Born Again

“You can close your eyes to things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel.”

I wish I knew who wrote that. I wish I could write like that. But I don’t think I am capable of words that tug at your heartstrings. If I did, I would have used words to heal the scars. But even if words fail me, friends seldom do.

Sometimes you need to remember things that are important to you. And sometimes if you are lucky, then you get reminded about them at times you need them the most. Somewhere at the beginning of the year, I realized that it had been a long time since I had really laughed, really cared for anything outside work and life was seeming like a dreaded weekend to weekend to routine. Just then like a breath of fresh air they descended.

Led by the “Gaurav of The Kachhi Beer Drinkers”, they came one after the other. Sometimes they came with their friends, a few times there were friends of a friend and in their “just out of college” way of looking at things, my last few months in Mumbai took a life of their own. In those last few months, when almost every friend had been moving out of Mumbai, they came in as family.

Often life surprises you in strange ways, you never know how the bonds that you have created can come and lift you up from your self-inflicted misery, the bonds suddenly are no longer shackles but a pathway to a life that once was. It was during one of those times that one is confused that the newly anointed alums of the Department of Photography descended on Mumbai.

The words “DOPY blood” has been misused regularly for a variety of things. It’s sometimes used for people with general enthusiasm which is typically shortened to “Gen Enthu”, further shortened to “Genthu”. It’s sometimes (on those rare occasions when there are more than 3 people coming for the shifting work post a festival), just a sigh of relief from old timers who thank the lucky stars that the department will survive. But to me Dopy Blood means a calling that you can’t resist when you meet someone who once shared a passion that you did.

They made me shake off years of lethargy; sunrises in Mumbai had never been so beautiful and suddenly I was clicking again, with one of that age old cosina, shooting with films like I have always loved to.

Life had changed, the love for “writing with light” had returned and redemption was bestowed on a soul parched for what it loved to do.

Here’s To Dopy Blood. Here’s to a bond beyond words – with ink or with light.