thats horrible...

That’s horrible….at least for me…just a few months from now I may not be able to enjoy such sunset from this place, my terrace, which is in fourth floor. After shooting the sunset, while post processing this picture I looked at the sun at 100% and was horrified to see the girders of a newly erected building piercing the fireball. Pune is such a lovely city….the people…the climate….the landscape…but how long it could be as lovely ….I know the city for over two years and watched its landscape worsen slowly.…I know its not pune alone which is facing the burnt of the development heat….its the cost of going higher we all are paying….but for that very better future, one cannot and should not watch the “movement” silently….these high rises could definitely be better planned so as to keep the landscape of the city least disturbed….few years from now I may or may not be here….but I will always be concerned for this beautiful city….the dozens of coming up concrete structures at the foothills may be a “heaven” on earth for a few….but why the entire city should pay for them….seriously start thinking…..and one need not necessarily be a nature lover for that ....
(click the picture for bigger view)

i killed her 35 years ago....

Its more than 35 years but I still remember every frame of that ghastly evening….I must be around 11 or 12 then…..I cried incessantly for more than an hour… till the night zoomed in around me…. I didn’t take food that night….I remember…..it was dead of the night….and I was awake….still shocked….how could it happen…. How could I be so accurate….I never intended it….but….it happened….I was not at all ready to believe it…. It was such a nice playful evening as ever….I was playing with my friends in that private garden of one of them….hitting rubber ball at one another….I was always a good sport…..as the evening matured, the game was coming to an end, when I saw a bird sitting far away (it was a bulbul perhaps), it was around 12 to 15 feet away…and I playfully took a small stone and flew it towards the bird….and to my utter disbelief in a fraction of a second the bird fell on the ground like a lump…. I ran towards the bird….and there it was lying dead….. I was aghast….what happened…. I seemed confused….and within minutes I realized what I had done… taking the bird in my palm I cried and cried and finally graved it in that very garden where it was chirping a few minutes before….

Last evening when I was enjoying a sunset…. I shot this bulbul (off course with a camera)….the bird too seemed in a very pensive mood….watching the fireball go down….and watching the bird in such a gloom was no less than a sentence for me….once again I felt like crying for the bird I killed 35 years ago…..

history fascinates me...

Abandoned places always create memories…you are bound to turn nostalgic once you walk into it…it’s an amazing world…you are thrilled, to touch a centuries old structure…as you move down deep into the stairs of timeline, you gradually start losing yourself…to the stories told and read to you in your childhood…and once you are soaked in completely, you start feeling those stories of kings and queens act by act, just in front of your eyes…that’s the reason history fascinates me…
I shot this picture inside one of the structures of orcha fort. The fort located in Madhya Pradesh (India) around 16 km from Jhansi (UP). Monuments of Orchha narrate stories of war and peace and of love and destruction. Situated on the banks of the river Betwa, it was the capital of the Bundelkhand region. Orchha was founded in the 16th century by the Bundela Rajput chief Rudra Pratap.

a chance to dream...

The sun is the same world over….but sunsets are not. They are as different as their impact on us, everytime. Yes, its tranquility affects me in a new way, always. I have seen sun setting behind beaches and mountains, buildings and streets, fields and trees and my terrace…and it has never been the same…. Whenever I watch a sunset, I feel this belongs to me…it wonders me….behind the whole riot of clouds and colors…..a sun with such innumerable hues within…..I am at peace….and while I see such sunsets….I am certain many of us had wasted one of the happiest moments of their lives by just missing that opportunity. But I, for sure, feel for those who see a sunset and not watch it… what a pity….he had lost a chance to dream…..its just not possible to watch a sunset and not dream.....

(all sunsets shot in pune)

"If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."

G K Chesterton

"Once i saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors and then retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper"

Adriaan Kortlandt

i'm nothing...i know...

Whenever I am in the lap of nature I feel fascinated like a small child….who has just entered a “mela” (a big fair with all those grand swings and giant wheels to enjoy), I enjoy the vastness and the expanse of sky, rivers, unending green stretches, mountains and everything there…I am overwhelmed by its beauty…...and there I know myself…slowly….the meaning of my existence…the more I give myself a thought…the more I seem small…like a mismatched patch in that entire surrounding…yes….i am too tiny a creature for this nature…however big I may have an ego….it all deflates there….in fact, you become a child….i feel, this mother nature loves me…and that’s why I am….i am there in her lap…and I shall do nothing to stop this flow of love….for I know…if ever she holds back my share…or if at all she gets hurt and is furious…I would be swayed to nowhere like a dust….i am nothing…I know…

(This is kass plateau near satara, around 125 km from pune, India)
(click the picture to look at those small creatures…)

wish i were a piece of rock...

This is kass plateau near satara, around 125 km from pune, india.we had been there for a shoot last week. It has vast beds of tiny wildflowers…they bloom while the monsoons are saying a bye…and are there for a few days, till they could feed from the moisture seeped in… visiting this plateau was an amazing experience…so much nature….in my reach….a very selfish feeling creeped into my mind…ahh…if I could possess it… a typical human thought…how foolish of me…why could’nt I understand…its all for me…a gift for all of us from God…seeing those flower beds our entire team went berserk…everybody wanted to have the maximum share…the flowers were so tiny that many of us (unknowingly) crushed a few flowers under their feet (just in enthu.)when one of our teammate warned us of what we were doing…he said, friends let the others who are late also enjoy this…I liked his concern….often we forget this…that’s why I say we are too selfish at heart(may be this too unknowingly)….any we shot for hours…and nobody seemed tired of it…wonder where from comes this energy…yeah…that’s nature…do you see that rock in that picture….i wish I were a piece of rock….

(for more pictures visit www.flickr.com/photos/sunder_iyer)