PHOTOGRAPHY | NATURE
Amidst knee-deep slush, swaggering buffaloes, water birds-a lesson on mindfulness
How visiting an abandoned marshy swamp on the edge of the city, helps me to unwind and become mindful.
Every time I am in my hometown Trivandrum, in the Southern tip of India, I visit this abandoned, marshy swamp in the city outskirts. These used to be paddy fields in the yesteryears, but now with rapid urbanization changing the city landscapes and people’s lifestyles, no one wants to do the hard labor of agriculture. Most of us including me prefer the cozy comfort of 9–5 jobs. So this patch of land which used to be agricultural land has metamorphosed into a marshy swamp, full of greenery, stagnant water, and slushy mud. No one enters this place, most people are concerned with getting mud on their legs, shoes, and pants. Their thought process seems to be “Oh! how yucky it looks? How am I going to clean up the mess?”
At present only buffaloes enjoy this place and have made it their haven. Buffaloes love the slush and water, they dip into the muddied waters and cool their bodies, they don’t care how dirty they look, looks don’t matter for a buffalo. A few families are left in the nearby areas who still up bring buffaloes and make a living by selling milk, they shepherd the buffaloes into this patch and leave them here in the day.
Walking in slush and mud is difficult. With the camera hanging around my neck, a stick in one hand, I take tottering steps as I venture into the swamp. Two things that make me jittery while walking through the marshy swamp are my legs getting stuck in the slush and accidentally stepping on a snake or a rodent which are there in abundance and can be fatal.
So I need to be conscious of every step I take, lest my leg goes deep into the slush getting tangled up there. My prying eyes are on a constant lookout for snakes and rodents. I never want to stamp them by mistake.
These marshy lands also attract a lot of water birds. Egrets, Ibis, and Herons are the most common, they share a very synergic love affair with the buffaloes, especially the egrets. Egrets and buffaloes seem to be sharing a deep bond and feel like they are talking to each other in their language.
Meditation with the camera
If there’s a dream photo for a photographer, a bird in flight would certainly rank high up there. These swamps provide ample opportunity for such snaps. The only thing I need is perseverance, patience, and complete awareness of the surrounding. I walk to a vantage point and slowly focus my camera on a bird standing by a pool of water. It’s time for meditation with my camera. Any unnecessary twitch from my body, any wandering thoughts which engage my mind can make me miss the moment when the bird in front of my camera decides to take off. Mindfully settling there, I keep my focus, I become aware of my breath, and I keep my focus steady on my breath and my eyes on the bird. When the right moment arrives, it is click, click, click, click in burst mode!
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Crazy guy with the camera
Yes, I am the crazy guy with the camera — and that is the name people around here have given me. And I wear the crazy tag with pride. Venturing into the unchartered terrain, sporting mud-smeared pants, embellishing slush and dirt on my legs, I may stick out as an odd thumb. But what I gain for myself by pushing to the edge and wading through the discomfort is a doorway to becoming mindful, attentive, and meditative. The dragonfly resting on a blade of grass, the mottled brown herons catching a fish, the mynas collecting a tick, and all the subtleties that nature reveals in front of my eyes are just too mesmerizing to be missed. And the more attentive I am, the more mindful I am mother nature unravels more of her innate beauty and great finesse. So until these swamps thrive, I will keep visiting them, and get myself dopa hit by unwinding and practising mindfulness.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished — Lao Tzu
