say hi, to ms tweety!

This is Tweety a livewire indie rescued stray, about two months old. She is being fostered by a friend, till she finds a permanent home.
Tweety was the first pup to be adopted in a recent Adaptation, but was returned a few days later - which meant that she was then part of the Hangover Adaptation (held a few days post the first event, especially for pets that get returned) It's a challenge, I'm told for indie strays to get adopted. If she was a lab pup they say, she would get adopted in a snap.
So, Tweety waits.
Here, she is at our place looking out of the window, inquisitively. Tweety has 3 year old Ceaser, for company and she is learning fast. She is already won a few hearts around the house and office -where
she goes everyday with our friend.

Here's a portrait of Tweety that I attempted on an app that allows you to render photos like an oil painting on canvas. I thought she looks stunning. What do you think?

ganesha 2014 : first look

here is the first look of our ganesha this year. and this time the son is at home to make it, so the feeling is even better. we've used two colours of clay, red for the human body and the grey for the elephant head.
the final finish and painting is still pending
may gajanana bring us all joyous times this year!

Hi there!

This morning, as I was craning my neck into a thicket to get a good angle on a flower, I came this close to a beetle. Both of us maintained our composure (I with a fair degree of effort). That done, I also managed to get some pictures of the flower. 

getting this close to the bee...

I have a simple point and shoot camera and the way I get close ups, is to get close up to the subject. There are two attendant issues to this - there is the apprehension that the bee will fly off and the other is that it will bite.

Over time, I've learnt that if I wait till the bee starts feeding, it gets so taken in that even my camera being centimetres away does not distract it. This picture was in the garden at Swaraj Bhavan in Allahbad, the house that Indira Gandhi was born in. Apart from the historical importance of the place, the flowering plants in the garden are a spectacle by itself.

dragonfly duo

Another early morning sighting at Gangtok. A dragon fly duo. The bright colours really stood out against the green. Never having seen these kind of colourful ones before, it would've been nice to take more pictures, but it would've been like intruding. So this is the only one I have

grains of rice

its that time of the year, when feilds are lush green and crowded. a drive down the country side will show you 256 million shades of green, and each one singularly beautiful.

have a look at this corn of paddy. i thought it looked stunning.

stray thought.

"as a kid, amma used to tell me how much effort goes through the making of a single grain of rice".

and how if i wasted even a grain in my plate, how it would nullify this veritable chain effort that went into making this grain of rice and bringing it up to my plate.

i wish i had seen this sight then.

The benevolent one

In the run up to the Ganesh Utsav, the city is full of temporary outlets where idols are being readied for people. A week before the big day, I spent a couple of hours clicking away at half a dozen of these places close to home.

The completed idols are covered with plastic sheets to keep them safe from the elements, and I wasn’t sure how they would react to me rummaging through the places. A lot of them are very small and narrow with hardly space for one person to get in gingerly.

I was surprised as place after place I was welcomed and my request for a few pictures was met with a lot of enthusiasm. Some even offered to move the idols I wanted to shoot out and into the sunlight.

Here’s a picture of one of them painted in bright luminescent shade of red. One of my best pix of the day.

Never say die.

I chanced on this sapling that had taken root in a dried tree stump in the middle of a tea garden in the upper reaches of Ooty. An example of how something new can start from something that has ended. One of the many lessons nature has for us, only if we care to look