G . O . A .

26 Years Old, Reborn

Got my 26yr old PENTAX ME Super SLR repaired finally. It had stopped working a few months ago. According to the camera repairman who repaired it, it will easily take snaps for another 20 years... provided they still make film...

Thinking about it, we can hardly expect today's 'hi-tech' SLR cameras to last so long.

Found this old advertisement about ME Super:

PENTAX is virtually unknown to our generation. Especially because it joined the digital camera bandwagon pretty late. They make great cameras even now but they are yet to learn to make great publicity and marketing...

photograph courtesy
William Eric McFadden

And Long After the Trip...

It took me so long to get the slide roll scanned...

You can see Everyman in the blue shirt here, near the bike...



The cool shade of the tree was inviting...

Spotted this lone bird flitting from tree to tree...

Hmmm... I am going through that phase again when I don't feel like blogging for a while... Just finished with an important part of a project and now I want to concentrate on a little travelling! This 16th I will be in Goa! :-)

Escape from Cubicle

(Friday, Oct 28th)

I look longingly at the world beyond the confines of this cubicle. The world outside beckons. I conspire and plot to make a break... this weekend...

(Saturday, Oct 29th)

I and Everyman set upon a bike ride into the Western Ghats. This time there was no monsoon. The sky was blue and the hills were beginning to dry. The waterfall that was roaring was now down to a trickle, with tiny fish stranded in little pools awaiting a dry grave... The grass still retained some of the green, now a more yellowish shade.... It was still beautiful!

Misson Accomplished!!! :-) :-) :-)

Entanglement

Wondering what to post, stumbled upon this one from an old folder...

Three-day Weekend

This three-day weekend was a relatively quiet one. On Sunday morning we went up the hills down the street and sat under the shade of a tree, watching the world below. But the most beautiful thing was the morning sun peeping from between the branches, and the blue sky with cotton clouds drifting above us.... there was only silence, interrupted by the leaves rustling in the wind and the occasional bird call...

...and my camera decided to do a little posing too! ;-)

She

She came from a land far, far away...

Long Term Relationship

She is not high maintenance. She doesn't drink too much. Nor does she smoke too much. She has the right vibes. We love going places together. We have been through all the ups and downs... together. It's been nearly 3 years now since we started our journey...and I am loving every mile of it! :-)

Just Kidding

Had a blast photographing the kids of the neighbourhood! For once I did not mind using a flash...

Boot Up

Thinking 'out of the shoes'... :-)

Sunrise Under Construction

Wind Chimes

My fascination for wind chimes and lace curtains might never end! :-)

Back to Mulshi

I was almost decided that I won't blog for a really long time. But just couldn't resist sharing this.

Was back at Mulshi and fell in love with the place all over again...

Three Sides

"There are always three sides to a story, your side, the other side and the truth." -Anon.

Shadows

Serendipity

Our conversations haven't really changed. We still fall down laughing so hard that my stomach hurts and my eyes get tears... we get the weirdest and wildly funny ideas when we get together! After all the laughing, we talked about how little kids call us 'uncle' now and only that reminds us of our biological age. Otherwise, we still feel like we are just out of school. Not that we shirk resposibilities! :-)

My long time friend since my engineering days AK, had finally come to Pune like we had always planned... even though I had lately stopped thinking of it as a possibility...

We went to our friendly neighbour PK's house to play carrom board. I told her that he knows Marathi. They started conversing in Marathi when PK realised that he has a different accent. The place in which AK lives was mentioned and immeditely PK's mom said that one of their old family friends Mr.S lives there.

Later, back home, AK asked us, "Does she have an elder brother called A?"."Yes, but how do you know?", we asked. "Because my dad's name is S too and we knew a family in Nashik (when I was in Kindergarten) who had the same surname as PK!!"

Yes! PK turned out to be his childhood friend and their parents were great friends too. They had lost touch many many years ago...

Twenty years later, he got a new job, moved to a new place, stayed at his friend's place, met a neighbour who turned out to be the same kid he used to play with when they lived in some other town!!!

What are the odds of that happening??

Cloud 9

This is the last of the mulshi series... I am bored of them...

How Green is the Valley

Went to Thamini ghat (and fell sick the following week which is why I could not blog for a while) and had an amazing time... it was truly a drive in the clouds.... my camera got so wet in the rain but I could not resist taking these snaps... my camera is still not working :-(

Everyman tags me...

Tagged by Everyman and oops, even by Aparna as I found out today!!

Now, I am sure that there is an unwritten rule that I don't have to write 12 wierd things just because of this!!! ;-)

6 Weird Things About Me:

1) I don't drink tea

2) I don't drink coffee. I do sometimes drink cold coffee, get high on caffeine, and end up sleepless late into the night...

3) I have absolutely no idea if someone is pulling my leg or not most of the time... this has been the case for the last 3 years and looks like still will be...

4) At a stationery shop I have a tough time trying to overcome the temptation of buying stuff I don't need. I feel this uncontrollable urge to buy all the little notebooks, markers, crayons and sketchbooks and.... the list is endless. Yes, I love fountain pens!!! The feeling of the pen nib effortlessly gliding over the paper gives me a high!!

5) I have decided not to have a TV ever in my house! I wonder what my future partner will have to say about this!! But I have alternate ideas for entertainment like a projection system... so, if you are reading this honey, don't worry! ;-)

6) I am obsessed with this place since the first time I saw it more than 2 years ago and am determined to capture it in all it's moods...

Now I am tagging ILLUSIONAIRE , alice in wonderland , Silent Eloquence (so what if Aparna has already done that??), Blue White Gold , raghu, and Liklasa .

I was eager to post my snaps taken in Thamini Ghat, but anyway, had to get rid of this tag you see... :-)

Purple Thoughts

"Why do we talk only about humans going to heaven? These little flowers gave so much beauty to their world during their brief existence, maybe more than what some of us humans could ever hope to give... will these plants be found in heaven now that they are long gone?"

Srirangapatna2

Well, here is the second installment of the Srirangapatna snaps...

I took another chance to take the same scene, with another camera, with a different field of view...

Inside one of the temples... I was wondering if the pujari will object to my wielding a camera... it was too small to be noticed ;-)

We came late in the morning and lost all the morning colors to the harsh sunlight... no wonder these snaps look colourless...


Then we sat with feet in the water... those are my mom's feet...


And back at the parking lot... hey, who moved the cycle??

Srirangapatna

Visited Srirangapatna on my last day in Mysore for now... on the way to the banks of Cauvery, the fields had their own charm...


...and at the parking lot... all that was there was this cycle! :) Hey Bem, check this out when you go there! :-)
I will post the snaps taken beside Cauvery later...
Right now a long journey back to Pune awaits me tomorrow...

Mysore Sky

Aaaah.... the wide open skies! No highrises, no smoke.... only sky...
...used a 2Megapixel Canon Powershot S200...
The same shot with watercolor, artistic filter in Photshop CS:

Cabin Gets New Coat to Avoid Demolition!

From Our Special Correspondent,
Edge-of-Universe,

According to reliable sources (me!) , the cabin at the Edge-of-Universe has been given an 'unprecendented' shade of freezing blue and raging red. It seems this sudden change in color was brought about as a pre-emptive measure against the impending demolition of this little structure by big bad burly builders who have no bussiness but to be on a crazy construction spree around the Edge-of-Universe. The painting seems to be an assertion that this place is still alive.

Apparently, the little cabin is not being spared of the real estate boom Edge-of-Universe is in the midst of, right now. A gravel road has been laid right up to about 10 feet from the doorstep of this little cabin (which actually, looks quite out of this world!). Cabin lovers around the world are scandalized by this new development and are woving to do everything they can to stop the demolition of the cabin, as soon as they find out where it actually exists. Some cabin lovers are speculating that they might also wait till the real estate bubble bursts after which the construction of concrete monsters might just stop coming up.

Our alert special correspondent, after the rain on saturday, expected a clear blue sky on sunday morning and went to the epicenter of this crisis to take some pictures. Our special correspondent in his own words: 'It's a cool place to hang out on a sunday morning, duuude!'

Now that we have already given you the news, it is now 'BROKEN' news. If we have more breaking news, watch this space! ;-)



[OK, seriously, this thing has been repainted. And the markings have been made for what looks like a building complex that might come up soon. It's days ARE numbered. :-( ]