Let me tell you a story of the Kalahari Desert in Africa! A place where crisp blonde grass grows in abundance, where no animal can have less to eat but a place which human and animals alike, avoid like plague. Simply because humans need water to survive and this place doesn't have the slightest trace of the good old H2O for 9 months a year. Well, not everyone does! There are a select few who call the Kalahari home, the little people – The Bushmen of the Kalahari! Small, dainty and graceful, they live quite contentedly in this desert that doesn't look like a desert. They know where to dig for roots and bulbs and tubers and which berries and pods are good to eat. Where any other person would die of thirst in a few days, these little guys know exactly how to survive against all odds adapting perfectly to the way they have to live!
It is common for those who have glimpsed something beautiful to express regret at not having been able to photograph it. So successful has been the lens’ role in beautifying the world that photos, rather than the world have emerged as the standard of the beautiful. We learn to see ourselves photographically; to regard oneself as attractive is banally, to judge that one would look good in a photograph. Photographs create the beautiful and – over generations of picture-taking – use it up. Certain glories of nature, for instance have been all but abandoned to the indefatigable attentions of amateur camera-buffs. The image-surfeited are likely to find sunsets corny; they now look, alas, too much like photographs. |
The Mango TreeMildly entertaining, occasionally funny and something pretentious coz the first two are too mainstream Archives
December 2020
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