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Kabir Awatramani

@kabir_s_a

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Kabir’s 1001 Tales from Tragique-istan.
(@kbb_creative by day)

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Just field tripping—it’s a joke, relax, but it sure felt like I was ambling into another dimension out here.
I originally went to college for archaeology with the ambition of solving ancient mysteries and raiding monuments abandoned by civilizations whose achievements still baffle our sense of progress today. (FYI that is emphatically not what archaeologists do, unfortunately.) That said, if you’re comfortable testing the patience of local authorities, you can always go crypt-raiding on your own time.
Since storming Area 51 on Thanksgiving in 2023, l’ve fallen embarrassingly behind on my self-appointed pilgrimages to the places that impressed me as a child.
Then, a very generous friend invited me to Stonehenge while I was in London.
Although it’s roughly as old as the pyramids, Stonehenge somehow doesn’t occupy quite the same place in our collective imagination. The Neolithic people who built it aligned these enormous stones with the solstices thousands of years before we supposedly understood basic algebra.and yet today, despite unlimited access to information, some still believe the Earth is flat. For perspective, Stonehenge was under construction around the same broad era that the wheel was emerging in Mesopotamia, roughly 4,000 miles away.
There’s a legitimate argument to be made that before Instagram and television, humanity had so much free time that if we weren’t building monuments like this, we deserve to be replaced by chatbots.
Something I envy here is the sense of totality these people operated under. The night sky wasn’t just an IMAX masterpiece—it united mythology, agriculture, and their understanding of the universe. Imagine living in a world where looking up was enough to explain almost everything. Dassit. Yet, I have absolutely no desire to live in any world before penicillin. Where should I go next? taken in Stonehenge, Salisbury - England by @kabir_s_a

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3 months ago

It’s been a very long time since something genuinely unsettled me. I, who love the Dario Argentos and B-list gore, couldn’t take this whole thing in without multiple breaks. I feel like we’ve become so accustomed to insipid vanity spectacles engineered for the algorithm (mirror-polished monuments begging to be posted — situating us dear viewers in the frame, of c) that I’d almost forgotten it’s possible to be paralyzed by your own response to a work of art. I know I say this while posting here. Somewhere along the way I threw out my art history degree because nothing announces late capitalism quite like the art “market” wearing its own logic as a badge of honor. I wouldn’t call this the sublime without hesitation, for obvious reasons, but somewhere on this psychical pilgrimage from the Uluru to Dahmer’s fridge, Kapoor delivered an affect I didn’t know he was capable of. My b. It reminded me, if only briefly, of the land artists of the ’70s—my favorites. Best 30 bucks I’ve spent. taken in Southbank Centre, London by @kabir_s_a

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3 months ago

I once paid a total charlatan 400 bucks that I didn’t have for the opportunity to recline on a sofa in his ‘office’—which, side bar: he could have retired to nightly, but didn’t, instead choosing to live in his Hyundai four-seater parked on Broadway and 28th—and regress into a past life under esteemed surveillance. At the time, I was struggling with a health complication that deafened me to my typical existentialism, and began advising my investments in the improvidence that is such fortune telling. Disappointingly, I didn’t regress to the Ming Dynasty or even some equivalently unglamorous pedestrian reality (to some relief). What I saw was my grandmother, tucked away by the coconut trees where she performed her namaz at sunset—fully erect, facing the sea, caftan masting in the breeze, hair still coloured. I never joined her, nor did she invite me. Parallel to my own anticipated encounters with pool sharks and tidal mermaids, Nani claimed Bibi Mariam (Mary) visited her on those rocks. Also her own mother, and even her sister on some of those evenings. Apparently, maladaptive imaginations don’t fall far from the tree. After seeing my grandmother, I was greeted by a beluga swirling through nebulae—a story for another time—but those memories, which were merely fingerprints from my childhood, now haunt my meditations (seldom) and my disassociations (frequent). by @kabir_s_a

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2 years ago

I’ve spent all my life in anticipation of a fatal shark attack in the swimming pool. Specifically, The Breach Candy Club Outdoor Pool. Also, the Indoor Pool, the Baby Pool, rivers, lakes, hot tubs, bath tubs, and the sea—which I refused to enter until only recently.
The only thing more ridiculous than my admittedly irrational fear are the advocates in pro-bono defence of sharks, insisting always that they don’t intentionally prey on humans (as if motive were top of mind in decapitation). That they also don’t live chlorinated pools in the first place is rarely the refrain.
For whatever it’s worth, we were in agreement that the latter is actually the real pipe dream. There was no such thing as an empty pool, and to lap without the possibility of razor sharp teeth shredding my legs off is a blue pill that I didn’t swallow. A reality where the submarines didn’t lurk at the 25m point? I didn’t know of it.
For as long as I could swim, I tried out-racing The Pool Shark from the shallows to the deep, from The Other-Side to the Island, and the slide—from Breach Candy Club to The Bombay Gym and The East Boulder Rec Center. What I never anticipated, aside from outgrowing this fear, is that I may actually not want to. That I wouldn’t be greeted by an orca, a Tiger or a shoal of Hammerheads—all of whom I had come to know so well, evidently makes for a solitary swim. More gutting than relieving, but ostensibly not disemboweling.
With apprehension now longing, I concede to defence—the sharks (and my many other aquatic apparitions) never came to harm me. Although this decision was unlikely determined by temperament. I didn’t realise how much I’d miss them. by @kabir_s_a

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2 years ago

I was murdered. taken in Workshop Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai - New York by @kabir_s_a

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2 years ago

Three margaritas and I’ll show you how a bitch paraglides 🪂 taken in Goa India by @kabir_s_a

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3 years ago

The AIs made this for me. What do you think? I would pontificate about transcendental homelessness in the caption, but I don’t feel like it right now. by @kabir_s_a

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3 years ago

A pilgrimage brings you to your knees, both through the demands of the journey itself and also before the transcendence you seek—the latter of which makes no promises to appear. And yet here we were 300 miles in the proverbial middle of nowhere in search of a connection to extraterrestrial life at Area 51. Begining our days before sunrise through the extending shadows on endless exhale of sand and shrubs—horizon to horizon—in audience to cloudless skies. I’m unconvinced there was any close encounter to be had there, but the journey to the ‘monument’ and desert, were uncannily familiar. It was the undressed landscape of our childhood. Familiar apparitions presented themselves in course through words unspoken, a tyrannical headmistress, a homicidal camp counsellor named Swampee, and bicycle chains. We had never visited the Mojave Desert before, but our imagination brought us there, several times. Attempts to connect with more intelligent life, only to be met with repudiation emphasising our distinct preoccupation in the contrary; now the joke is on them. Yet, Miu and I with differences in age, perspective, and skepticism spent countless hours together in the sandy abyss. The other voices here were whispers—the wind, the droll of our engine, and the occasional lone coyote beyond the sunset. The only contact to be had was with each other and also ourselves—solitary and in prostate to the majesty of a landscape unyielding to inaptitude on missing trails, at breakfasts with icy winds on slipping sands, and through ditched roads prejudiced with cacti. The desert had something to tell us before we left—the salt flats were submerged in ephemerous lakes that just made an appearance for first time in millennia. taken in Death Valley National Park by @kabir_s_a

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3 years ago

2022 you were a 🧁 Thank you to everyone who made this year so wonderful and loving for me—tremendously grateful for the lessons learnt, and to my many detractors I thank you for your service, but now go get fucked, please. #tb to dancing in the moonlight on the beach in Tulum with these beauties 😎✨ I don’t have any #NewYearsResolutions except to continue live, serve c*nt, and die. taken in Posada Margherita by @kabir_s_a

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4 years ago

wasn’t a huge fan of this apartment, but a total simp for this sunrise. My ‘22 was as about as placid as the #drakepassage, but I loved every second of it. taken in The Seaport by @kabir_s_a

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4 years ago

I know you’ve made love to a woman,
and I’m sure you’ve made love to a fish,
but I bet you’ve never made love to a mermaid 🐠 huge thank you to @adriennecamota @rlepasana 🍄🙏🏾 by @kabir_s_a

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4 years ago

If I’ve been gone too long, blame my former shrink — a big advocate of situational trauma therapy ie: “change your environment; change your mind.” Although he’s since been replaced by a shaman and my new Keanu Reeves aspirations, let me assure you that where you lead, your problems will eventually follow. In practice, the new environment can offer perspective, but respite is brief.
“The work” is very much pending and eternally uphill - sometimes even downhill (just ask Sisyphus).
The purpose of this diatribe is to remind myself that transcending in the Himalayas is mostly pointless if you can’t transcend at home: where all the circumstances that put you on the lam in the first place await resolution. For me, that ashram is neither far flung nor psychedelic, but in my home away from home, New York — where I mostly live out on my terms, an entire hemisphere away from the ghosts.
Ashamedly, I recognise that they haunt less than they are summoned. But host that seance nonetheless: the transcendence we seek is found not in the absence of the triggers and trauma, but in spite of them.
I had the best time in my haunted house, and many thank yous to all my allies and adversaries for the alchemy, the Alfonsoes, and the many spoons 🙏🏾🤍 (photo cred to my middle school teacher, Ms Kartika) taken in Konkan Coastline by @kabir_s_a

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5 years ago