'Photograph'

Here is the poem 'Photograph' which was published in Coldnoon Diaries last month. Along with the photograph it was written for. The photo has been clicked by my friend, Ritu Singh, in IP College, Delhi University. And, Happy New Year and all that!

Photograph

A photograph is a means of travel.

It is a way of defeating binary linear logics

Of space-time by jumping them. Flying

Through them. A Muggle way of apparating

 A Muggle Time-Turner. An apparition,

I apparate there, where the topmost branch

Meets the roof. I am a bird who lives in the tree.

(I wonder if you would like me if I was a bird in a tree?

If you would shoot me with your lens instead of your eyes)

Photography at least gives scope for the imagination.

I am a bird right now, in this twilight dusk, crooning

And chirping. Do you see me? Can you hear me?

I am right here, in this photograph. I am flying now.

Tree friends, bird friends, rooftop friends, muggle friends,

Present friends, past friends, and you, will you be my friend?

I have been here for an hour now, this evening, this tree,

This photograph, this place. This mist of memory and dreams

Which films my eyes, this foggy lens of imagination. This place

Looks so beautiful in a photograph. Is it so beautiful, really?

I am trying to remember. I always thought that photography

Is a bourgeois art. I used to think it is a voyeuristic art.

But it is also a way through which I am both bird and human

Both there and here, both then and now, both in and out

This photograph has set me free from factuality.