The Routineless Routine
After the birth of our first daughter Uma, my wife and I began to seriously discuss a change in lifestyle. I was becoming disillusioned by the increasingly commercial nature of the majority of my work. I felt I had become too formulaic and I craved something more honest. It was late 2002 when I abandoned my career and we bought one-way tickets to India. We set off with an open mind and open hearts.
We travelled slowly and simply for several years between India and Australia. At this time I adopted digital photography and I also began the process of turning my camera inwards …
Time is the ultimate luxury. In India time seems almost elastic to me, certainly circular and not linear. I wanted to fuse this notion with one of an intimate photo diary of our experiences. The Routineless Routine, in many ways, represents a time of photographic and personal transition.
It was a time of undoing, searching and self-discovery. The result is a photographic sketch of our personal journey, in times when we lived very simply in several villages across India as well as camping and road tripping across Australia.
All images from the series, The Routineless Routine, 2003-2004, Digital
A Mild Evening
Poem by Ankur Khurana
On a mild evening in the winter of life
A bluesy tune lingers on a shadow’s lips
Borne by a breeze of the southern hour
She lingers at the sarcophagus of solitude
And when I lie down to wait for a dream
Or to merely unravel an intricate tapestry
Her euphonic veil meanders languidly
Seeking a way into my wearied heart
I wish to be lost in her insouciance
Striving to leave all that time has given
Maybe only to collect space up in the sky
Or dive deep into the heart of the sun
If you are enchanted by the golden tune
Follow its trail and you will find me there
Where the mild cessation of thoughts
Staves off, for us the dark, descent of the night
And the notes of her too soon ending story
Call to question our faltering breath
Shall we succumb to that lullaby, so soft,
Shedding displaced regrets as a childhood
Or seek a new morn in tunes of our own
On a mild evening in the winter of life.