And Babarya poised

And Babaraya poised before a tin moon, suspended from the ceiling, is holding my life's work, Phalke's studio, aloft in his hand. My thirteen year old son, dressed as Hanuman, bears aloft all the stories, past and present, and even the nature of how we will be forgotten or remembered in the days to come. Our lives are held in a young palm that was our creation. Among the shifting rivers that cut into his hands, seeking the final, settled form of fate, between their embankments, he bears us. His eyes still unknowing, he peers into the studio, like you might into a doll's house. And in response to our child's call for play, Saraswati and I become living dolls, and relive our lives for our children.

I who would greedily let my camera swallow moments, capture them and make them mine, am going to try and retrieve moments from my own life for my child.Not captured on any glass plate, not processed by any camera. which therefore, are actually dead forever. I shall be magician again, and try and conjure them up, and disguise the fact that it is all an illusion. Nothing exists of these moments any more, only perhaps my own strong desire for immortality which I am seeking to imprint on my child.

Trymbakeshvar, where I was born, lives on the banks of the holy Ganga Godavari.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke 1919

piaget [1]