d r i s h y a n v e s h

Silent Revolution

2011-09-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Since the last few years I have come to know about many great teachers who are dedicating their lives to share their wisdom about life and well being. Some are controversial, but I know many who are almost anonymous and seem to be interested in really doing some good. They have little publicity and people who go to them only getting to know about them through word of mouth. Rarely do I see the media bothering with them.... which might actually a good thing.

About 10 years ago I got to know one such teacher who taught us meditation and pranayama for about two weeks and also shared some secrets of happiness that some of us struggling to realise. He charged about 300 rupees that went into hiring the hall, the equipment, the carpets, etc. It is funny that most probably his credibility suddenly rose in your eyes as soon as I said this. While I do believe that when someone is sharing any kind of knowledge, they should be paid back in some way, it is always humbling to see someone who is sharing stuff that is sometimes life changing for almost nothing. Otherwise they are called corporate trainers. ;)

Anyway, I wonder if he was left with anything. And all he did was travel all over the state teaching these things all year round. He wanted us to live to a higher ideal, to live to a better future and well being. I do not know how much I was able to live up to those higher ideals but I do know that this was one of the most important turns my life took. Until then I was adrift in a sea of confusion. Now I know that I at least have some direction. And it is not everyday you get to see someone who is not a money spinner but a humble person who gave up everything because one felt that it was their only aim in life to share some knowledge.

The reason why I wanted to say this is that I see what the media is doing to us on a daily basis. It is bombarding us with negative messages and mostly ignoring the little (if not larger undercurrent of) good stuff that is happening silently. Some of them have become messengers of hatred too! It is important for us to realize and remember that things not really as bad as they make it sound and the world can really be a beautiful place if we want it to be. It is the biggest myth that one person cannot make enough change if that is what discourages us. So, if you have something positive to share with the world, do not hold back. :)

Kerala trip: Rest of it

2011-05-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

It's actually no fun posting the pics months after the excitement of coming back from a nice trip has died down. But to keep with the flow, after having posted pics of the first part of the trip in Cochin, I will post the rest.

I have become so seriously involved in photography that I have little to write these days. The information overload of trying to know how to get the best out of your equipment can be daunting. The budget always comes up too! :( And posting images on my facebook artist page and getting instant 'Like's and comments from friends who would have never read it on the blog is an altogether different thing! :)

Anyways I won't punish you further! Here are the pics :)

Here was a local romeo zooming off into the munnar hills on his bike :)

Any grocery shop worth its salt has to have a few varieties of bananas.

Going by the lavish ads the jewelry and saree industry enjoyed, it felt like these were the two prospering industries there (recession or not). We rarely saw any other billboards. It also looked like most of the models were from Mumbai. We even got to see an ad with what looked like Sayali Bhagat in one of them.

Why was I so interested in billboards of all the things? Some of the road journeys got a little monotonous and these were the interesting things we saw. And another thing is that each of these ads is a lesson in itself, if one wants to learn the art of fashion/commercial photography. How it can be and in some cases, how it shouldn't.

One thing that I think that definitely distinguishes Kerala is the windowless buses there. Keeps one completely in tune with the elements! ;)

Munnar was the best part of the trip if you ask me. It was unlike the other places that I have seen before. The tea estates had a charm. But it was the trees in the forests with trunks more than a 100 feet tall, growing on steep hills towering above us. All this after we ascend so many hundreds of meters up into the hills. The sheer scale was hard to imagine!

The main part of the Munnar town was a dusty little high altitude garbage dump. Was a little embarrassing to see what we are turning a pretty little hill station into. Rubble strewn all over, many new constructions not in tune with the landscape, and heaps of burning garbage. No, I did not take any pics there. :(

It is very hard to express the beauty of a place when every time you click the picture, the camera seems to interpret the scene in a different way, although equally beautiful. Very enigmatic.

And then it was down into the hot humid plains into the backwaters. The mandatory houseboat ride. The best part of this ride was the unique glimpse into life along the backwaters. Unique because I feel that there is nothing else like this in this country.

The last part of the trip was Kovalam beach. We did go to Kanyakumari but I did not like the place. Quarrelsome hotel managers and bad service marked our stay there and we realised that apart from the novelty of being on the tip of India and the Vivekananda rock, there isn't much to the place.

Kovalam beach was not such a great beach but it has this nice light house that you should not miss. The view from the top is worth dying for. ;)

Kerala - Cochin

2010-11-22T02:50:00.000-08:00

We landed late in the evening and checked into the homestay called Rossitta Wood Castle and it turned out to be a beautiful place. A building built in 1706 now converted into a lovely homestay. Visiting a historical building is one thing and staying in one is entirely another. Of course, it also had all the luxuries like heated water and air-conditioning! :)

If you like nice little streets with character, the streets around Fort Kochi (the homestay was located here) and the Jewish town are places to be.

We were lucky that we got to see Sunday morning service in progress when we visited the historical St Francis church.

I felt our stay in Cochin (two days) was too short as I wanted to visit the Jewish town when the light was good but we just could not make it on time and the shops there close very early (5:30pm if I remember right). There went some good photo-opportunities. All I had was snaps of the streets in harsh light.

To completely absorb the essence of Cochin and walk unhurriedly through the silent streets, we need at least two or three days in this place. Good we did not take a package tour.

The Paud Church

2010-08-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

I have noticed this church by the road every time I go to Mulshi. Nestled in the Pirangut valley, surrounded by the Sahyadri hills, this stone built church has an air of mystery about it. The looming monsoon clouds and the beautiful hills behind it only added to its beauty.

This church is named Paud Church, after the village it is adjacent to. I had entered the church compound once long ago when I was here with Everyman but it was a Saturday and this place was closed. I came to know from a passer by that they have service every Sunday, but I was somehow never there at the right time.

Finally, a couple of Sundays ago, we were going by this church and we decided to stop. This time I was with family and friends. We walked into the church compound admiring the building, wondering how old the walls were, when the pastor came in right behind us to open the doors. He told us that service was about to begin and we realised that we were in luck! We decided we will attend at least attend a part of the service before going ahead on our journey to Mulshi.

The pastor told us that this church was built by the British in 1912 and had seen better days. Now there are only about five Christian families left in the village. They just manage to keep the place going as they do not have a lot of funds.

This church has an old world charm that is hard to find. The first time I saw it, I had thought it may have been abandoned. But inside these dark walls, every week, the place comes alive with the voices of singing, led by the baritone voice of the friendly pastor.

Zappos

2010-04-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

The prelude (You can skip this if you are more about the destination than about the journey and go straight to the book review. I wanted to make seperate posts on how I came to review the book and the review itself but decided to combine them!):

If you talk to any senior colleague who might have been in the company since around the time of its inception, you might hear one thing from them that's common: 'Things are not what they used to be.' Change is the only permanent thing (© Buddha circa 400 B.C )

Change is usually for the better. But most probably you will hear them wistfully talking about how things got a little less warm. 'At the start everyone knew everyone. There was less bureaucracy and fewer restrictive rules. There was a time when Orkutting was allowed but one fine day Orkut, Facebook, Blogger, etc were blocked. The company at its inception had a few people who were very passionate about what they were starting. For each of them the company was like their own. As the company expanded to about a few hundred, many of them turned out to be not that passionate anymore.' (This is actually a compilation of what many different people had to say on this!)

Have you heard this often? I have heard this so often that I had almost decided it is the norm rather than an exception. Was this even avoidable? At least some of it! There must be a way. I also had a lot of questions about what it is about a workplace that makes you want to stick around, work, and still be happy about it. It is true that if you do what you love chances are you will be happier. But this is not everything as I came to know the hard way from my own experiences. The culture at your work place goes a long way. By culture, my initial idea was of a place where everyone was friendly and none was the kind who would make things hard for you due to some vested interest. I realized that is not all! Why not have a culture that is not only a place where no one messes with you but is also about fun, togetherness, a lot of group activity very much like what we were evolutionarily programmed to do: be part of a 'tribe' in a way that would make us feel happy from within. I would recommend you read this book to know more: http://www.triballeadership.net/book. I haven't read it yet so do let me what you think of it!

I started regularly reading articles on http://positivesharing.com/ and I got to know a lot of things about the science of workplace happiness (that I was so missing at that time! ) . I also came to know about a workplace where happiness is given top priority and has also proved that it affects the company bottom line positively (almost nothing to $1 billion in ten years!). That company is Zappos.

Initially, the idea that such a company existed intrigued me and I started researching more on it online trying to find out if the skeptic in me was right. The skeptic in me said that such a thing might look good on paper but was it practical? I told about Zappos to one of my friends who has been working for about 20 years in a corporate environment and he told me it would not be possible unless the number of people was way less than 500. Then I googled for the total number of employees in Zappos and YES there are more than 500 people in Zappos! I also found Zappos is now among the Fortune list of 100 best companies to work for.

And now for the best part. I happened upon this link about a month ago: http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com. I found that Tony (CEO of Zappos) has written a book about his journey as an entrepreneur and how it led him to become part of Zappos. All I had to do to get a pre-release copy was to fill a form with my address and agree to review it with my honest opinion on the day of its release, which is today, 7th of June!

I was very thrilled to get the UPS courier from Zappos in a few days and was pleasantly surprised to find two copies inside instead of one! They managed to create WOW there too!

I opened the envelope and just could not help taking a pic:

The review:

Anyhoo, here is the review:

This book has a nice conversational style and I enjoyed reading it. Tony peppers the narration with little anecdotes that make it all the more interesting. There are quite a few sections that were contributed by other people who talk about their take on how their experience with Zappos was.

You might find some concepts repetitive in the later half as different people write about their experience but talk about similar ideas. At some places I found that the font used to denote transcripts of emails is a little low on readability, especially if you have more than a page of that text.

This book might not be a masterpiece in terms of writing style. Tony says he refused to use any ghost writers to make sure it was straight out of the horse's mouth, so to speak, in all it's rawness. But I would still value this book and seriously recommend it for the message that it holds. Those of you to whom organizational behavior, science of happiness and workplace psychology are a topic of interest, this book is not to be missed!

This book might turn out to be a first in corporate history to document what has been confounding many corporations (ironically): What makes employees truly happy? How come hefty raises and perks fail to retain some employees? ...and many other questions.

As you can see I was almost a fan of Zappos even before I read this book. But I have tried to give an honest opinion of this book both in terms of reading experience and the value of the ideas it conveys.

The Conclusion:
Highly recommended! 4.5 stars out of 5.

The giveaway:
I am going to giveaway one of the free copies to anyone who is interested. I will mail it to the address you are at and don't mind bearing the postage. I have no financial benefit from doing this but it feels great to spreading the message that this book has!

You can also buy this book at: http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness

Further reading:

Some of the content and links that I randomly collected before I read this book and wrote this review are here. Instead of rewriting it, I decided I might as well paste it here. I have tried to include links where the material might be copyrighted. If any of it violates copyrights I will remove it.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zappos_ceo_talks_culture_fit_a.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpU8oIT8tM&feature=player_embedded

Interesting transcripts from the video:
"If you get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like great customer service or building a brand will just happen naturally."

"For us, actually customer service is not our number one priority. Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right then most of the other stuff like great customer service or building a great brand will just happen naturally."

"For us we formalize the definition of our company culture into ten core values and hire and fire people based on those values. We actually have two sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his or her team will do the standard interview and the HR panel does a separate interview for culture fit."

Some interesting stuff at this link:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/making-sure-the-shoe-fits-at-zapposcom /

"Be positive!" ...even if your tail is on fire?

2009-11-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

As you can see, my posts are getting less frequent. Am I busy with other things in life? Do I have no time to blog? Have I stopped taking pictures? Yes, no, and no. I have plenty of things to do but I also hate the phrase 'I have no time'. I guess if we love something strongly enough we will always look for ways to find time for it. Oh yes, I still love blogging but now there are quite a few other things I love that I am giving my time for.

Since a couple of days I have been trying to give this blog a makeover in terms of look and feel. I just realized it is not very easy with the limited choices in templates and what all you can do with them (when you have a limited knowledge of HTML!).

I also realised one thing about this blog:
I have been writing less and posting snaps more and it started getting pretty monotonous! So, for a change, I have been looking for something that would make me write and here it is:

Just this morning I read this interesting post at http://positivesharing.com/2009/11/the-happiness-hat-will-hurt-you-until-you-smile/ which got me thinking about this 'Be positive' phrase that you must be hearing very often.

I think one of the problems in simply saying 'Be Happy!', is in the way it is said. Saying just that without 'Real Caring' (a phrase so nicely put by one of the commentors on that blog), makes it insensitive and therefore more irritating and depressing. And people who show you Real Care do not need to say 'Be Happy!' ever. They spread happiness without saying it!

The phrase 'Be Happy' itself gives us a very important clue about what it is, which we often miss. We 'be' happy, we never 'do it' like it were some work. So it is not like we have a happiness switch that can be turned on and off! And sometimes the pain that precedes it is important to let us know that there maybe something we need to sort out before we feel that bliss. Yes, it is sometimes important to make good use of the wisdom we gain from a bad phase! And when we are happy it does not mean we would be grinning from ear to ear 24/7 either! :)

Monsoon Calling

2009-08-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

This silent valley has so much to say

A million shades of green and blue

The mountains spout a hundred waterfalls

of cool crystal hue

As the monsoon comes calling

Watch the green grass wave happily in the wind

and dance to the raindrops falling

I have been to this place again, again, again, and again. It just keeps getting better :).

Back to the Roots

2009-06-29T03:26:00.000-07:00

He made sure he is financially secure for a lifetime and took an early retirement. He has romanced the sitar for about 30 years now, a little more than for how many years he has run the company he started from scratch. Now he has broken free from the responsibility of co-owning that company. Now he has gone back to the sitar once and for all. He has gone back to what he loves most.

Road to School: Memory Lane

2009-06-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

It was sometime in '94 that I walked down this road to school. About a week ago I went down that road again. It is as beautiful as ever. The green tree canopy is greener. Totally another world.

Lace Curtains and Wind Chimes

2009-05-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to have lace curtains and a wind chime right along... now I do :)

She

2009-04-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Silence and the River

2009-01-18T04:03:00.001-08:00

"Be passive--as you sit by the river and the river flows by and you simply watch. There is no eagerness, no urgency, no emergency. Nobody is forcing you. Even if you miss, there is nothing missed. You simply watch, you just look. Even the word watch is not good, because the very word watch gives a feeling of being active. You simply look, not having anything to do. You simply sit by the bank of the river, you look, and the river flows by."

-Osho

Ant Safari

2009-01-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

I was in Mysore a few weeks ago. One dull boring afternoon, I set out into the 'vast expanses' of the portico of our home in search of some interesting ants. When you are looking for ants even a portico is a very very large place... except that you can easily cover it in less than an hour. :D

Framing a fast moving ant is not very easy...

Sometimes you realise that the huge orb that it is about to bite is actually your toe... you see the butt of that ant sticking from under the toe? I made a quick retreat after that shot...

Here is an ant in what is maybe the one of the most exotic locations it could be in... a pink hibiscus... my mom hates it when I crop the flower like that!! :D

Under the Mango Tree

2008-12-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

Coconut Land 2

2008-11-25T05:56:00.000-08:00

I shall not speak...

A little bit of Malgudi...

2008-10-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

Like RK Narayan says, Malgudi could be any little village in India. This Pujari looked straight out of Malgudi immortalised by RK Laxman's cartoons... thought the sepia tone would make it look pre-independence! :D

And a passerby on the street...

Then, there was this trio looking like they were not particularly sure about what to do next...

A ritual in progress...

Smiles to Remember

2008-10-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

My cousin and I went to the nearby villages to distribute wedding cards to all our relatives in the nearby villages. One of our relatives is a teacher in a little village school. Here is her entire school:

Yes, that's the ENTIRE school. It has two teachers!

It was a long time since I had seen school kids who looked stress-free!!

I told them to show all their teeth... :D

Coconut Land

2008-09-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

The Godavari Delta of Andhra Pradesh has some beautiful landscapes. This place is about half an hour from Amalapuram and has rich clay soil. What you see in the foreground is a pond used for fish farming. Some fish apparently grow upto 2-3 feet in length!

Tried an HDR with a single RAW image file...

My Granny

2008-08-26T22:38:00.001-07:00

While my niece is the youngest in the family, my granny is the eldest. My mom's mom. One of the most beautiful people I know. She has beautiful eyes. Her wrinkles tell a thousand stories. She is more than eighty and some say ninety, as it seems some people did not really have birth certificates then. She still reads the newspaper and can discuss politics :) Quite a lady!

Niece update

2008-08-22T00:55:00.001-07:00

Just a couple of months ago she was too small to recognize human faces. She's now ready to start crawling.

She sleeps ever so peacefully and then wakes up with a big smile! She lets anyone carry her without a tantrum! During my cousin's marriage there was a lot of disturbance while this girl is a light sleeper. The day after all the celebrations were over, she was peacefully sleeping when I took the first snap... You say anything to her and she gives her big toothless smile!

Delta

2008-08-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

Just back from a trip to the Godavari delta area, coastal Andhra Pradesh. It is a land of abundance, whether you are into farming or photography! ;) I have updates of my little niece and
a lot more images coming soon...

We had stopped our hired ambassador car (I realize they still make them!) to ask this man for directions. His rolled cigar in his mouth and looks made a for a nice photo-op... People are so vary of offending others there, he removed the cigar when talking to us. I had to persuade him to put it back in for the snap :) after telling him it looks stylish :)

Shepherd's Banquet

2008-08-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

After about two weeks of camping, the shepherds decide it is time to leave. On the last day they sit together for dinner. Women, a flurry of activity preparing bhakri on firewood stoves. Men chat, passing around a small bottle of liquor, taking occasional sips. The kids sit with them and listen to them under the cool afterglow of the twilight sky....

Lone White Lamb

2008-07-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

What a Wonderful World :)

2008-06-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

He was a security person at the gates of the little campus in which our office is situated. Being a senior citizen, he had a nearly toothless smile. What set him apart was that he used to salaam everyone who passed by. Initially, I did not acknowledge his salaam as I just wasn't used to strangers greeting me so cheerfully, as if I were an old friend. But then one day I thought, 'What the heck!' and started saluting him back! That was fun! This man was always so happy each morning I saw him. He greeted the world that went by and the fact that no one seemed to wave back at him never discouraged him.

Now I don't see him anymore, standing there, waving. He was so old and frail, I wonder where he is now. The strange part is that he looked well beyond the age of retirement.
He reminds me of one of my favorite songs, Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World':

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And i think to myself:"What a wonderful world!"

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to my self:"What a wonderful world!"

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying "How do you do."
They really say: "I love you!"

I hear babies crying I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself:"What a wonderful world!"
Yes, I think to myself:"What a wonderful world!"

I have seen some people say that this song is too happy for our times. You might ask that if people everywhere are hating and killing each other, how can someone be so happy? There may or may not be an answer for this depending on how you look at it. A part of the answer might lie in the fact that this song was written when racial discrimination was high. When equal rights seemed to be a distant dream. A dream that is now reality...

Watch him sing! :)

Sigur Rós

2008-05-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

The new face of rock. The saviors of rock. Taking rock music into the new millennium. Overtly melodramatic (actually, I like melodrama!!). These are the things being said about Sigur Rós. I am completely entranced by their music and learnt this when I started searching information on these people out of curiosity. I think the only reason for their not being as popular as they should be could be due to the fact that the music scene is simply dominated by the US.

Interestingly, one of their albums is an abstract work. It is simply named ( ) and the songs have no names and no lyrics. Essentially meaningless gibberish that the singer sings with the music and we just have to make of it what we want to. Abstract music...

About three of their tracks were featured in the Tom Cruise starrer 'Vanilla Sky'...

Sigur Rós - "Heima" Trailer (Hoppipolla Version):

Make sure you watch the ending of this music video:

Baby and a Goldfish

2008-05-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Met my 2 month old niece for the first time. I realized it was ages since I felt a tiny little hand in mine. She still does not recognize faces yet but cries very little. She actually does not know how to cry even when she's hungry! LOL! She just makes 'skawking' sounds with a painful expression on the face! Teeny hands and teeny feet! Mother nature is the master designer of cuteness!!

They also have a pretty goldfish gracefully swimming in its glass bowl. I realized to my surprise that if anyone stands close to the bowl, it immediately swims towards them and hovers around there. Even more surprising was that if you put your hand close to the glass the goldfish gets distracted by the hand only for a moment and then starts looking at your face again!! It felt as if it can recognize the face! Maybe we humans grossly underestimate the intelligence of other creatures.

I can imagine! At night when everyone is asleep the goldfish pulls out a little laptop from under one of the pebbles and starts wondering on its blog: 'Today I saw a human showing signs of intelligence. He did not tap my glass bowl (How I hate it when they do that!!). He actually seemed to look into my eyes. Maybe humans are not as dumb as previously thought...'

...Obviously, I had a very tiresome overnight bus journey back to Pune, its Wednesday morning but am still short of some sleep...

Of course, I also met my two year old nephew. It is impossible to track down fast moving two year olds and take a pic when indoors... all I could get was his doggy toy...

(posted this a day later...)

It Takes So Little

2008-04-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

The mesmerized smile was imprinted on his face. His eyes were fixed on the ice-cream cone in his hand. Probably 3-4yrs old. You had to probably watch your step to not step on his little feet as you hurried across to catch your bus at the other end of the bus terminal. A woman, probably his mom, walked ahead unaware that the kid might not exactly be paying attention to which way she is going. It was that little smile. It would make you realize you too are smiling a while after it unconsciously appears on your face. It stays with you long after. Reminds you it takes so little to make a kid happy...

This post if for you, Lucky!! :)

Letting Go

2008-03-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

He looked at the road ahead, negotiating the potholes while avoiding oncoming traffic at the same time. Our conversation drifted to the topic of trees.

He asked me, "Do you know why I love trees?" I said that I didn't. He said, "I was driving down the highway more than a year ago when my eyes were clouded with tears and I stopped on the side. Those were the days when I was really giving up on life. Nothing seemed to be really worth it. What I had lost seemed to be unbearable and unfair."

I had come to know he had lost a loved one. I knew what he was talking about. He continued, "Up ahead on the roadside, something caught my eye. It was a tree. A very huge one. Probably a couple of hundred years old. What I noticed was that one branch which was leaning dangerously onto the traffic was damaged. Now and then tall vehicles would brush against it and finally the branch had no life left in it. It was barren. But did the tree stop growing? Did it give up? No. Another large branch continued growing in another direction. It was green and it was blooming flowers. Birds sat on it and built nests. That day I realised I need to be like that tree. Willing to let go and to not stop growing. I am grateful to that tree for having taught me how to live..."

As he said this tears welled up in his eyes. His voice chocked. For a second he leaned closer to the steering as if to rest his head on it. Then he regained composure, held his head high, and drove on...

***************************************
Some related quotes that I found here:

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
-- Havelock Ellis

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break.
-- Julia Butterfly Hill

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
-- Oprah Winfrey

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.
-- Lao Tzu

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-- Raymond Lindquist

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties,
-- Gail Sheehy

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
-- Author Unknown

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.
-- Gerald Jampolsky

Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?
-- Leo Buscaglia

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting that there are things that cannot be.
-- Anon

Loving someone is setting them free, letting them go.
-- Kate Winslet

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.
-- Sylvia Robinson

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
-- Gloria Naylor

Think about any attachments that are depleting your emotional reserves. Consider letting them go.
-- Oprah Winfrey

True love doesn't have a happy ending, because true love never ends. Letting go is one way of saying I love you.
-- Author Unknown

There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.
-- Author Unknown

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.
-- Joseph Campbell

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
-- Lao Tzu

You have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
-- James Matthew Barrie

You never leave someone behind, you take a part of them with you and leave a part of yourself behind.
-- Author Unknown

The Quirk Tag

2008-02-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks lively for the tag. The tag is to list down the quirky behavior that I tend to show every once in a while.

The Rules:- Link to the person that tagged you.- Post the rules on your blog.- Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.- Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.- Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

1. I tend to be so 'in my own world' when I am in my building society I rarely look up at faces. Of the three neighbours in my floor, I know only two of them. I won't recognise the others even if they walk by. I guess this should change. Otherwise, I would not know even if George Bush moved in next door!

2. I don't think the pug they show for the hutch (now vodafone) ad is really as cute as it is made out to be.

3. I don't like coffee or tea. The cold coffee I have about twice or thrice a year gives me such a high I can't sleep.

4. I don't really hate Himesh Reshamiyya. I really envy him for being able to rule the airwaves more than anyone was able to (But where is he now??).

5. This is in the back of my mind almost everyday (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/here-it-is-the-future-of-the-world-in-23-pages-400923.html). Population uncontrolled, tiger dissappearing... they say one of the tipping points of the climate change could be the dissappearance of the monsoon. Maybe this would wake us up.

6. I like to observe interesting little quirks in people (I am sure I have mine too!) especially regarding their walking style. Some examples:

Today I saw this guy walking along the roadside and he had this amusing and stylish swagger as if he is walking to some live music. There was none, neither was he wearing headphones. But you could see that the music playing in his head :).

I knew this girl in school who always cat-walked. You would always see her sashaying away even if she were in a hurry!

I knew a guy in college who always had his mouth open. Even while riding his moped!! My brother always wondered if the lives of many flies and mosquitoes would have a sticky ending as he rode by!! I bet the world was a constant source of wonder and amazement, rendering his mouth continuously open!

One of my rules was to NOT make this a personal blog. But then, when tags come by and they are usually all about YOU (or me in this case) and I felt I was a little too harsh not posting on the tag that pixie had given me long ago. And when this tag came by, I thought, 'Oh well, I have nothing much to write these days, anyway. Let's do that tag'... :)

Relationships lately have been giving me a lot of food for thought. A post has been brewing in my mind for some time now on relationships but still needs lots of processing... coming soon :)

By the way, I tag none.

What's up?

2008-02-02T21:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, I have been meeting a lot of interesting people. Here is little chunnu-munnu trying to find out what the camera lens smells like. Ok, I don't know the real name of this little guy. But wouldn't chunnu-munnu make a great name? And do make sure you put your suggestions in the comments ;).

Come Away With Me

2008-01-18T03:18:00.000-08:00

More than a year ago when I searched for it at PlanetM they were out of stock. Yesterday, while browsing through the music folders copied from my bro's computer, I found this song!

Listening to this song is like lying in the cool grass on a summer evening while the you hear the gentle sound of leaves rustling in the breeze...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBKcKQHZXks

Come Away With Me
-Norah Jones

Come away with me in the night

Come away with me

And I will write you a song

Come away with me on a bus

Come away where they can't tempt us

With their lies

I want to walk with you

On a cloudy day

In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high

So won't you try to come

Come away with me and we'll kiss

On a mountaintop

Come away with me

And I'll never stop loving you

And I want to wake up with the rain

Falling on a tin roof

While I'm safe there in your arms

So all I ask is for you

To come away with me in the night

Come away with me

Finding Yaman

2007-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

One interesting thing I did this month was work on a cover of the Sitarist Vidur Mahajan's Indian Classical album Maitra Yaman. The raaga was Yaman and we were to capture it's essense visually.

It felt great working alongside an artiste who has given so many years of his life for an artform with evergrowing love for it. The best part was I was not intimidated by him but inspired by him.

Vidur is also an entreprenuer and industrialist. His passion is the Sitar. Sitting under the starry winter sky, surrounded by the hills, I sat with him at his little farm house-like place, listening to his story of how he first fell in love with the Sitar. It's a journey he started more than 2o years ago. His passion for playing the Sitar has only grown over the years...

I waited more than three weeks to write this, hoping that I would write more objectively. Without going ga-ga! But it seems I fail miserably at it. I shall just post the snap now :)

Lies People Tell But Do Not Admit

2007-11-18T06:04:00.000-08:00

Chances are you have heard these somewhere, somehow, or maybe even said them. Chances are we all know what they mean, actually...

1) "I will call you back"

They usually never call back. Either there is a genuine reason or they might just forget. They WILL call back only if they need something from you! If this person does manage to call back more than 50% of the time, chances are he/she could be one of your lifetime friends ...or just a perpetual parasite.

2) "I will die without you"

This is one of the stupidest lines!! Usually the person telling this believes that this is true. This usually happens in extremely immature relationships with messy endings. I know people who said it and are still alive, recovering from the 'relationship'... And boys, if you are saying this, there is no better way to reinforce that you are emotionally weak. I actually know a sadistic girl who ditched her guy and then later called him asking him why he's still alive!!

3) "Lets just be friends"

This means even the friendship you had is over. Dumbo!! Did you not realise that she's not even interested in you? (We are assuming here that it is guys who get this phrase from girls, usually) Even if u carry on with 'just friendship' it will invariably fizzle out, so chuck it and keep walking. It requires exceptional maturity for any relationship to survive this stage. This is always dangerous territory for anyone. If you made your intentions clear from the beginning then this wouldn't have happened. And how is that? Well, I am not going to tell you, it's fun learning through trial and error! All the best!!

4) "Lets do freiinseep"

Yes, the most infamous Orkut line. It's been mentioned many times in many blogs but it just keeps coming back! At first it appears similar to number 3 but is very different. This is usually the most intellingent line that a desperate desi male is usually capable of writing in his vain attempts to mesmerise anything that looks remotely feminine on Orkut. Uncouth in approach and absolutely clueless about human psychology, these males, ignoring umpteen other males writing the same lines in all the previous scraps, foolishly hope that suddenly someone will be swept off their feet on reading these three magic words and maybe immediately agree to meet up with them at the nearest coffee shop or God knows where. Sad.

5) "I have no time"

It only means the person who said it is not interested enough to 'make time' for whatever you are talking about. So go talk to someone else. Chances are you will find the same person at a movie theater near you having a whale of a time. Remember, even one of the world's richest man Steven Speilberg returns home at about 6pm for dinner with his family everyday unless he is in some other part of the world (OK i don't think I have proof of this as he said it in a talk show). It's all about priority and this is a nice way for people to tell you that you are not one.

Pixie contributed the following gems (Thank you pixie, how could I have overlooked these?!!) :

6) "You are our best resource and we don’t want to lose you"

You will find that after you leave that company, your manager and the project survive very well without you! If a meteorite from outerspace ground you into pure carbon this very minute, it is only your family/loved ones/friends who will miss you. Your famliy and parents might mean a lot to you, but that doesn't mean someone can get away with no. 7!

7) "My parents won’t approve"

That’s the cheesiest of them all. It just means the guy/gal isn’t interested in you enough to decide that it's worth making a commitment. But of course he/she does want to flirt around with you… or in other words USE you and then discard you as soon as the real princess/prince charming arrives! So, Mr/Ms Standby Lover, wake up from your dreamy slumber and get out of the tunnel because the light at the end IS the oncoming train!!

Mysore Lounging

2007-11-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

Yaaaawn.... it's been a good Diwali holiday so far. I will truly hate monday the 12th! Mysore was... is cool and blue as usual. Managed to get this new lens for my camera and am loving it! Took a lot of lousy shots for a change while fooling around with the new lens...

In Pune, you will never see the sun setting into someone's backyard!! ;)

clothes line...

Ok, this is NOT a lousy shot :) this happens to be dad's new car...

Mysore has plenty of coconut trees everywhere...

Wonder what's up with blogger, the image uploading is getting very messy. I had to upload these images so many times to see them...

It's time to make lunch (yeah, am helping mom) , have lunch and then a nap.... YAWN!

Back to Mulshi 2007

2007-10-19T01:06:00.000-07:00

...the field was bordered with yellow flowers...

It had been a long time since I went anywhere and I was beginning to feel pretty suffocated with the restless routine. So I, my friend V, and his little Swift, headed to the hills. And only to discover yet another mesmerising avatar of the Sahyadris. The just-after-the-monsoon Sahyadris. The grass had just mellowed from the psychedelic, ecstatic green it had in the monsoons to what it is now. The blue Mulshi Lake and the blue skies looked out of the world. I am so glad Mulshi is not a popular tourist destination. I am so glad it is still untouched.

The waterfall is now more of a babbling brook. The green grass around it was a beautiful reminder of what was. Flowers blooming everywhere, as if an obsessive compulsive gardener had run amock, planting them all over the place!! :) My friend V was coming here for the first time.

We climbed the rock faces that used to be the water fall and headed up a stream which was one of its sources. The brook wound it's way by a rice field guarded only by yellow and orange flowers. Even though it was this beautiful, the sun, as it rose higher in the sky beat down upon us, reminding us that this place would soon be ruled by one color: golden yellow...
I know I will be back here, among the fields of gold... just like last year

Flowers were everywhere...

My friend posing... I haven't asked his permission, so no faces...

You can see the Mulshi dam as a straight line...

I had shot this place just last year...

Rice fields on the way...

Hmm...

My friend's Swift negotiated the curves effortlessly... he simple loved this snap and it is now his wallpaper :)

Steve Jobs' Gyan

2007-10-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how I end up finding these when I need them the most. Here are some things that Steve Jobs said that I really need to remember...

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Elmo Update

2007-10-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

To all of you out there who are wondering what the coolest dude in town is upto, here is the much awaited update: He just had his bath! Yes, Elmo was feeling a litle dusty and he wanted a bath. So here he is, post bath, just out with a towel (OK, it's a kerchief but that's adequate for him isn't it?) and enjoying the morning breeze! Or does it look like a lungi?

Roadies

2007-09-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Been attending a short film making workshop and this was the homework after the first class... we were asked to make a single-shot, aproximately 1 minute movie. Stumbling with a shaky camera and with very patient, helpful friends, shot this one... and had a lot of fun! :)

Till Recycling Does them Apart

2007-09-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Before Sunrise

2007-08-29T09:08:00.001-07:00

Jesse: I have an admittedly insane idea. If I don't ask you this... It's gonna haunt me the rest of my life.

Celine: What?

Jesse: I wanna keep talking to you. I don't know what your situation is, but... but I feel like we have some kind of.... uuuh... connection, right?

Celine: Yeah, me too...

Jesse: Well, great! So here's the deal, you should get off the train with me in Vienna and come check out the town.

Celine: What?! *smiling*

Jesse: Come on! It'll be fun!

Celine: What would we do?

Jesse: I don't know... um.. all I know is that I have an Austrian airlines flight to catch tomorrow morning at 9.30, and I don't really have the money for a hotel, so I was just gonna walk around and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me... and if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get onto the next train!

Celine: :) *thinking**hesitating*

Jesse: Alright, alright! Think about it like this... Ummmm... jump ahead, 10-20 years, OK? And you're married... only, your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, you know... you start to blame your husband...

Celine: *now looking with interest*

Jesse: You start to think about all those guys you have met in your life and what might have happened if you picked up one of them... right? Now, I'm one of those guys! It's me!

"...I'm one of those guys! It's me!"

Now think of this as time travel... from then to now... to find out what you are missing out... see what this really could be... it's a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you are not missing out on anything... I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totall boring and... you made the right choice and you are really happy...

Celine: *laughs, avoiding eye contact, thinking*..... Let me get my bag!

And so they venture into the streets of Vienna... talking... their chemistry is instantaneous and never feels out of place... This is a movie that is hard not to fall in love with. I still watch it whenever possible... having lost count of the number of times I did so...

Before Sunset is it's sequel. It's a beautiful continuation of this amazing story.... with intelligent conversations that you would never get bored of... A very unique and intelligent movie, a must for hardcore romantics and movie buffs!

Before and After

2007-08-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

You have to be there to see the transformation of the Sahyadris...

The Prelude to a Siesta

2007-07-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

It was a hot summer afternoon. After a heavy lunch consisting of mountains of rice, along with delicious curries, pickles, and curd, the serotonin was too much to handle. Sleep was inevitable. The cool ceramic tiled floor and a colorful straw mat suddenly looked very inviting. The ceiling fan above sent soothing gusts making the curtain across the balcony entrance wave gracefully, creating intermittent brightness and semi-darkness... this was same the day I took this snap

Watch Crazy

2007-07-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

You buy two watches on impulse just because you feel your current watch is kinda OK but looks out of fashion, and then you get a third one gifted to you. Shaantam paapam! Sinful accumulation of worldly possessions! Nice. Now for an extra arm...

Cold Fire

2007-07-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Post Lunch

2007-06-20T22:04:00.001-07:00

Page 3 Elmo

2007-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, Elmo has many reasons to be happy these days including appearing in the media posing with some pretty actress for the Daytime Emmy Awards according to the Yahoo! News. And the other day he was in an elevated state of fluff (does he have a mind? ;-) )

Fiery Finale

2007-06-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

There are one or two days in the entire year when the sunset is the kind you might see a few times in a lifetime. Thought I was through with boring sunset picture-postcard snaps until this day, when the sky seemed to be set on fire.

This was the view in our hall...

BEWARE (boring) TECHNICALITIES!: By the time I could set the tripod the sunset was just a dull red glow in the horizon, not much color that the human eye sould see. But giving the camera a 30 second exposure soaked up all the red hues there were in the sky and gave me this unexpectedly (unnaturally?) red sky. And this one is a HDR too... the room interior was too dark to be visible in which the sky details are clear...

Sky Scapes

2007-06-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is the time of the year when the Pune sky comes up with some of its best cloud displays. The sky turns into an ever changing canvas of endless hues!

Sunday evening gave this. What I thought would look pretty average ended up quite decent!

Saturday afternoon: the black cloud looming large on the right is the thunderstorm....

Mysore almost always manages to come up with something spectacular. This time I got to see this rarely seen display. This phenomenon happens at the top portion of Cumulonimbus clouds.

I am unable to find that site which had information on this kind of phenomena...

Postcards from Mysore

2007-05-19T05:17:00.000-07:00

Srirangapatna, famous for being the capital of Tipu Sultan's kingdom which stood valiantly against the British Raj, is not that well known for it's rustic charm and natural beauty. The river Cauvery's tributaries flow through this idyllic town and has reverside temples unchanged, just as they were since historic times. One of my favourite places in the world is this place called Gosai Ghat. Sitting on those steps on the banks of Cauvery as the cool waters flow by, under the shade of mango tree, beside the ancient temple, is an experience I would seriously recommend!

This time I tried some HDR imaging. And I got this image.

And of course, I had promised Mysorean that I would give him a better panorama of this spot.
Here it is, Mysorean!

Postcards from Bengalooru

2007-05-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

Auto drivers in Bangalore... er, Bengalooru, are becoming very well known for their ruthless fleecing of customers. Still, an autoride is always fun as you zip through Bengalooru traffic. Especially if you know you are going to MG Road or Brigade Road! :-) One autodriver told me that the government allows them to increase the metering charges only about once every 2 years! So, in the meanwhile they are only allowed to mug the customers! There are also plans of completely removing autos from bangalore roads once the metro, according to one driver that I talked to. Well, they do came across as the predators but they are not that high up in the 'food chain'.

*************************************

There is this island of greenery just off MG Road that a lot of us do not seem to know about. The green and yellow lines are MG Road and Brigade respectively in this snapshot from Wikimapia. The park is marked in red.

Someone on Wikimapia has labeled this park as a 'useless park'. But if you see the number of couples putting this place to good use, you'll think otherwise! ;-) Now, before you let your imagination run wild about what I was upto there: I was just having a photoshoot there with a friend. So there...

Here is how green the trees are there:

Snapshot from Wikimapia:

Regis Givazo

2007-05-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

The accordion somehow made famous by Raj Kapoor in Mera Nam Joker is almost unheard of in present-day India. I have always been a fan of the accordion for the pleasantness of its sound. The movie Amelie had a generous dose of background score consisting of a lively accordion. If you heard Rahman's song for the movie Guru, Ei Hairathein (Ok, my Hindi spellings are not good), it starts with an accordion (or at least I think so) leisurely playing a melody, immediately bringing to my mind images of some quiet European city with cobble-stoned streets and street cafes! The morning sun casting a silver light on the cobble stones and.... and now let me get back to what I was going to say...

This Wednesday, I attended this accordion concert by Regis Givazo hosted by the Poona music club. "Regis who?", was my response too. He is supposedly a world famous (Yes! and WE don't know!) accordionist who is originally from Madagascar. Regis teams up with Mirandon a percussionist/drummer, and together they create magic! He sang with his rich Malagasy (language of Madagascar) voice while his accordion provided the rhythm and bass along with a
complex interplay of notes that simply mesmerised us! His style had a very ethnic touch to it but at the same time incorporated a strong European flavour. Having been in Paris for about 10 years, he had beautifully assimilated various sounds.

I did not know that an accordion is such a versatile instrument, or is it the greatness of the artiste? I would think the latter would be closer to truth. You can listen to his tracks at this National Geographic World Music link . Do try the song Aia Rose at this link.

Now that I hear the tracks on the little CPU speakers in my grey cubicle, it does not sound like it's a big deal. When you are in front of the artist while he is passionately playing his instrument into the amplified hi-fi sound system, each sound crisp and clear with energy, it's a different experience altogether!

That evening I went home and had the perfect hangover :-)

Dolled Up

2007-04-11T23:38:00.000-07:00

While visiting my friend's place, this little key-chain doll caught my eye. Some 'inanimate' objects seem to have so much life in them! Right beside the doll is the Laughing Buddha...

The Arrow and the Song

2007-03-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Arunima: umm, read it long time back when I was going to give my boards. We were 149 in the batch and knew all of us won't be together. With much love, we had scribbled on each other's scrap book, these lines from this fellow. Ah! those were the days when friendship meant the world.*

Claytonia Vices: Ya, friendship did mean the world then... it still means a lot, but I guess we don't use the word 'forever' as frequently (or carelessly?) as we used to. I guess we understand the impermanence of things better... I think I should blog on this... or would you like to do the honours, Arunima? :-)

Arunima: please go ahead. Iwould love to leave my footprints on your page.*

Claytonia Vices: Footprints? Hmmm... thank God you are not very heavy! ;-)

Arunima: :-)

(I am scared to open my mouth. you will blog that also. so just a smiley.)*

*Posted with permission of course! :-)

Doing the Dew

2007-03-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

The ad was dumb. So was the punch line. The Sprite ad's spoof on it damaged whatever little was left. But one day while travelling by bus, feeling extreme thirst and nausea, I tried it. it felt good. Now it's my soft drink of choice.

Now, why am I writing all this just for a drink? The other day I went to the hill top to have a photosession with my friend and he had brought a Dew bottle filled with water along with his bag. So I thought the green bottle and red bag in the evening sunlight made a good combination... In summary all this that I wrote is just a bahana to post these snaps! ;-)

I am simply loving the 'quality time' I am spending with my K100D! I have posted hi-res versions of these snaps..

Moonset at Sunrise

2007-03-05T04:46:00.000-08:00

The picture is so ordinary but the moon looks beautiful...

By the time I reached the top of the hill, the sun was up, it's warm rays leaving a faint orange glow on the trees... these trees are green only during the rains and remain leafless for the rest of the year...

Watched the NH-4 below, winding throught the misty Sahyadris of Pune. It connects Bangalore and Mumbai via Pune.

By then the moon was much closer to the horizon...

Taking the brisk morning walks and climbing this hill almost everyday has been very rewarding apart from the beautiful sights. On the hill-top the morning air is pure and cool. Each time you take a deep breath it seems to fill each cell of your being with energy...

New Desktop

2007-02-20T01:14:00.000-08:00

Meet Elmo!
He sits on top of my desk, so...

Oh, right now he's thinking out of the box! ;-)

The Kid

2007-02-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

She's loves to sit on the swing. She can make 'tea' from the kitchen set and warns you that the stove is too hot to touch. Never throws tantrums. She's got a little book collection. She showed her storybook of the firemen and their dalmation. It was nice to see her squealing in excitement while looking at the colourful images in the book as if she had seen it for the first time! Everything's fine except her vocabulary, which seems to be out of the ordinary. She knows that something can smell 'pungent'. I'll let you know if she starts her own blog! :-)

Down by the Seaside

2007-02-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

The beach as seem from wikimapia:

The trees circled in red above can be seen in this badly stiched panorama:

This 4-foot long fish beached itself one morning...

The rocky side of the beach....

Yes, am finally done with the pics from this trip! :-)

Urban Village

2007-01-30T01:41:00.001-08:00

There was this burly looking silver Pulsar parked right next to the thatched house. The wall of the house had a fading Pepsi logo. A village with no mobile coverage but with tiled roofs adorned with satellite dishes, Harihareshwar is one little place that can show you some interesting contrasts...

Way to Go-A

2007-01-22T01:54:00.000-08:00

Finally got to download images from my little Canon Poweshot. These are snaps taken from the bus on the way to Panaji...

And at the resort, tried some low-light photography just before sunrise...

To Mulshi and Beyond

2007-01-12T02:38:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, my friends/colleagues suddenly planned to travel to the west coast (Konkan). The place decided was Harihareshwar. It is a tiny village on the edge of the Sahyadris (Western Ghats). The route is one of the most picturesque I have seen. You have to go beyond Mulshi where the western ghats are all the more breathtaking!

One of the best parts of the journey is when you have to travel beside the Mulshi Lake for many kilometers.

Here is what the wikimapia shows:

I have labeled the places. Lonavala is just for reference...

About 6hrs after leaving Pune, we finally felt the sea breeze. That evening we visited the beach. The sand here is a dark brown and the first reaction is that it is dirty. The color is probably due to the undersea rocks (which are almost everywhere in this region) getting eroded.

Right now I have only the snaps taken with my colleague's digicam. The snaps in my digicam and from the film camera, I haven't got them on the hard disk yet. These pics (except one) are all shot with a very narrow field of view and I find them making me a little claustrophobic!!

We went to the Harihareshwar temple the next day.

The village had this narrow lane about 6 feet wide with various shops and restuarants lined on either side. The atmosphere there reminded me of R.K. Narayan's Malgudi village! :-)

Perched on one of the houses near the temple was a loudspeaker. Interestingly, it was silent.
Then on the other side there was this narrow alley leading to this quaint little house...
We saw a staircase leading to the other side of the hill and decided to see where it landed...

Hmmm... it lead to a rocky shore on the other side. A kind that I had never seen before.

The stairs landed at a place that looked like a tiny docking area. This could have been a scene straight from a classic James Bond movie. The secret docking area to the villain's lair who is planning world domination!! :-))

Close to the top of this hill grew a lone tree...
Waves smashed against the rocks sending water as high as 10 feet in some places. Away from the seafront the rocks formed recesses on which you could sit. There on those rocks sat two non-identical twins...

On this rocky shore was this turtle-shaped sea-sculpture in a pool within the rock... I told my friend's wife to sit on it.... this is her reflection...

That chilly evening we had dinner sitting around a bonfire and then played dumb charades...
In the next post I will put up the wide angle landscapes that I shot...

G . O . A .

2006-12-26T23:41:00.000-08:00

26 Years Old, Reborn

2006-12-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

Got my 26yr old PENTAX ME Super SLR repaired finally. It had stopped working a few months ago. According to the camera repairman who repaired it, it will easily take snaps for another 20 years... provided they still make film...

Thinking about it, we can hardly expect today's 'hi-tech' SLR cameras to last so long.

Found this old advertisement about ME Super:

PENTAX is virtually unknown to our generation. Especially because it joined the digital camera bandwagon pretty late. They make great cameras even now but they are yet to learn to make great publicity and marketing...

photograph courtesy
William Eric McFadden

And Long After the Trip...

2006-12-04T23:54:00.000-08:00

It took me so long to get the slide roll scanned...

You can see Everyman in the blue shirt here, near the bike...

The cool shade of the tree was inviting...

Spotted this lone bird flitting from tree to tree...

Hmmm... I am going through that phase again when I don't feel like blogging for a while... Just finished with an important part of a project and now I want to concentrate on a little travelling! This 16th I will be in Goa! :-)

Escape from Cubicle

2006-10-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

(Friday, Oct 28th)

I look longingly at the world beyond the confines of this cubicle. The world outside beckons. I conspire and plot to make a break... this weekend...

(Saturday, Oct 29th)

I and Everyman set upon a bike ride into the Western Ghats. This time there was no monsoon. The sky was blue and the hills were beginning to dry. The waterfall that was roaring was now down to a trickle, with tiny fish stranded in little pools awaiting a dry grave... The grass still retained some of the green, now a more yellowish shade.... It was still beautiful!

Misson Accomplished!!! :-) :-) :-)

Entanglement

2006-10-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Wondering what to post, stumbled upon this one from an old folder...

Three-day Weekend

2006-10-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

This three-day weekend was a relatively quiet one. On Sunday morning we went up the hills down the street and sat under the shade of a tree, watching the world below. But the most beautiful thing was the morning sun peeping from between the branches, and the blue sky with cotton clouds drifting above us.... there was only silence, interrupted by the leaves rustling in the wind and the occasional bird call...

...and my camera decided to do a little posing too! ;-)

She

2006-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

She came from a land far, far away...

Long Term Relationship

2006-09-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

She is not high maintenance. She doesn't drink too much. Nor does she smoke too much. She has the right vibes. We love going places together. We have been through all the ups and downs... together. It's been nearly 3 years now since we started our journey...and I am loving every mile of it! :-)

Just Kidding

2006-09-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Had a blast photographing the kids of the neighbourhood! For once I did not mind using a flash...

Boot Up

2006-09-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

Thinking 'out of the shoes'... :-)

Sunrise Under Construction

2006-09-01T01:03:00.000-07:00

Wind Chimes

2006-08-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

My fascination for wind chimes and lace curtains might never end! :-)

Back to Mulshi

2006-08-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

I was almost decided that I won't blog for a really long time. But just couldn't resist sharing this.

Was back at Mulshi and fell in love with the place all over again...

Three Sides

2006-08-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

"There are always three sides to a story, your side, the other side and the truth." -Anon.

Shadows

2006-08-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

Serendipity

2006-08-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

Our conversations haven't really changed. We still fall down laughing so hard that my stomach hurts and my eyes get tears... we get the weirdest and wildly funny ideas when we get together! After all the laughing, we talked about how little kids call us 'uncle' now and only that reminds us of our biological age. Otherwise, we still feel like we are just out of school. Not that we shirk resposibilities! :-)

My long time friend since my engineering days AK, had finally come to Pune like we had always planned... even though I had lately stopped thinking of it as a possibility...

We went to our friendly neighbour PK's house to play carrom board. I told her that he knows Marathi. They started conversing in Marathi when PK realised that he has a different accent. The place in which AK lives was mentioned and immeditely PK's mom said that one of their old family friends Mr.S lives there.

Later, back home, AK asked us, "Does she have an elder brother called A?"."Yes, but how do you know?", we asked. "Because my dad's name is S too and we knew a family in Nashik (when I was in Kindergarten) who had the same surname as PK!!"

Yes! PK turned out to be his childhood friend and their parents were great friends too. They had lost touch many many years ago...

Twenty years later, he got a new job, moved to a new place, stayed at his friend's place, met a neighbour who turned out to be the same kid he used to play with when they lived in some other town!!!

What are the odds of that happening??

Cloud 9

2006-07-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is the last of the mulshi series... I am bored of them...

How Green is the Valley

2006-07-14T04:47:00.000-07:00

Went to Thamini ghat (and fell sick the following week which is why I could not blog for a while) and had an amazing time... it was truly a drive in the clouds.... my camera got so wet in the rain but I could not resist taking these snaps... my camera is still not working :-(

Everyman tags me...

2006-07-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Tagged by Everyman and oops, even by Aparna as I found out today!!

Now, I am sure that there is an unwritten rule that I don't have to write 12 wierd things just because of this!!! ;-)

6 Weird Things About Me:

1) I don't drink tea

2) I don't drink coffee. I do sometimes drink cold coffee, get high on caffeine, and end up sleepless late into the night...

3) I have absolutely no idea if someone is pulling my leg or not most of the time... this has been the case for the last 3 years and looks like still will be...

4) At a stationery shop I have a tough time trying to overcome the temptation of buying stuff I don't need. I feel this uncontrollable urge to buy all the little notebooks, markers, crayons and sketchbooks and.... the list is endless. Yes, I love fountain pens!!! The feeling of the pen nib effortlessly gliding over the paper gives me a high!!

5) I have decided not to have a TV ever in my house! I wonder what my future partner will have to say about this!! But I have alternate ideas for entertainment like a projection system... so, if you are reading this honey, don't worry! ;-)

6) I am obsessed with this place since the first time I saw it more than 2 years ago and am determined to capture it in all it's moods...

Now I am tagging ILLUSIONAIRE , alice in wonderland , Silent Eloquence (so what if Aparna has already done that??), Blue White Gold , raghu, and Liklasa .

I was eager to post my snaps taken in Thamini Ghat, but anyway, had to get rid of this tag you see... :-)

Purple Thoughts

2006-06-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

"Why do we talk only about humans going to heaven? These little flowers gave so much beauty to their world during their brief existence, maybe more than what some of us humans could ever hope to give... will these plants be found in heaven now that they are long gone?"

Srirangapatna2

2006-06-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

Well, here is the second installment of the Srirangapatna snaps...

I took another chance to take the same scene, with another camera, with a different field of view...

Inside one of the temples... I was wondering if the pujari will object to my wielding a camera... it was too small to be noticed ;-)

We came late in the morning and lost all the morning colors to the harsh sunlight... no wonder these snaps look colourless...

Then we sat with feet in the water... those are my mom's feet...

And back at the parking lot... hey, who moved the cycle??

Srirangapatna

2006-06-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

Visited Srirangapatna on my last day in Mysore for now... on the way to the banks of Cauvery, the fields had their own charm...

...and at the parking lot... all that was there was this cycle! :) Hey Bem, check this out when you go there! :-)
I will post the snaps taken beside Cauvery later...
Right now a long journey back to Pune awaits me tomorrow...

Mysore Sky

2006-06-05T08:54:00.000-07:00

Aaaah.... the wide open skies! No highrises, no smoke.... only sky...
...used a 2Megapixel Canon Powershot S200...
The same shot with watercolor, artistic filter in Photshop CS:

Cabin Gets New Coat to Avoid Demolition!

2006-05-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

From Our Special Correspondent,
Edge-of-Universe,

According to reliable sources (me!) , the cabin at the Edge-of-Universe has been given an 'unprecendented' shade of freezing blue and raging red. It seems this sudden change in color was brought about as a pre-emptive measure against the impending demolition of this little structure by big bad burly builders who have no bussiness but to be on a crazy construction spree around the Edge-of-Universe. The painting seems to be an assertion that this place is still alive.

Apparently, the little cabin is not being spared of the real estate boom Edge-of-Universe is in the midst of, right now. A gravel road has been laid right up to about 10 feet from the doorstep of this little cabin (which actually, looks quite out of this world!). Cabin lovers around the world are scandalized by this new development and are woving to do everything they can to stop the demolition of the cabin, as soon as they find out where it actually exists. Some cabin lovers are speculating that they might also wait till the real estate bubble bursts after which the construction of concrete monsters might just stop coming up.

Our alert special correspondent, after the rain on saturday, expected a clear blue sky on sunday morning and went to the epicenter of this crisis to take some pictures. Our special correspondent in his own words: 'It's a cool place to hang out on a sunday morning, duuude!'

Now that we have already given you the news, it is now 'BROKEN' news. If we have more breaking news, watch this space! ;-)

[OK, seriously, this thing has been repainted. And the markings have been made for what looks like a building complex that might come up soon. It's days ARE numbered. :-( ]

The Bug

2006-05-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

When I was about three, we had one in our neighbourhood and we used to call it 'kappe car' ('frog-car' in Kannada). This little car has stolen hearts the world over for a long time now. I was pleasantly surprised to find this Beetle parked outside my friend's apartment complex.

This car has a unique history involving Hitler and the renowned designer/engineer Porche... Among all car designs ever made so far, I feel this is the one which might never lose its 'cute quotient'.

The bug hath bitten me! :-)

Mysore Memories

2006-05-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

I long to be here again, under the shade of the mango tree, on the granite steps, crows crowing overenthusiastically above, the swift waters rippling over the rocky river bed...

Behind the Scenes

2006-05-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

...And for almost five minutes, he diligently wiped the dust off her glistening body with tender loving care before she could be ready for the shoot... :-))

Sunday Morning

2006-05-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

The beautiful lace curtains make patterns on the wooden cupboard.

Speed Demon

2006-05-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

If I had a near-death experience, it could be riding pillion with my bike-crazy friend on his Karizma (the one above) at around 100kmph. The bike seems to pur silently even at these speeds and the loudest sound is that of the wind blasting by and the occassional 'swish' sound of a vehicle you just overtook, now quickly shrinking into the distance...

It is easy to see why he is addicted to it...

believe

2006-04-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

I believe the person you are grieving for is there somewhere, in a form that we may not percieve, watching over you, wanting you to be happy, wanting you to be strong, feeling helpless to see you cry...

please be happy for that is what he would want you to be...

please pursue your dreams for that is what he would have wanted you to...

carry on being loving, caring and understanding to the people around you the way this person taught you to be...

be strong the way this person showed you how... for that could be the best way to show this person how much he meant to you...

I know it is easy for me to say...
...but this is what I believe...

New Car!

2006-04-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

My friend's company gave him a Mini Cooper car for free. When I saw the car, I liked it a lot and asked him casually if I can have it...

He said YES!!!

Well, I am not dissappointed by the fact that it is 36 times smaller than the real thing...
Hmmm... and who said I am too old to have a new toy?

The Pianist

2006-04-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

Post-Trip Hangover

2006-04-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

Bought this straw hat in Goa. Gives a rush of happy memories (although it was in Dec '05!) when I look at it as it hangs on my room wall, waiting to be touched by the orange light of the setting sun...

Road to Pune

2006-04-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

While biking back from thamini ghat, the time was around 8 am and the summer sun was already shining down brightly. The silver road wound its way into the hills. Beyond the hills lies Pune...

Banks of Cauvery

2006-04-12T01:43:00.000-07:00

If you are in Mysore, this is one place you should not miss. This is the at Srirangapatna (18km from Mysore), on the banks of river Cauvery... this snap is made of 8 snaps 'stiched' together and you can see that it is not seamless...

@#$%! Blogger is shrinking the image to a thin strip!!

Thanks to zoxcleb's advice I put it up on ImageShack. If your internet connection can handle it, here is a larger version...

Jesse Jaisi Koi Nahi Bhokti....

2006-04-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

"Woof woof whine woof woof grrrrrrrrrrowl woof woofwoofwoofwoof whine woof whine woof whine woof woofwoofwoofwoofwoofwoof woofwoof woof woof grrrrrrrrrrowl woof woof woof woof"

Translation: I am Jesse, supposedly the daughter of a Kannada film star's dog. Of course, I do not throw any starry tantrums! When I am hungry, my big soulful eyes look sullen and you know I am upset. Then as soon as my mistress calls out saying that breakfast is ready, I am off in a flash of shiny black fur and then you realise how hungry I was! :-)

Kidding

2006-04-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

This kid was sincerely trying to frighten us by saying that he will let loose the dinosaurs that he has back home...

Truly Madly Deeply

2006-03-31T02:59:00.000-08:00

I'll be your dream
I'll be your wish
I'll be your fantasy.
I'll be your hope
I'll be your love
Be everything that you need.
I love you more with every breath
Truly madly deeply do...
I will be strong I will be faithful
'Cos I'm counting on a new beginning.
A reason for living.
A deeper meaning.

I want to stand with you on a mountain.
I want to bathe with you in the sea.
I want to lay like this forever.
Until the sky falls down on me...

-Savage Garden

Inside

2006-03-27T23:05:00.000-08:00

Tried my hand at photographing interiors.