Of Crows And Men -- Flash Fiction

Naughty old man!! After assuring the community that you had nothing more to add over what had already been said, you managed to slip in the final word on the subject.

oj

 

Dear GG,

Most impressive comment. I am wondering now whose freedom you are talking about. I suppose it is the crow's. I fought for its life beyond the boundaries of my balcony. And then I questioned its right to visit the balcony itself. On the other hand, it could have been my own freedom as well. I am free to fight for living beings away from home, but back home, the tip of my nose insists on rigid discipline!

oj-da

 

Dear Syamala,

That is no doubt the case. And remember that the world's most dangerous animal is MAN/WOMAN !!

oj

 

Dear Srama,

It's not exactly springtime here now. But the full throated cry of a koel wakes me up every morning. What on earth is the koel crying for in the middle of summer? I need to inquire about this. Has it lost its mate? Or is it calling out for the monsoons to arrive?

Liked your reference to

Do you really believe that the crow is a useless bird? I don't. After all, it is a scavenger, which the koel is not!! Worse, it lays its eggs in the crow's nest. Doesn't even care for its own offsprings.

Btw, your quote काकः कृष्णः ... reminded me of a Bengali song sung long, long, long ago by Hemanta Mukherjee. It goes

Loosely translated, the first two lines say: Krishna is dark, so is darkness itself. Why then did you not fall in love with me?

oj-da

 

Dear Agatha,

Thank you for your kind words. Coincidentally enough, I did try out photography several years ago, between 1980 and 1990 I think. I realized that it was a challenging job. One needed to understand the camera in two different ways. The physics of it and the artistry that it demands.

I read up the necessary books covering the physics of the camera, but then I needed to figure out the art of the camera. The most important thing that I saw in the process was that one must understand how the camera is viewing the object being photographed as opposed to the way the human eye tends to view it. There is a world of difference. I think Satchi in IL knows all about the matter. I needed to train my eyes to turn into a pair of camera lens. Yet, this was the not the end of the struggle. The question of composition came up. Not much different from writing. You can describe the same object in totally different ways to express completely divergent sentiments.

There is a story that I heard when I was very young. I think my mother told me the tale. On observing a dried up log of wood lying on the wayside, two poets described it in two different ways in Sanskrit. One said: shushkam kashtham tishthat agre, while the other one said, neerasa taruvara purtah bhaati. Some ascribe the second of the descriptions to Kalidasa, but I am not learned enough to verify the authenticity of such claims. Also, I can't exactly remember who was the first of the poets. I don't see anything wrong in the first description though, since it all depends on the sentiment you are trying to arouse.

In any case, composition, in the case of photography, is comparable to such stories. There is little point in clicking a camera shutter unless one doesn't know what story he is trying to capture. Of course, you can dress up things later on while you are developing and printing the photograph. That brings in the chemistry of photography, on which again I had to spend a good deal of time.

Now that photography has gone digital, a robot works for you as far as the chemistry goes. But the physics part is still most important, so is the composition part. I lost interest in photography and got involved in writing a few years later. They are both art forms as far as I can see.

And of course, a crow is an interesting bird in my opinion. I once wrote a haiku involving a pair of crows. I called

Intriguing Silence — A Haiku

One doesn't associate silence with crows, but it all depends on the point of view. It is a very short composition.

Like you, I think I am interested in crows!!

Thanks again.

oja