Adventures in Sitting Down

Photoessay

This began with a photograph I didn’t take. Instead, I tried to write a poem.

Last Monday morning, on my morning commute towards the local train station, I saw a cat dying under the clean wheel of a black Mercedes sports car that had just reversed. Crows circled. I couldn’t lift my phone. I could only write a bad poem called The Black, Silk Feathered, Funeral.

That act prompted fellow Substacker

Janani Vivek

to start sending me daily prompts to write poems, an unexpected kindness, and I took it as an invitation to focus and improve.

One of her prompts was "Adventures in Sitting Down."

An exquisite prompt for poetry. But even more, a way to pause the city and go through images . So that became this weekend’s photo essay

A father asks his son to sit in his boat on a Sunday morning to read the waves, the breeze and the smells of the sea.

Sitting quietly.

Dreaming of home?

Family time.

We used to sit by the home fire. Now we stand. One day we will have to run to a cooler place.

In a city where most people do not have formal employment and the gig economy was the norm even before it became an accepted term, finding a place to sit on the footpath or any other suitable spot to set up shop is an adventure in sitting down.

Ace photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani, sitting and shooting an astrologer who has a spot near Dadar station.

At their mother’s workspace, a small footpath stall, they are finishing their homework.

The hundreds of squares and junctions that host Labour Markets every day.

And then there is the common public space for people to escape from cramped homes and just sit.

Then we have our fishing villages with seats facing the sea to watch the weather.

And a navigator guiding a fishing boat to its berth at the city’s main fishing dock.

That’s all, folks!
But before I go, a message to anyone above 40 who is war-mongering and destroying the future of their children:

Sit Down, Uncles!