Deepa's Jottings

The morning sun shone through the trees as we entered Lalbagh today...The trees and the light together gave the effect of a painting!The light shone on these flowers...this little squirrel:this lady with her morning newspaper:It turned the sky blue as a backdrop for this magnificient Brahminy Kite:and in spite of this white Asian Paradise Flycatcher trying to hide in the foliage, shone enough for me to take a photograph!Truly, Lalbagh is a magical place of light and life....It was a wonderful Christmas; we might not have celebrated the birth of the Son, but we certainly enjoyed the birth of the…

The 919 km cycling trip across the Nilgiris, the Tour Of Nilgiris event got off to a flying start early this morning.In the mist, some of the organizers held the flag aloft:And then that flag was used to start off the trip:The cyclists set off to cheering and applause from the gathered crowd...Here's Sukhdev, the youngest rider (he is riding under medical supervision), with his family:The message these riders are carrying is that cycling is a great way to get from A to B, no matter what the distance between A and B may be!For more pictures click here Let's…

Right in the middle of the rush and hustle of St Mark's Road, I spotted it...a "gem of purest ray serene"...but not in the "unfathom'd caves of ocean", but right in the centre of this city of ours.Surrounded by its garden, shaded by its trees, it looked an oasis of unexpected peace in the middle of the explosion of glass, chrome, steel ...and traffic...that is St Mark's Road today.It was like suddenly having a little window opening into the gracious past...I stood for a while admiring the beauty of the building, and then walked on, knowing that I could share…

The Ragigudda Temple, Jayanagar 9th Block, is celebrating the Hanumath Jayanthi (birthday of Hanuman or Anjaneya) from the 3rd of December. The area around the temple has been cordonned off to traffic and several stalls have sprung up, making the area a colourful, bustling one now.One man was setting up his bookstall as I walked past:at another bookstall, a policeman on duty was having a look at the books:There were plastic toys (probably Chinese-made ones) for sale:So were clothes:An incredible heap of ceramic items:Some people were setting out template rangoli-pattern plates:When the powder was put through these plates, these beautiful…

I was walking down Jayanagar 9th block when I saw this really beautiful work of art. Its function is to keep people from bumping into the glass, but the artist in the person entrusted with the job was not satisfied with just drawing a cross across the glass. Art..and aesthetics...show up in the most unlikely places... who would think of the glass pane of a building under construction as a canvas for someone's imagination? ⊕

The Valley School area, just off Kanakapura Road, is a beautiful spot, retained as a wilderness by the Valley School authorities,and it's a great way of escaping into the outdoors, even on a weekday morning!The unexpected trip, with three friends, proved to be a real treat, with the light at its warmest, and all the birds (except of course the evil few...more about that later) actually posing in a calm and composed way for us....Here are my friends, C and R, clicking away to glory, and the glory was, the grasses lit up by the morning sun:We were not able…

After a long time, I went to attend a concert in the centre of town. Shankar Mahadevan, Sivamani, Zakir Hussain and Selvaganesh were playing/singing, and it would be interesting, I thought. I did, also, get some nice images...But, I reckoned, without the truly terrible traffic jam, that held us up all the way from the Johnson Market signal to Richmond Road, at which point, we got off the auto and just started walking towards Museum Road, where the concert was being held at the St Joseph Boys' School grounds.The wisdom of holding such a popular event in the middle of…

Those who looked up into the sky yesterday had a smile on their faces...because the night had a smile upon its face, too.  For those who want more details, click hereI was lucky to quickly get this image on my little Canon S3, but by the time we got our DSLR's and set up a tripod, the cloud cover ensured that there was no photograph possible! ⊕

It was an unusual way to end a predominantly techie meet...the FOSS.in (Free and Open Source Software annual meet which happens at the J N Tata Auditorium) closed with a keynote address by Kalyan Varma, who is well-known in software,photography, and wildlife circles.The tagline for this year's meet was, "Talk is cheap. Show me the code"!After the "workouts" discussions and reports were over, the well-"connected" audience settled down for the keynote address:Kalyan, about whom I have written in Citizen Matters here and here , put the finishing touches to his presentation:He then talked about "Free World:Sharing and Caring".He started out…

I regularly visit this lady cobbler in J P Nagar 3rd Phase:I am always impressed by her cheerful, smiling demeanour,and struck up a long conversation with her today. Her name is Mariamma, and she hails from a village near Tiruvannamalai.She says she has four  children. "They are all grown up, and are working," she says. Her husband passed away a few years ago. Though there is usually a stigma attached to the profession of a cobbler, she did not let this deter her, and plies her trade happily. She says her little stall keeps her occupied, and keeps her from…