Lonesome...?
Two's company...
Three is fun...
And, I lose count with this crowd...!
All clear...! The sun is up n' it's time to head back home...
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Morning raaga...
This is the Nirmal Nagar park at Kalyan Nagar.
I walk through this park while returning from my walks/photo jaunts at
the University Campus. This morning, I stopped for a while to rest... :)
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Look where I land up when a class gets called off...
The green house/nursery at the botanical garden as seen through a window of the dilapidated store house...
The green house/nursery itself does not house many plants, but the space around it has a very impressive variety of medicinal plants. Most of them growing outside their assigned pots/beds wild like weeds... The culprit according to Mr. Guddadamatha, labour problem!
The gnarled twisted branches of an age old yellow laburnum have over the years become a part of the wire fence...
The few plants inside the green house/nursery are making a valiant attempt to survive.
Old pals, growing together for, I wonder how many years...!
A yellow laburnum and a rangoon creeper entwined all over the wire mesh.
The bright ocher-green roots of an orange (mango tree) orchid, spread all over the trunk of this more than fifty year old mango tree.
I loved the whole feel of this frame. The colours, the textures... sumptuous...!
I loved the whole feel of this frame. The colours, the textures... sumptuous...!
Peering through the quaint little hand-made gate behind the store house...
An interesting find...
The ever-faithful cloth bag that carries my regular photo-jaunt supplies- A bottle of water, a small box of multi-grain biscuits, a hand towel, a pen/pencil, a small notepad/folded sheet of paper, a hair clip (To fix back my crazy hair when it sometimes gets impossible to manage) some money for emergency and without forgetting some SOS medicine... :)
Another very interesting find. A window display to die for... A made-to-order super aesthetic composition that made my day...!!
Looking through the rusted gate onto the lovely wooded grounds of the Botanical Garden...
And then the man himself... Mr. Guddadamatha
The early morning session at STTF got canceled and before the coordinator there could finish saying, "Have a good day Ma'am..." I had landed up at the Botanical Garden peering among the overgrown grass n' broken pots...
It's of course sad to see the run down state of the small warden's office and the green house, or what's left of it... The store/tool room was a brilliant study in rust n' old wood, maybe not opened in ages and the identification labels on the trees all faded and mostly broken... Ironically to me, the dilapidated surroundings offered a plethora of aesthetic opportunities, waiting to be framed... And for a whole hour-and-a-half I lost myself in the lush greens of the grass and leaves, hoary ochers and siennas of ancient twining vines and broken garden pots, powdery umbers and rusted oranges of the grills and wire-work around...
And then I met Mr. Guddadamatha, the warden of the Botanical garden, an extremely resourceful, helpful n' patient gentleman. He's been working there since 1968...!! According to him, the botanical garden grounds, an almost forty acre lush wooded area, of which we've hardly explored a minuscule portion, is actually a treasure trove of medicinal plants and many a rare variety of tree...! He was amused n' intrigued to see the pictures I'd taken of the old twisting vines, rust n' old wood, and wondered why I wasn't shooting the typically "beautiful"(as he termed them) pictures...
On knowing about my interest in all things green, he very patiently took me around and introduced me to the extremely interesting medicinal plants around the dilapidated nursery... There was a plant with a remedy for almost every ailment you could think of...!! Many I recognized, but there were many many more that I'd never ever seen or even heard of...! There was a tree, whose leaves are used as a substitute for tea, a tree that released an oil that smelled exactly like lavender oil... Oh, the list is simply endless...! Mr. Guddadamatha, the good man that he is, has invited me (And anyone else who's equally interested) over again with more time to spare and of course armed with a thick notepad and my camera battery well charged. He's promised to take me on a tour of the whole grounds. And guys, you wont believe it, I've even managed to get him to allow my kids to be a part of the Tree-tagging event after the rains...! WOW and double WOW...!! What an excellent opportunity that would be for my me and my kids...
A dramatic prelude to today's rain...
7th October, Sunday
If the prelude was this dramatic, today's director for the "Aakash Natak Company" decided to up the drama meter to an all-time high and the rain itself that followed was at it's histrionic best...!! Well, the heated practice sessions of the past few days were indeed a guaranteed indication of the fantabulous show that was to come...
I'm sure the thunderous applause and echoes of encore, encore have done the needful and we're surely gonna have repeat shows...
If the prelude was this dramatic, today's director for the "Aakash Natak Company" decided to up the drama meter to an all-time high and the rain itself that followed was at it's histrionic best...!! Well, the heated practice sessions of the past few days were indeed a guaranteed indication of the fantabulous show that was to come...
I'm sure the thunderous applause and echoes of encore, encore have done the needful and we're surely gonna have repeat shows...
At the entrance to Shanti Nagar, near Laxmi Talkies... You can see the side wall of Laxmi Talkies in the left background...
Shanti Nagar is the new annex to Mission compound that's replaced the lovely "Tamarind" grove where we had many an adventure during our childhood days at Granny's house...
Shanti Nagar is the new annex to Mission compound that's replaced the lovely "Tamarind" grove where we had many an adventure during our childhood days at Granny's house...
Notice
the building under construction? Every nook and corner of Dharwad is
getting packed with shoddy replicas of flats and shopping complexes from
B'luru...
In front of Hotel Hoysala, opposite Kittel College. Looking towards Jubilee Circle... Look at the number of "Complexes" that have come up along this road...!
And on the Hotel Dharwad side, many old bungalows have given way to
Shopping Centers/Complexes...
The quaint old Karnatak Bhavan hotel/lodge of the wooden trellis-front fame, (Which was home to my mother's family for quite a few years) has be replaced by a new glass n' steel structure...
The quaint old Karnatak Bhavan hotel/lodge of the wooden trellis-front fame, (Which was home to my mother's family for quite a few years) has be replaced by a new glass n' steel structure...
Outside the new Reliance Fresh store beside Brindavan lodge...
This is the huge shopping complex that's come up in the place where the Manjanbail's "City Light Lodge" once stood. Looking at Court Circle...
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Chipping away for a pittance...
A truly humbling experience this was...
As I sat along side the rubble and watched them chisel away... The patriarch- at it from dawn, the son- having followed pace, the daughter-in-law- settled to her chipping after having ensured everyone had dropped something into their naturally small stomachs... and the two lil kids- happily entertaining themselves with the interestingly shaped gray chips that kept flying all over...
They may not be master chippers carving temple arches, they may not be famed sculptors chiseling a statue that would adorn the city square, each knock of the hammer on the chisel may not fetch them something bright n' tinkling, their rudimentary tools and makeshift studios may not measure up, their crude tobacco stained, paan spewing selves may not garner a second look in a market place choc-a-bloc with products of all kinds and colours... yet to me, the grinding stones they fashion are nothing short of being simply elegant and graceful, where each piece has a poignant story to tell...
These stone cutters go about chipping away in right earnest from dawn to dusk, every single day, right in the middle of a bustling market place with it's myriad sights and sounds and are yet far from it all, lost in a world of their own, where each chip get them closer to their next meal...
It is agonizing to see a customer bargain ever so casually for a few rupees over a grinding stone on which these calloused hands have worked themselves to the bone... What's more heart-rending is when a middle man strikes a fabulous (For him) deal and the stone cutter accepts it with a smile to see a dozen or so of their pieces being picked up at one go... the lady has a smile- for she knows this would mean an allowance of a few extra grains of lentils in the next day's daal... The kids jump in glee- for to them it means a possibility of a sticky sweet from the nearby sweet vendor, the grand old man of the family has a blackened wry smile- for he knows he can wrangle a few extra beedis from his son...
As I quietly slip my camera into the bag, pick myself from the rubble and walk through the busy market back to where Mahaboob bhaiyya has parked his auto, the steady chipping sound and the clear laughter of those two kids follow me... I know these sounds are not gonna leave me so soon...
As I sat along side the rubble and watched them chisel away... The patriarch- at it from dawn, the son- having followed pace, the daughter-in-law- settled to her chipping after having ensured everyone had dropped something into their naturally small stomachs... and the two lil kids- happily entertaining themselves with the interestingly shaped gray chips that kept flying all over...
They may not be master chippers carving temple arches, they may not be famed sculptors chiseling a statue that would adorn the city square, each knock of the hammer on the chisel may not fetch them something bright n' tinkling, their rudimentary tools and makeshift studios may not measure up, their crude tobacco stained, paan spewing selves may not garner a second look in a market place choc-a-bloc with products of all kinds and colours... yet to me, the grinding stones they fashion are nothing short of being simply elegant and graceful, where each piece has a poignant story to tell...
These stone cutters go about chipping away in right earnest from dawn to dusk, every single day, right in the middle of a bustling market place with it's myriad sights and sounds and are yet far from it all, lost in a world of their own, where each chip get them closer to their next meal...
It is agonizing to see a customer bargain ever so casually for a few rupees over a grinding stone on which these calloused hands have worked themselves to the bone... What's more heart-rending is when a middle man strikes a fabulous (For him) deal and the stone cutter accepts it with a smile to see a dozen or so of their pieces being picked up at one go... the lady has a smile- for she knows this would mean an allowance of a few extra grains of lentils in the next day's daal... The kids jump in glee- for to them it means a possibility of a sticky sweet from the nearby sweet vendor, the grand old man of the family has a blackened wry smile- for he knows he can wrangle a few extra beedis from his son...
As I quietly slip my camera into the bag, pick myself from the rubble and walk through the busy market back to where Mahaboob bhaiyya has parked his auto, the steady chipping sound and the clear laughter of those two kids follow me... I know these sounds are not gonna leave me so soon...
Friday, September 28, 2012
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