ...

what he might be thinking in his mind ? he might be going to his home after a long time ... he must be seeing his girlfriend after a long time ... he must be giving excuses to his girl friend for not coming so frequently ... may be this is his first visit after getting a job in these southern states ... may be he is carrying lot of gifts for his family in him tiny little bag ... and may be something very special and tiny for his girl friend ... he is trying hard to keep it a secret ... he may be waiting to have food from his mother's hand ... may be he was so bored having southern food for quite a time ...

or may be he is a student and studing engineering somewhere ... having a lot of dreams inhis eyes ...

i imagined... i wanted to relate me with him... i was thinking about my days ...

i didn't not talk to him anytime in this journey ... i wanted the secret to be secret, i wanted my imagination not to break ... i wanted my thought to fly in the air ...

[ this documentary was supported by Nokia and all the photos are shoot with a Nokia N85 Camera phone ]

52 hours of insomnia and N85

train journey always fascinates me ... be it in India or else where ... sitting next to the window and looking at outside shows me the real world like a bio scope... this time it happened to be longest journey amongst all... starting from Bangalore and traveling through the entire east coast enriched me with full of experiences .. different states, different people, different food, different language ... it is kind of a harmony and celebration of life ...
it is like a collage of a life ...

I was provided a Nokia N85 from Nokia to test the camera feature of it ... I took this journey as my project ... i wanted to document this piece of life ... this collage ... i was really happy with the performance of that camera phone ... i am going to write in detail about that in coming posts with lots more photographs ...
it was kind of insomnia ... but it was a different perspective ... altogether ...