photography

In the ongoing Covid crisis, accessible green, open spaces are a dream for many city dwellers. And yet, there is burgeoning work on the profound positive impacts of urban green spaces on the physiological and psychological health of city dwellers. Despite being polluted, dammed, encroached and thwarted, rivers continue to be free and open public places. Today more than ever, rivers, riverbanks, floodplains and bridges are an invaluable resource for any Indian City. This momentous service is ignored in our riverfront development projects, metro and road plans and city development plans which encroach upon rivers. Green, open riverbanks in India…

It was like a rare alignment of the planets: several factors come together to pull me out of my usual Ranga Shankara ambit for watching a play. I had not been to visit Bangalore International Centre, which opened a while ago in Domlur; Bangalore Little Theatre, as part of their "VP 80" festival, was staging "Credit Titles"; the play, written by Vijay Padaki, whose 80th birthday the festival marks, was based on a story by Vinod Vyasulu, an eminent economist whom I've known for a long time, as our daughters share a cose friendship dating from 1988. And last but…

This is butterfly season; you must have noticed these beautiful creatures fluttering past you, in the gardens and even on the roads, everywhere in the city. If you observe them carefully, you will find many moments of drama and tension! One lesser-known fact about butterflies is that they hatch out of the pupa (it's called eclosing) as fully mature adults; something I had to think about and accept, being only used to a progression of living beings from infanthood onwards to adulthood. Because of this fact, sometimes, male butterflies try to mate with a female as soon as she's emerged…

On our way for a quick birding trip at Basapura Lake, we were crossing Bommanahalli when our attention was caught by a car-pillar. We quickly stopped to take a photo, and when I put it up on my FB page, I got several details....this is a park, with an RTO (Regional Traffic Office) nearby, where people come to take driving tests. It's just referred to as a "Car Park", which I thought a nice pun! My friend Vidhya Sundar says there are many creations here, made from waste. She sent me this photograph of the plaque which gives the names…

For a while now, the world of insects and spiders has begun to be revealed to everyone, through the medium of photography. As the micro-sized creatures are captured through macro photography, stunningly weird-looking creatures appear on social media feeds, making us feel that these, surely, are beings from a different planet! No, these creatures are not "out of this world" at all. It's just that their tiny size prevents us from seeing them in detail. Another reason why we know little about them is that they are often so well camouflaged, as leaves, bark, or other natural phenomena, that we…

A Mushroom... (or toadstool) is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. In this post, I'd like to share the variety of mushrooms I've been seeing in the monsoon season, in and around the city!   The terms "mushroom" and "toadstool" go back centuries and were never precisely defined, nor was there consensus on application. Between 1400 and 1600 AD, the terms mushrom, mushrum, muscheron, mousheroms, mussheron, or musserouns were used. Puffball Mushroom Black Puffball Many species of mushrooms seemingly appear overnight, growing or expanding rapidly. This phenomenon is the…

Birds know no borders; the ones that we go to see in Karnataka fly off and can be seen once we cross over into Kerala! So when the birders of Kasargod announced the second Kidoor Bird Fest, to celebrate both the first sighting of the Orange-breasted Green Pigeon Photo credit: Sarala Jeevanthi Gamage and the birthday of Dr Salim Ali, the noted ornithologist, it was clear that this would be a productive birding weekend. The participants and the organizers. The festival was a bigger event than it was in 2017, because this time, birders from all over Karnataka (see featured…

I don't find it necessary to go to jewellery shops, as Nature provides me plenty of jewels! All the photographs below are from local gardens in Bangalore. Do I want pearls for a necklace? Here are the pearls of the Sterculia foetida, locally called the Jungli Badam. The monsoon season, or even a dewy morning, provides so many diamonds. Here are hundreds,sprinkled over a spider web: One of the bugs we see often is, indeed, called the Jewel Bug. It appears in rainbow glory, with a metallic sheen, on top of our most common plants and weeds: And when the…

On our way back from our nature/birding outing, I suddenly caught sight of a beetle and a snail, on a tiny twig. Seeing these two together isn't very common, so I decided to photograph the scene. I then realized that what was going on was an attack, and a major war! The beetle, like all ground beetles, likes a snail diet, and was attacking this one. This was an amazing drama that we watched for a while. The beetle was attacking the snail, which produced the froth in self-defence. Whenever the beetle approached the snail, it would get caught in…

Sometimes, the juxtaposition of two things strikes the eye, as it did when I saw this gentleman, along with a book that a young lady had left open on another table. The caption occurred to me at once. As he got up, the gentleman called the attention of yet another man to the glasses he'd left behind when moving to another table. Such casual helpfulness, somehow, made me feel very happy! So much to see and observe even on a short visit to a Darshini (this one was Coffee Thindi in Jayangar 4th T Block)