March, departed - The way we are, #2
A video essay this time. March comes like a lion and leaves like a lamb, as Vishnu said.
The Way We Are is us trying to be the timekeepers of NALSAR.
These are records of how things are, caught mid-spill - before we forget. Campus life moves fast, but it settles like dust - on Mess chairs, under GH fans, in the corners of the Stadium. Shamirpet recorded: A sticky, specific somewhere.
We're not trying to say anything. We're just making notes, keeping time.
This is the way we are.
March 2025 at NALSAR.
The academic calendar creates its own seasons, and March occupies a unique place - the breathing space that exists in a particular rhythm during this month. Post-examination expansion, pre-celebration build-up.
We rediscover leisure. There are conversations without deadlines and there is a particular quality to the light that falls across campus when nobody's in a hurry. Someone plays the harmonica on a Saturday evening. We all cheer after yet another Trilaterals win. The Batch of 2025 arrange themselves for what might be one of their last group photos on campus.
Time’s relentless melt, a la Susan Sontag. What Barthes called the combination of two voices - the banality that everyone recognizes and the singularity of personal emotion. An amateur's eye attempting to stand closer to photography's essence - not to construct meaning but to disclose what is already there. March documented becomes March already departed.
In addendum to the video above (amateur-ly but lovingly made), here are a few photographs from the month:
