A Hundred Dreams

A Hundred Dreams is a book about relationships, love, hope, despair and trust. The poems in this book are about those evanescent feelings that flash across the mind and then evaporate like the mist, leaving no trace. They are momentary regrets, joys, doubts and sadnesses that overwhelm all of us at some point in life. We brush them away lest they become lasting and make a dent in our peaceful existence. Her poems are not about profound lessons or deeper meanings of life. They are just vignettes of a normal life.

I have collected the photographs of the benches from around the world and span over a decade. Benches are unlike a home yet some become home. Home to rest the weary soul, unburden it and then go one's way. A bench where one can shed a few tears. A bench where there is no judgment. A bench where one is not cast in a mould, stamped and posted!

Dr. Balesh Jindal is a physician and is busy with a full time practice. She has two children and lives in New Delhi with her husband, who is a surgeon. Balesh received the Award For Compassion, from Stanford University, in 2013 for her essay on her work with young girls. The essay was organised by Wesleyan University, USA and was selected for the Award from 250,000 entries from around the world.

BBC.com featured her work as The Most Compassionate Day In The World and the essay was featured in many international journals.

Balesh was a writer and artist before she became a doctor. She started writing poetry when she was nine years old. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1995 by Writers Workshop. Balesh has had many solo and group shows in India and abroad. Her paintings adorn the walls of art collectors around the world. She is a self taught artist and has devised her own methods of painting with the knife. Her inspiration comes from the thousands of patients who walk into her clinic.

Balesh calls herself a normal aesthete. She loves beauty in the most mundane things. She believes that it takes very little effort to add beauty to daily life. Her love for poetry, art and photography all are facets of these aesthetics. Balesh is an receivedamateur photographer but the eye that sees the beauty is trained and passionate.

As I wandered down unknown lanes in unknown lands, craving to lose myself in the maze of strangeness, away from all things familiar, I discovered these benches. Weary of my own familiar fetters, failed dreams and perpetual trying, I felt drawn to them inexplicably as they tugged at my heartstrings in unfamiliar ways. I found my steps lurking furtively in search of these solitary havens on lonely, crowded and desolate streets. When my heart desired solace and floundered for something undefinable, I discovered in these benches, a place of my own.

Benches are unlike a home yet some become home. Home to rest the weary soul, unburden it and then go one's way. A bench where one can shed a few tears.

A bench where there is no judgment.

A bench where one is not cast in a mould, stamped and posted!

A place of one's own…..

I saw them in a park, in the woods or a forgotten corner and they were all I needed to flee prying eyes and conditional affections. I found these benches languishing and derelict in lonely corners, on crowded streets, at airports and everywhere else. They beckoned me to stop and think. In some places they were laden with crumpled fall leaves, at times they blushed endearingly like cherry blossoms and some looked quaint with bird droppings. A few were rusting delightfully and reminded me of the roads not taken.

I saw some benches that were weighed down by snow, ivy, sadness or heavy thoughts that just wouldn't go away. Some had paint peeling off like old wounds, while a few had rusty nails trying to hold them together. Like most relationships, they were waiting to fall apart. One wondered, what kept them whole. The wounds, the cracks and the efforts to mend showed through, yet they stood proud and strong. There were freshly painted ones that seduced me with their beauty and shouted out to me fervently. There were others that tugged at my heart with their romantic torments and deep wistfulness. I saw them smile when a few children frolicked around in undiluted laughter. At times I walked till the end of the road, to find a bench that sighed in content as an old couple sat holding hands tenderly.

These sentinel benches became milestones in my life for they followed me for more than a decade. There were so many that I forgot to photograph some, yet they live in my memories. These benches became cherished mementos of my celebrations, personal victories, loss of faith, disillusionments, some profound self realisations and finally acceptances of all things that I could not change. As I photographed these benches in the towns I visited, I came to personalise them. Each bench became a person with a personality and a remembrance that endeared itself and I reminisce about each one as I would a dear friend.

As we tread down the path of life we realise that we are never alone, for the weight of a thousand lives and a million thoughts accompanies us at all times. When one is with a loved one, the lives, memories and wounds of the loved one too, weigh us down. There is a bench for every wound and every scab and surely it will find us. We look around and watch people change. The pretensions of loved ones become so obvious that it rents the heart. To not have to explain, to not have to stand judgement and to just be me, to find a place of my own, I seeked out these benches

There are times when situations that seem under control, take different turns and like sand, the grains slip out from our clenched fists. Dreams that we kept clutched tightly for decades and saved them to retrieve later, slink away, bit by bit. Perspectives seem to reorient rebelliously and life seems to have no meaning. A sense of despair and helplessness overcomes us as we wander to find a place of one's own. To take stock of the paths chosen and to wonder... ‘What if I had gone down the other road!'

I had many realisations and discoveries on my journey with the benches. The weary, the old, the sick, the lost and the betrayed, all yearn for a place to mourn and cry. People ask 'Why not happy benches ?' Happiness and celebrations don't need places or people. Both are in plenty. It's when one is flailing with doubts, failures and despair that one needs to seek out a place of my own. Most of the benches are empty. What is more pleasant than an empty bench! For unemptiness one has family and friends. I wonder why I seeked out empty benches. Maybe my own forlornness and a desire to escape from the noise of life, carved out a persistent need for the empty benches.

Was it the speechlessness of the mute benches that drew me to them or was it the silence of my own screams that pierced my polished charade.

Was it the benches that needed to be befriended or was it me in need of a friend?

My vision was extremely abstract in the initial stages and later, I watched wondrously as my random pictures metamorphosed into this beautiful book.

The poems in this book are about those evanescent feelings that flash across the mind and then evaporate like the mist, leaving no trace. They are mere words of momentary regrets, joys, doubts and sadnesses. Scattered dreams that overwhelm all of us at some point in life. We brush them away lest they become lasting and make a dent in our peaceful existence. The poems are not about profound lessons or deeper meanings of life. They are just vignettes of a normal life.

Benches...

Hmm. The first image that springs to my mind when the word is mentioned is that of classrooms.

My very first one, with a 4-year-old me huddled on a toddler-sized colourful bench on my first day of school, crying inconsolably...

My tenth one, with my BFF of those days sharing a creaking, horribly uncomfortable bench with me, giggling and gossiping in between classes, unmindful of our sore posteriors...

My twelfth one, with me on a scarred brown bench that suddenly felt like a designer sofa because the guy on whom I had this massive, secret crush for an entire year was sharing it with me...

And then there was the tiny, bright pink bench on which I left my own 5-year-old sitting, chattering happily and confidently to the other kids on her first day of school, while I dragged myself away, weeping copiously and bringing my bench-related feelings a full circle...

A mixed bag of associations, so to say, where the bench was just a prop against which the drama of life played itself out. Outside the classroom, it was a humble piece of furniture placed in museums and parks, on railway platforms and in the corridors of dusty government offices. The tired, the heartsick and the elderly would use them to rest aching muscles and feet before dragging themselves off on yet another errand, yet another journey, yet another bleak quest...

It was only later, during my life as a global gypsy, that I began to review my take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards benches, finding them planted in the most unexpected, picturesque settings and watching people use them for activities I'd never before associated with them. Reading, working on a sleek laptop, taking a break while walking a dog, conversing with a friend, hugging a child and even - to my initial shock - kissing a partner! Or just watching life go by - smiling at the birds pecking at your feet, drinking in the autumn gold and red of drifting leaves, studying a single painting for an hour, or spending me-time with yourself. Not so dreary, after all, I thought, and not merely a convenience...

And then came Balesh with her lovely, lively, luminous take on benches, her lens bursting with explorative curiosity and her painter's eye automatically turning each shot into an exquisite celebration of colours, angles, shapes, positioning, light -and, somehow, emotions. I saw these photos on Facebook first, and began to wonder why I'd ever dismissed benches as drab and uninteresting! Damn it, why hadn't I come up with the idea of photographing them?! Envious but star-struck, I'd look out for the next photo, the next little poetic description that accompanied them, and would wonder if she'd ever turn those charming, disparate images into a book from which luminous hues spilled like the colours on her canvas. And she did! This exquisite coffee-table book is a kaleidoscope of dreams, not merely in images but also in words. Every page is another step into a magical world where benches become your flying carpet, zooming you in and out of perfect landscapes and fabulous frames.

Keep this beautiful book on the table you use most, and whenever life tends to overwhelm you with its dreary realities, reach out and flip open a page - any page. The image you see will blow the cobwebs away and convince you that enchantment exists, maybe just around the corner where a bench awaits you, inviting you to relax, to think, to feel, to dream and maybe to recall - or spin - a happy tale.

Thank you, Balesh, for opening the doors into your mint-fresh world, inviting road-weary and life-stained travellers to come in and put up their feet for a while, resuming their journey refreshed and re-energised by the loveliness you have shared through this book.

**Contents and Sample Pages**