

Taken in the summer of 2018 in Bengaluru.
Garland coils in saffron and yellow.
Burlap bags of loose blooms in many hues.
Free petals strewn across the floor.
Vendors sit like stamen, still amid the chaos.
Customers waft around like pollen on the wind.
And workers flit about like industrious bees.
It’s a post-apocalyptic scene.
Until you see the flower floor.
Concrete walls, bare but for paan stains.
Looking like a fresh massacre.
A murderous rampage
written in shotgun spatters.
A pack sits, rhythmically rocking,
hands mindlessly at work.
But with their backs to you,
you can’t see they’re stringing garlands.
Looks like the junky fidgets
of a Zombie horde at rest.
The impulse to tip-toe past, rationally quieted.
Then you peer over the rail to the flower floor.
The flower floor is brightness.
The visual gravity of oranges and yellows
exerts such an aesthetic pull on the eyes
that one can’t see any sign
of dystopian dreariness.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #12]
As I skipped posting Daily Photos over the weekend, I’m posting two today–in honor of a Western and an Indian holiday respectively. Holi is the festival of colors, and today one can see plenty of people with faces and clothing powdered in vivid colors. In the markets one sees these conical piles of color defying gravity in a most stubborn fashion. FYI- Today isn’t the day to wear your finest, pristine white dress shirt.
This is the Jama Masjid in Bangalore (not to be confused with the massive Jama Masjid near the Red Fort in Old Delhi.) It’s indicative of Bangalore’s rapid growth that the mosque sits right up against the highway flyover that frames it herein. It’d be a nicer looking picture from on top of the flyover, but a.) that would be terrifying and b.) it wouldn’t give the impression of how hemmed in it is.
The mosque is located right next to the K.R. (City) Market, and is considered the most impressive of Bangalore’s mosques by many. This area is a crazy hive of market activity at all times of day.