An Indian Narravtive

In our trip to Rajasthan, we did see `Tiger of Bengal', the wise who learned us the wisdom: `the man who has spent a week in India, can say many things about it; the man who has spent two weeks, can say too many things; but the man who has spent three weeks, can hardly say anything.'

So, after near two years in India, Mehdi, my fellow traveller, has a hardly-spoken narrative of our eternal trip. Here is his narrative:

Hindustan

Our journey in the eternity, Hindustan I mean as we used to call it like that in our trip-talks, didn’t only happen in buses in between cities and at ancient monuments of gods, it happened in other stories too, even in some other languages; it even happened in our nocturnal dreams, still tripping in another cities; it happened in frames too and it started by this one: Payam, at my place, after a long trip-talk ...

Another eternal journey started for me, as soon as he stepped in Hindustan.

Delhi

The first city, we walked all the streets till we reached the end which had the gate we had already interred to that city; it was the city of analogue repetitions, they call it Delhi, a circle of rectangles. In every time you are where that you were there.
The first wisdom: In Hindi, the word for tomorrow is the same for yesterday. If you could live the past, you will live the future forever.

Jaipur

Pink City: the gaze of reality started. The king made the city out of the lines he could remember from his dreams of a lady wearing a pink Sari.

Wind Palace

The story goes on like this:
Every time when the king wanted to roll open the sari around her, he would wake up from that dream; so he called for his wise, and the wise said that she can not be seen naked, her innocence makes her vanish. Make a palace full of small windows, so you would see her from each, but not to be seen through it. So the palace was made window by window, and each one for a dream. Till the one thousand, one was dreamt and the palace completed.

Hava Mahal

The King asked the wind to make the palace, not only because wind could be faster in making a window each day for a dream, but also it was wind who knew well the moves of lines in her sari.

Monkey Temple

On the way to the Sun Temple, but at dusk: many small things stopped us on the way, climbing up to the temple.
Payam came up later mentioning this: here, everything is so transparent that even death can be invisible.

Sun Temple

At the Sun Temple, we lost to see the sunset there, a monkey did either.

Pushkar

Waking up in another city, we called it the city that wasn’t here. We used to be silent and see the things which were there, but not here.

Bazar

Payam did shopping with the closed eyes.

Thinking

We thought with closed eyes.

the Ordinary

I took this picture with closed eyes.

Dawn

Next morning we ran away, we couldn’t bear not seeing anymore. We opened our eyes and we were somewhere else; the city of all the cities. There was a palace for everything. A palace for poor, a palace of rooms for every kind, a palace for loneliness…

Udaipur

There was a palace that outside and inside was both part of the palace.

Citizens

Everybody was a citizen. The city was ours, and kings were walking in our shadows.

City Palace

The palace of love, we had to pass the lake to reach it, and then lost in its corridors. In the map of the palace this was written: `The only way to love someone is the effort to know her, but with no hope.'

Monsoon Palace

A palace for solitude: the King built it high a way from the city, so he can bear the Loneliness instead of his own people.

Solitude

Payam broke the silence of the place: you can be so damn lonely here that no one would hear you die.

They never found the body of the king.

Sky

We couldn’t stand it and could get out of it neither. Its gravity wasn’t from the center of the earth; we were appealed toward the sky.

Consciousness

Payam fainted, but full of consciousness about silence and sun.

Babel

I said from inside: it’s like a grave, but vertical toward gods’… maybe the last floor of the Tower of Babel could be like this, if it was built to the end… God was lonely, so he then created the differences in language.

Unconsciousness

I fainted too. The only thing I can remember is the click sound of this pic, and three men behind me.

Lake

We took the last picture before leaving for the Lake Palace.

Fluidity

Coming back, we felt like falling down. We sat closed to each other to fall down in a same spot, as though on a boat.

Lake Palace

They didn’t let us even near the Palace; it was for rich people, and we two were there on a boat with feet paddles… those who had motor paddles could go to the palace.

Landscape

There, from the Lake, we saw the Monsoon Palace (the lonely palace, on the top of the hill)… it looked far away and it happened in a moment.

Sunset

And then the sunset; at last we saw it, a sunset in an interim eternity.

Silhouette

We even wept with silhouette tears … we were happy to be in these simple stories we couldn’t even imagine before. We always dreamt to heat the road and ran away from the world, and now we are somewhere greater than what we could know.
Another wisdom: Eternity is where your imagination cannot go, unless you step in it for the real.

City World

Next morning we left again.
We were leaving so much of ourselves behind in each city, that we feared we would be finished before the last. We used to make fun of it: although eternal citizens, but still worldly human we are.

Earth

He sometimes used to call back the world; calling his mother, and his beloveds. No one knew when he is going to come back again, even me ...

Always Travelling

This man, on a local bus asked who we are; we said travelers. Although he had never went out of his city, but gave us a wisdom on traveling: `Wisdom is in details; I travel in between rooms and doors. I’m always traveling.'
So after many cities behind us, we started to take the Roads between the Rooms…

Turban Room

We went to a room with the biggest turban in the world.

the Dead

A room for the dead guests in the city palace.

the Future

We saw a room where someone had mad a working image of the future and calling it the 6th world… he had imagine it with space ships working with air balls attached below them.

Smoke

We went to a room for smoking a cigar.

Mirror

I went to a room with only a mirror and saw myself.

Butchery

Payam walked into the butcher room and took this picture.

Bus Room

We traveled in a small room in a bus, from Udaipur to Bombay.

Return Room

I remembered Payam back in my room the first night he came.

the End

This is the last picture I took from Payam, again where we started, so that’s why it doesn’t feel like something that happened in the past and finished. It's still going on, and this time were like this choosing near 40 of the pictures and writing for each of them. Our journey happened in many more pictures, more wisdoms and wonders.
Eternity has a hell of different views. Once a Spanish painter said, Hindustan is like a very realistic cubism ...

Writing

But there is one image that always remain in every narration of my journey with Payam; the image seeing him writing. Nobody ever saw him writing, I mean besides the translating. I even worked with him in one or two of his translation, but I never saw him writing his fictions. Although he used to talk about his stories, but always he had to be alone to write. I never even saw him taking notes, or carrying a notebook; he has a monstrous memory.

Memory

But now, in India he used to bring out his notebook and write, in front of peoples, in streets, in busses… I took a series of pictures of him writing; these are my favorites. Knowing him for years, and now its something new I see in him.
The last wisdom I remember:
In eternity you don’t see anyone writing anything, because we are in the stories, in the happening. So those who still keep on writing, are the ones who have really understood the vanity of writing.