Similarities between ronin and cab drivers

This may seem like a bad drug induced trip, but hear me out, i just might made sense in my state of sleep deprivation.

Ronin are Samurai that have no master. These are mostly the equivalent of guns for hire, wandering lethal assassins who took up a job that paid enough to barely be fed.

Cab driving in Mumbai is one of the toughest jobs in Mumbai today, well according to me anyway. Anyone who's been out in peak rush hour traffic, would only appreciate someone who not only drives through this soup we call traffic from 8 in the morning to 10 at night, but also does so with optimum efficiency with their accident rates being lower than other private cars that barely take to the streets a fraction of the time a cab is on the streets. Cabbies (drivers) usually aren't from this land, they've come here from far flung places so remote, some of them have only seen Mumbai for the first time when they get here. They're specialized in what they do, most not knowing anything else, or have the lack of any other skills. For their endless transit from one end of the city to the other and a hundred times more, they barely earn enough to carve out a sustenance, are at the mercy of the ruthless Mumbai traffic cops and at the same time at the mercy of the goons who have sponsored them here in way of renting them cabs.

Think your job sucks? Let me give you a cab on rent, make you pay a ridiculous percentage of your earnings to me, have traffic cops treat you lower than vermin, have every passenger that you pick up distrust you and think you're a cheat and a hoodlum, have fuel charges rising with inflation with your fare not correspondingly rising, have you drive around in rush hour traffic and be made to go everywhere all the time, whether you want to or not.
Still think your job sucks?

I think cabbies in Mumbai would rather be Ronin. They'd at the least get a sword.

Death of artistic inspiration

OF late, i've been a bit less enthused about going out with a camera with the intention of capturing life in all it's splendor. The weird part is that i can still vividly remember the original intent of me wanting to click, with new insight everyday it seems to chisel away at a lot of my earlier pursuits that now seem trivialized in light of new ways of processing information.
About a year back, I spent a good quantity of money on upgrading my camera equipment and made the arduous and what i later found to be breathless trip up the mountains of Leh in Jammu. Armed with a wide, telephoto and a basic prime lens, i captured as much as I humanly could, much like someone being let out into the outside world for the first time.
I saw blue skies, bluer than i'd ever seen them before, blue waterfalls, water so clear, it was transparent even a couple of foot down to the bottom. Stunning landscapes with cascading mountains with sporadic patches of greenery especially snaking alongside the Indus River. Birds, flowers and plants that i'd never before seen or even heard of in my life.

I spend my first four to five days incessantly cataloging everything i saw to the point of me almost filling up all my memory cards, which even by conservative measures was a herculean task. But then five days in, a chord stuck within me, something i'd probably hoped for, it being the reason for me making the trip alone.
Suddenly clicking pictures in such a beautiful landscape seemed redundant at best, and after which, i could click no more. The rest of the pictures i clicked post that day were about 4, all from my blackberry to catalogue food and a bus schedule.

The pointlessness of my photographic pursuits probably became apparent when i found myself surrounded in a place where i could best clear my mind, alone on a mountaintop, and after I climbed down (took a good 3 hours) i realized that all i'd done up there was try to select the best vantage point to click my pics. I was so caught up in getting the light right and trying to best and most accurately capture mother nature that i forgot about taking a moment to open my eyes to their widest and realize where i was, on a mountaintop, in leh, by myself. I could've sat there for hours and pondered whatever i wanted to, without a disturbance in the world.

This didn't take anytime to be applied in other areas of my clicking, and i soon began to see the pointlessness in trying to get shots of wildlife or landscapes or still life or even cities. Sure, i'd have a good picture, sure it'd go into my collection of pictures, but then what? what was the end point in wasting my life with one eye constantly looking though my viewfinder when i could have both eyes wide open and life completely in the moment.

Im yet very enthused about cataloging how people look. I believe the average person should have pictures of himself so as to remember where he was and what he was. This is an important part of growth; knowing who you were, and many people can't remember this without visual aid.
My next trip will probably not have the same heavy equipment i lugged around the first time. Maybe a simple point and shoot to remember all the happy people i meet, maybe not even that.

This leads me to heavier topics, but for now, this will have to stop here :)