Tuesday, January 29, 2008

suggested ways to spend the afternoon (no 1)

in between finishing work in college at 2 or so and dinner at 5 spice in town, a good way to spend the afternoon happens to be a ferry ride from bhaucha dhakka to rewas and back. you will start off by parking your car outside the main gate along with the huge trucks that line the street. chai and omlettes at the many small shops in the main terminus will help you pass the time as you watch the day trippers, the daily commuters, the fishermen who go through there everyday. also then there are the permanent inhabitants of the space- the shoe polish guy who follows you around lowering his price from an exorbitant 5 rs to a more reasonable 4, the owners and the workers in the food stalls who slip money to the policemen patrolling the shed and there is asif from up who just arrived in bombay 2 weeks back and now lives on top of the stall with a pink mosquito net protecting him and his brothers. the nine hundred and twenty architectural design thesis done here, that transform this into megastructure multimodal transport node with pizza huts and glass morphing roofs hover like bad dreams over these people.

the winter sun is soft on the boat as we pass stationary barges desliting the docks, huge ships anchored off the shore. a girl sleeps listening to her music phone bathing in the sun. as you approach mora huge cranes rise from the jnpt docks to the left. you can choose to get off and take a walk in the streets of the village or continue to sit as the ferry unloads and reloads its passengers. the sun in lower when you are getting back and comes right in thorough the window. its good photography light. on top of the ferry men sit in corners gossiping loudly in marathi and others get into the mood of the ocean by staring through sunglasses, wearing bandannas at the sunset. the horizon of the city is even more dramatic now with the mill lands disappearing into a haze of looming skyscrapers. the sun sets behind the spectacular skyline burning it away. in winter the smog turns everything into a ruin from the future.

Photographs when the internet starts working more regularly.

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