Archive for November, 2008
posing . for . a . photograph November 27th, 2008
this was a photograph I took of the Taj a little over a month ago. I don’t want this to in any way be perceived as a lack of respect to those who died in the terrorist attacks of 26/11/2008 in Mumbai; just a record of what this hotel meant to the city, being right across the road from the Gateway, arguably Mumbai’s greatest landmark.
Mourn those who are lost, mourn some of our ideals and ways of living that we will no have to relook at. I don’t know what else to say right now.
Words from the New York Times:
Anand Giridharadas, who writes a column for the International Herald Tribune, sees the Taj Hotel as unique. He had this to say:
Anyone, anywhere who has lived in Mumbai was gasping at the sight of a burning Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel. That is because it is not your average hotel.
It is not another Sheraton or Hilton in the business district of another world city. It is the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in Mumbai. Its major role is to serve its guests, who come from around the world and elsewhere in India. But it also serves the local city in a way that few hotels in the world could claim to do.
If a momentous infidelity is being committed on a given night, or a billion-dollar business deal being inked, or a recklessly brilliant idea being hatched, there is a fair chance it is being committed, inked, hatched at the Taj. Mumbaikars who can afford it have their most romantic meals at its Wasabi restaurant, accept marriage proposals in its Sea Lounge, land job offers in its coffee shop.
Non-guests are forbidden to use the pool. But so many Mumbaikars enterprisingly bring a towel, furnish a fake room number and dip into its manmade lagoon.
It stands across from the Gateway of India. Those who would not dream of paying $3 – a decent daily wage – for one of its fresh-lime sodas sit outside the hotel, leaning against the stone wall on the sea. They take in the scene; they admire the finely dressed people breezing in and out. They know that it is not their time for the Taj now, but, should a fortune bless them, it is in the Taj they will spend it.
Few other hotels of the world could say they were built out of spite.
Legend has it that Jamsetji Tata, a nineteenth-century industrialist, was once turned away from a hotel in British-era Mumbai because he happened to be Indian. He decided, in a strange kind of revenge, to build the best hotel in the country, outfitted with German elevators, French bathtubs and other refinements from all around the world.
The hotel became, for many Indians, a symbol of the overthrow of the indignities of the colonial age. And it became a symbol of the best that could be had in a city paved with dreams.
Posted in Politics/Ideas | Comments (0)
to . freeze . what . is . fleeting November 23rd, 2008
“All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory / of the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.”
- Charles Baudelaire
-
"Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe"
- The Beatles, Across the Universe
Tags: Baudelaire, Beatles, flickr
Posted in Music, Photoblog, Photography, Politics/Ideas | Comments (0)
a . wait . for . life November 23rd, 2008
“By means of the sign man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.”
- Umberto Eco
Posted in Photography, Politics/Ideas | Comments (0)
