Bathing in the Fountain of Youth

“The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do [with great artists]; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star. ”
(From “The Prisoner and The Fugitive : In search of lost time, vol. 5” by Marcel Proust)

This young man was climbing a pillar which is usually underwater in the Ganges at Scindia ghat.
This architectural element is what is left from the massive palace which used to stand there until the end of the 19th century before the whole structure fell in the holy river.
This picture belongs to a series revolving around my “search of lost time” and of the lost splendour of Varanasi (Benaras)…

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Footprints of the Soul

“The Ganges front is the supreme showplace of Benares.
Its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to summit, along a stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry, a bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stair flights, rich and stately palaces….soaring stairways, sculptured temples, majestic palaces, softening away into the distances; and there is movement, motion, human life everywhere, and brilliantly costumed – streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical gardens on the mile of great platforms at the river’s edge.”
(Mark Twain – American Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)

This is a view of the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras) from Ahilyabai ghat to Mansrowar Ghat.
Some dreams can never be lost, they become footprints of the soul…
The Eternal city belongs to these kind of dreams…

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Forgetfulness

“What is a man’s life but a prelude to his death?
And what is death but a long sleep, a most welcome forgetfulness.”
(From “Ophelia” by Lisa M. Klein)

This young man was not dying like Shakespeare’s Ophelia, he was simply doing yoga in the holy waters of the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras) and was floating as quiet and still as possible for deep relaxation.
This picture was shot early in the morning at Scindia ghat.

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A Physical State

“When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.”
(Swami Vivekananda – Indian Spiritual leader, 1863-1902)

This picture was shot inside the akhara facing the Ganges at Raj Ghat in Varanasi (Benaras) where this pehlwan follows a daily training at dawn.
The reflection in the mirror was providing a backlighting which I always enjoy to work with…

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Promise of the Setting Sun

“When pain brings you down, don’t be silly, don’t close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine ”
(Alanis Morissette – Canadian and American singer-songwriter, guitarist and actress, b.1974)

A few hours ago the sun was setting in the sky of Saket in Delhi and I took this simple picture with my new camera (Panasonic DMC-FZ200).
From the terrace where I was standing I could listen to the call to adhan (prayer) from the muezzin of a mosque nearby.
The sun couldn’t be more oriental and in some ways it became full of promise for someone who was sharing this moment with me and is expecting some good news in a few hours…

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Pink Powder

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No quote with this picture but one simple message:
“Nowadays breast cancer can be cured if it is diagnosed in time”.
Spread the word, you can save lives.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

This picture was shot at sunrise near Assi ghat along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
I dreamt that this lady adjusting her sari after taking a bath in the holy waters was receiving pink particles in order to protect her from cancer.
Each year “Pink for October” allows me to make pictures like this.
It is a way to pay a tribute to those many women who are fighting and to those like my mother who are not there anymore.

For more information about breast cancer and what you can do to help, visit:
www.nbcam.org/
www.breastcancer.org
www.pinkforoctober.org/
www.curie.frwww.rubanrose.org

The Light that Brings Cold Cheer

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“Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar, how far away,
The nights that shall be from the days that were.
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign;
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
(Whose sounds mine inner sense is faith to bring,
Continually together murmuring,)
“Woe’s me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”
(Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Ballads and Sonnets,1881)

One day, Proserpine, a young maid of spring, was out picking wildflowers with her mother, Ceres, goddess of grain when she saw the white petals of the narcissus flower. She began straying far from her mother.
Out of the dark depths sprang Pluto, god of the underworld. He grabbed Proserpine and drove his chariot back into the caves of the earth…
Ceres, devastated by the kidnapping allowed the earth to become barren.
Mercury, the messenger god, wandered the underworld until he came to the misty throne room of Pluto and Proserpine.
There he told Pluto he must return Proserpine.
She remembered the joyful times of her mother’s love, the wildflowers, and open sunlit meadows.
Before returning Proserpine, Pluto offered her the seeds of a pomegranate fruit.
When Ceres heard this, she told Proserpine that the fruit was a symbol of marriage.
As a result, when Fall and Winter come, the earth grows cold and barren because Proserpine must return to the underworld with Pluto.
But when she comes back, Ceres turns the world to spring and summer.
…This is how seasons began.
(Chrysantha Gakopoulos – The story of Ceres and Proserpina)

There is no editing on this picture which was shot at night at the ”Bosquet de la Colonnade” which stands in the gardens of the Château de Versailles.
The green lights were settled for a special evening.
This is a close-up of the famous group “Proserpine Ravished by Pluto” which is in the centre, it was sculpted by François Girardon in 1699.

 

Day is Come

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“Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle.
It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.”
(Rabindranath Tagore – Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)

Those Rajsthani villagers came a long way in order to worship in Varanasi (Benaras).
I saw them leaving a small boat on the holy waters of the Ganges nearby Manikarnika Ghat where all earthy lives are ending, it was at dusk.
Suddenly the words of Tagore are giving deeper colours to the souls living in this image…

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A Tear Drop in the Face of Eternity

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Since many years I wanted to take a few pictures of the Taj Mahal from the other side of the Yamuna river and a few days ago I could at last do it while I was going by car from Delhi to Lucknow.
Rabindranath Tagore once said that this wonder of the world was “A tear drop in the face of eternity”, those words allow me to fly away with the birds and to open a new ethereal dream, under a mysterious moonlight…

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Some Secrets of Life

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“Of all our games, love’s play is the only one which threatens to unsettle our soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body’s ecstasy.
…Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of that same law which ordained that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory.”
(Quotes from “Memoirs of Hadrian” by French writer Marguerite Yourcenar)

Antinoüs (111–130) was a member of the entourage of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, to whom he was beloved.
Antinous was deified after his death.
This marble statue stands at Le Louvre museum it allowed me to try a Canon EOs 500D.

 

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