Copyright 2004 Atma Singh Myself, my wife and a close friend went for a walk yesterday, with little Zor Singh in his buggy. We visited a small park nearby. On our way home we spotted a discarded chair which had been neatly placed next to a large dustbin, on a picturesque road adjacent to the park. My wife who likes to sometimes think of herself as a ‘collector of things’, which really means she is a hoarder, decided we could use this chair. I politely reminded her we had just given away two chairs very recently after we had suddenly realised we were running-out of space. She insisted. So I carried this very heavy chair a few metres before she changed her mind and realised we didn’t really need a chair, at which point I put it back where we had found it. Marriage is so full of u-turns!
Anyway, when we got home, I started to look through some photographs I have taken over the last few years. I’m currently getting a website designed in order to promote and share my photography. I’m sure you’ll hear more about this in the coming months even if you don’t wish to! As I browsed the streams of thumbnails, trying to decide which images will feature in one of the online galleries, I came across a picture of a chair which was taken soon after the Tsunami wreaked its terrible wrath upon much of the developing world in 2004. It brought back so many memories.
This chair was photographed in Sri Lanka in a district called Batticoloa, which is on the East Coast. I was there briefly as a volunteer with Khalsa Aid, a humanitarian disaster relief organisation. We supplied tents to some poor Muslim fisherman and their families, in a nearby fishing village. These people were desperate for assistance because they had been overlooked when rebuilding had started, by the majority neighbouring Tamil communities.
The chair was located in a property which had been brought to its knees. I still remember the terrible stench that saturated the moist salty air around us. We were told by locals that this emanated from corpses which hadn’t yet been removed from underneath the masses of rubble.
If the chair were to remain untouched, who knows how long it would sit there, testifying to the chaos that surrounded it. It attracted my eyes because it was part of a strange wider environment, but unlike those humans who had not been killed or destroyed, this chair couldn’t walk away or leave the scene. However like them it was a survivor. Perhaps its owners had all been killed. Perhaps like the chair we saw yesterday, but had decided not to take with us, it had been perceived as useless or a luxury not worthy of being carried, to wherever its owners had carried themselves. Who had sat upon this chair? What memories had it preserved, locked away in its dark, dense body?
It came across as peacefully poised, yet resolute in its will to keep on standing where so much else had fallen. I felt compelled to take a picture of it. The colours and lines which surrounded it made it, in my eyes, a beautiful scene to capture. I took so many photographs of people on this trip, many of which I will soon be sharing, but for some reason, this image seems to carry a unique emotion.
It makes me wonder how long that chair I saw yesterday will sit there before someone takes it. I imagine the reason it has been discarded is far removed from the circumstances which surround the one I photographed. I hope someone does make use of yesterday’s chair some day soon, so that it doesn’t get tossed away.
I remember visiting Darbaar Sahib (‘Golden Temple’, Amritsar, Panjaab) for the first time several years ago and being shown where Guroo Arjan Sahib Jee had often sat. I simply can’t convey the feelings I felt. I couldn’t stop myself from placing my forehead on that spot and kissing the dust that lay there. Afterwards, as we walked away, I couldn’t seem to stop an immense feeling of awe from continuously arising and subsiding within me, like the movement of the tide, as I looked over my shoulder again and again, thinking: ‘My Satguroo sat upon that ground, underneath that tree”. I just couldn’t take it in.
Furniture and objects don’t just support us physically; they carry so much emotional energy with them. As spirit-born beings, humans leave so much in their wake, even going about their mundane daily business. Whether we keep an item or discard it, whether it is destroyed or remains intact, I believe that something of us, a residue, forever permeates the things we have touched and the places we have been.
These are the things that I remember when I look at this photograph.
Anyway, when we got home, I started to look through some photographs I have taken over the last few years. I’m currently getting a website designed in order to promote and share my photography. I’m sure you’ll hear more about this in the coming months even if you don’t wish to! As I browsed the streams of thumbnails, trying to decide which images will feature in one of the online galleries, I came across a picture of a chair which was taken soon after the Tsunami wreaked its terrible wrath upon much of the developing world in 2004. It brought back so many memories.
This chair was photographed in Sri Lanka in a district called Batticoloa, which is on the East Coast. I was there briefly as a volunteer with Khalsa Aid, a humanitarian disaster relief organisation. We supplied tents to some poor Muslim fisherman and their families, in a nearby fishing village. These people were desperate for assistance because they had been overlooked when rebuilding had started, by the majority neighbouring Tamil communities.
The chair was located in a property which had been brought to its knees. I still remember the terrible stench that saturated the moist salty air around us. We were told by locals that this emanated from corpses which hadn’t yet been removed from underneath the masses of rubble.
If the chair were to remain untouched, who knows how long it would sit there, testifying to the chaos that surrounded it. It attracted my eyes because it was part of a strange wider environment, but unlike those humans who had not been killed or destroyed, this chair couldn’t walk away or leave the scene. However like them it was a survivor. Perhaps its owners had all been killed. Perhaps like the chair we saw yesterday, but had decided not to take with us, it had been perceived as useless or a luxury not worthy of being carried, to wherever its owners had carried themselves. Who had sat upon this chair? What memories had it preserved, locked away in its dark, dense body?
It came across as peacefully poised, yet resolute in its will to keep on standing where so much else had fallen. I felt compelled to take a picture of it. The colours and lines which surrounded it made it, in my eyes, a beautiful scene to capture. I took so many photographs of people on this trip, many of which I will soon be sharing, but for some reason, this image seems to carry a unique emotion.
It makes me wonder how long that chair I saw yesterday will sit there before someone takes it. I imagine the reason it has been discarded is far removed from the circumstances which surround the one I photographed. I hope someone does make use of yesterday’s chair some day soon, so that it doesn’t get tossed away.
I remember visiting Darbaar Sahib (‘Golden Temple’, Amritsar, Panjaab) for the first time several years ago and being shown where Guroo Arjan Sahib Jee had often sat. I simply can’t convey the feelings I felt. I couldn’t stop myself from placing my forehead on that spot and kissing the dust that lay there. Afterwards, as we walked away, I couldn’t seem to stop an immense feeling of awe from continuously arising and subsiding within me, like the movement of the tide, as I looked over my shoulder again and again, thinking: ‘My Satguroo sat upon that ground, underneath that tree”. I just couldn’t take it in.
Furniture and objects don’t just support us physically; they carry so much emotional energy with them. As spirit-born beings, humans leave so much in their wake, even going about their mundane daily business. Whether we keep an item or discard it, whether it is destroyed or remains intact, I believe that something of us, a residue, forever permeates the things we have touched and the places we have been.
These are the things that I remember when I look at this photograph.
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Atma Singh - everyday sikhee
1 comment:
The below is an extremely beautiful poem relating to this post, written by 'pk70', a member of the Sikh Philosophy Network Forum:
The Chair
That was a chair to be sat on
Reclining back and eyeing the far away waves
They would go as they came
It was a post to sit on to watch
Scattered colors on the horizon reminding
Not Captured beauty revisited repeatedly
It is the chair having honor of lapping
A being who would watch fading the life away
Like the ice sitting on hot sand melts
Right in front of the eyes that refuse to see this reality
This is the chair that had pleasure to hold
A being that kept melting in due to day today
Sorrows and pains, a stamp of so called life
Nothing was there to measure them
Thanks to the one who captured it as the chance smiled?
Or cried in awful situation to remind us all
How sudden close the end knocks mercilessly
Remind us how we blossom to depart
This was a chair to be sat on
Reclining back and eyeing the far away waves
They would go as they came
Sadly this last time they came not to return
Not this time as they would before.
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