I've been reading a lot of travel literature of late, and a few works describe the Indian streetscapes I'd lived and breathed a little too long ago.
"Bullock carts trundle along red dirt roads..."
"Old women in blue saris sit on verandahs while their granddaughters troop along with jasmine flowers in their hair..."
Building on every line, the scene steadily came to life in my mind and I could almost hear the toot of car horns and smell the faint whiff of sundried turd. Wait a minute... those weren't the author's words; they were mine. That's when it dawned on me – those words had to be just part of the jigsaw that his eyes, or pen, chose to pick up on. What else did he see but not see? An unwashed beggar pleading for alms? Or the glint of a shiny commercial tower in the distance, juxtaposed against the fertile greenery?
The written word is ambiguous that way, but therein lies its beauty.
When faced with a reader's freewheeling imagination, a single written phrase takes on endless interpretations. What shades of blue were the grannies wearing? Were they grinning toothy welcomes, or snarling in hostility at being observed? In a single shot, a photograph would have captured that, and more, but I'd very much rather watch the scene unfold in my mind's eye. There's a lot more room to dream that way.
This made me think of the heated arguments I used to have with an ex-lover on his obsession for photography. I thought that they stemmed from my childishness but on hindsight, maybe they weren't so absurd after all. He was a visualist living to capture the present; I was a wordsmith absorbing the present to mull on later. I am as much the eternal dreamer as he is the stark realist.
