City Moment – Evening Bird Over The Barbed Wire, Venice Ghetto
The memorable instant.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The wind is cool. It had rained earlier in the day. Now, some parts of the sky are completely covered with waves of clouds, and other parts are clear. The sun is beginning to leave and the air is drenched in a soft shade of bluish-red, or is it bluish-orange? The symbolic barbed wire installed to commemorate the holocaust seems mournful, as always.
It is evening and The Delhi Walla is at Campo del Ghetto Novo, the bigger of the two squares of the ancient Jewish district in Venice. The two tall trees are looking watchful and the centuries-old buildings are looking tired. The world’s first ghetto is observing its 500th anniversary but it itself is no longer a ghetto. The jumbled houses are no longer homes of the Venetian Jews. Those people left the ghetto long ago to make a life elsewhere in the city and also out of it. These old houses have new inhabitants; their histories are different from that of the ghetto and its old synagogues.
But perhaps all the people who ever lived in the ghetto lived through such an evening light at least once in their life. It might be this common bond that runs through them all.
A woman is crossing the square.
Soon, the nature’s light starts to fade further. The ghetto is entering into a restful night. It is no longer easy to discern the shape of things. Just then a bird flies over the barbed wire. It is a memorable moment.
The remains of the day
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The pictures are great. I’m starting to miss your Delhi posts though. The semal and dhaak trees here are turning red with vernal merriness, our parks are carpeted with yellow leaves and the weather’s great. It’s time someone put into words the ephemeral beauty of the Delhi Spring-Autumn .
Haha! so true Naushirvan!!