Spring-time Rains

"And when it rains as thus in the Spring, the bountiful boughs, in gratitude, shower their flowers and the moistening earth, in joy, exudes petrichor!"

The Campus looks enlivened again today! It is the season of Spring and the flowering trees have been holding beautiful inflorescence, like an adornment embellishing their curvy branches and bark. Until yesterday, the flowers reigned bright and ebullient, bathed by the ample sunlight and constantly pecked by the overjoyed songbirds of the Spring. The abundance of the flower laden trees and the joyous Spring-time displays mellowed the harshness of the heat. The floral aroma of different kinds mixed in the sultry hot air of March and April and made a campus walk enjoyable even on a hot afternoon.

The one thing missing was the coolness of the campus air. And the Spring-time rains came down and brought with them all that coolness and a lot more

*********

Spring-time rains, in the campus lanes
Tap a little tune, on my window panes

They gather some grey, on a dusky day
And cast a cuddly cheer, on my curling way

The flowers on show, on the big burly bough
Fall and float with glee, down as they go

Sieving through the leaves, the frivolous weaves
A spell of jaunty love, of the smitten and the thieves

This flirty stealing breeze, swirls with lovely ease
To kiss and pluck the flowers, and sway them in its seize

Such flowers of Spring, sheathe with zesty zing
The soil with hues and nectar, as the passerines sing
  
The gushing gust, girdles with lust
The girth of the trunk, that catches it first

Feathery floating pods, with wings or curly cords
Swing in tizzy turns, when the wind so wily prods

Drops skim the cheeks, when the canopy leafy leaks
Swinging with the singing gale, the eager branch now creaks 

Twigs tiny tumble, bigger branches bumble,
Dancing on the roof, slump down and they crumble

Misty air settles, Midst the freshly bathed petals
Joy flows in crazy musings, and steaming hot kettles

Spring-time rainy days, of fragrance and lovely haze
Of songs and silly laughter, and walks on campus ways


Vindy
12 April 2015

May

Mango my mouth, Mohur my mind, Magic my MAY!

Blue spillage!

I still feel like going berserk again, like we did day before yesterday, to scream and jump with joy with no one and nothing to stop us! So satisfying has been the coveted win that the mind refuses to stop smiling with gratitude and happiness. And so everything around feels so jubilant and colourful and wonderful and everything to feel happy about!

Add to that the festive occasion of the new-year, home-made sweets, festival feast and the start of spring, and one surely has a treasure trove of fun and happiness. In such a joyous mood, I picked up an 'unused from 1988' pack of oil-colour tubes and decided to paint anything that came to my mind. Since it was the first time I was using oil as the medium, I didn't know (and still don't know) the technicalities/techniques involved and decided to do it just with my fingers. I certainly felt a kid-like joy doing this painting :D

Splash all the hues! And Bring on the Blue!

-Vindy

On The Go...

(Sometime around the end of Sharad rutu, early Dec 2009)

Early mornings, now-a-days, are slightly chilly, as if the waiting winter were slowly crawling upon me. With the weather Gods going crazy and all confused this season, winter seems to have resolved to put things back into their place and restore the familiar order in earnest. And so, with no more surprises expected and as a meek acknowledgement to the increasing cold, my reluctance at shedding my blanket and shrug out of my bed has increased in proportion; with that the repeated attempts of my mother to wake me up and get me moving and to my office; and so have come out my sweaters and the black Peter England coat. The winter giggles all along at me as I finally manage to hit the pedal. Me and my poor friend, who must have bore the cold brunt all night in the open, set about gulping distances by circumferences.

My friend is sent through violent shocks and jerks by the few metres of kuchcha road, and so am I with him; awaking both of us from the stiffness and dullness of the incomplete slumber. The landscape plummets down in front of us pulling down with it the quiet houses and farms, before the mountains far away lift it up towards the sky. They aren't very far away though, what with they almost filling up your sight and their essence percolating through your senses and soul. They surely do strike a pleasant, magical chord, almost enthusing a gladdening, familiar scent of the mountains all around you and within you. The winter, however, has played a beautiful trick on these harmless humps on the earth. It has brought all its mist clogging down, thick and dense, under the mountains to stay there, such that one can't see through them. The mighty mountains, as a result, appear to have been lifted nonchalantly up by the indolent congregation of the dense mass of vapour. It looks enchanting, I tell you. The sun's slowly peeking above the horizon, almost with a yawn, sending down warm rays to mix with and glisten the white mass of mist. If only I had my camera with me! Where, however, would I capture the smell and the cold feel of the winter that's tingling its way through me, perching on my nosetip, sprawling on my ears and setting into my eyes?

I pedal further down the now smooth road, breezing down the straights and around the bends. My numb fingers try to control my overjoyed friend. He is sprinting across, ignoring the undulations on tar. His bell calls are met with happy responses from his chums; the sparrows, bulbuls, mynas, crows, munias, shrikes and others and that's the cause of his joy. We pass the Krishna temple smiling our greetings to him. He smiles back at us, serene and healing as ever.

At the station, I bid a goodbye to my friend, promising to return at dark. I am amongst people now; my kind. The early morning crowd includes many youngsters, high-school students to college going teenagers. Everybody is geared up for the cold weather. From rural folks in plain dhoti and stained shirts to milk vendors and vegetable vendors with their huge cans and baskets to office going people like me to the teenagers, the station is buzz with activity and conversations. Herds are what I feel I am seeing along the length of the station and the faces wearing multitudes of emotion appear like ruminating on the daily dose of conversation and gossip. The newspaper guy is in the thick of action and everybody's more than eager to grab his/her copy. I always walk half the platform towards the far end to climb the train there. There's no reason for that, just a preference. I have a few minutes before the local train would arrive allowing me to take an easy stroll across the platform in my comfortable canvas pair.

My hand brushes my warm coat at its sides as I walk. I try to keep my head steady, but my fickle, flickering eyes give away my curiosity. I can't help but notice the girls whispering to each other. I cast a glance on the group and my eyes are held captive by a complimenting pair, pure, black and mesmerizing (as Onkar says, I think in my mind :-)). What follows is a strange status quo as far as expressions on both the faces are concerned as against a distracting and confusing hustle inside, behind the falsely held expressions. Both the individuals stuck in the deadlock become exceedingly wary of every movement and each sinew asks permissions before it can twitch. Intervened by a conscious mind now, my involuntary walking and poise suddenly assume proportions of a foreground process requiring extensive-complex-real time-stimuli based-decision making algorithms. Where the conscious mind sets in, I lose the fluidity of my sub-conscious self. She follows suit and her posture stiffens laying bare her own susceptible processes which have evidently gone awry by a little disturbance. Until my friend, ‘inertia’, thankfully carries me ahead and beyond the threshold distance disengaging the bond, we both go through a strange metastable state in our minds which can neither be defined as outright enjoyable nor as entirely uneasy. The effect sweeps across the group. Every individual goes through the brief wave trying to win attention and pleasantly sail with the occasion if it happens. Depending on various sensory parameters (primarily audio-visual) and their weights in position and time, any two individuals may get connected or there might be a sequence of multiple short connections. Let me accept that this is indeed a natural sociological behaviour in animals and the aforesaid events and effects form the normal protocol in mortal beings like me. Anyway, the point is that you feel for it. It is almost like an instinct driven by the irresistible laws of attraction and which renders every post-adolescence individual predictable and helpless in such situations. It pleases the heart and rides the mind and there’s not much one can do about it except wait for time to take care of and tone down this instinct, if it ever does. Besides, since I am no Yogi, I often follow the ritual and enjoy the uneasy transients and muse in the pleasant feelings that blot my heart as the experience trails. And so, I do the ritual today again. And boy! Am I not pleased! She looks beautiful, doesn’t she!

- Vindy :)

Lightning experiments

It was happening again yesterday. Heavenly flares and flashes were lighting up the backdrop behind that hillock and the immediate neighbourhood. Akshay came running to me, bursting with excitement at the spurts of illumination which were creating magnificent, isolated silhouettes of the hillock, the clouds and the tall receiver station, in an otherwise dark sky. As I broke into a beaming smile and let go a rapturous 'tokk', I realised that despite seeing this almost every other day here, at Talegaon, it still evoked a wonderous feeling. Far away, beyond the hillock and the mountain lines perhaps, a possessed clan of clouds and the crazy earth must be playing with their charges!

I have never seen before lightning with such regularity as I have seen in Talegaon. The location of this place between mountains on many sides and more importantly the vastness of perceptible space seem to make this possible. Unlike a metropolitan, where visibility is limited by structures and their immense density, this place is not that badly cluttered and not so populated as yet. Hence our terrace affords a lavish view across the countryside right until the horizon which in this case is largely undulated by mountainous hunches. And not just on one side, but in almost all the directions. The feeling, when I spend evenings sitting on the water tank at the top of my building, is akin to those I have had on numerous treks; a view spanning the earth as much as it could!  When I lift may gaze slightly skyward I see myriad and plenty clouds and realize their movements. Sample this – In cities, either there are clouds or there are no clouds; either it thunders and throws lightning or doesn't; it either rains or it doesn't. But here, I can see dense clouds, not here, but a few kilometers away over that mountain; I can sense the rains to my right and sunshine in front of me; I can sit down here without fear and still watch in awe furious lightning striking somewhere in a distance! I can sense nature at work in its various forms at different places at the same time, as if it were running numerous parallel processes, all of them distinctly visible to me.
 

Somewhere along this experience I thought I should try to capture images of lightning. There are, anyway, many spectacular images of this phenomenon already available across web and other literature, and still I wanted to experiment with my camera. Although this was a long cherished idea, I thought I had good chances of getting a good result here. I started with the first noticeable rains of this monsoon and have made a few attempts since. With a digital camera like mine, it is pretty simple. Trying to click at precisely that moment when lightning strikes is obviously not a very wise option. One might instead think of utilizing the features in a good enough camera. All you need is a fairly prolonged shutter speed (which means keeping the shutter open for atleast a few seconds) and loads of patience. Based on the other conditions, one may have to adjust other settings in the camera, like keeping the aperture small when exposing for a long time to reduce the insurge from other areas in the frame. With a long exposure, a steady surface for the camera is advisable while capturing the image. The lightning, if it strikes in exactly that window of time when shutter's open, is bright enough to create a reasonable impression, as also to leave the rest of the frame fairly illuminated. The settings may have to be adjusted bearing these things in mind. Patience is a very important trait in this pursuit and that can convert the matter of luck to a matter of time, before you get your desired result.
 

A few days ago, I felt, I finally got a satisfactory image. Hence this post :P
 

I would like to share some of the images of lightning that I have captured till now. Apart from scaling the images, I have worked around, slightly, with these images in GIMP, mainly modifying the picture curve to reduce unwanted illumination from lightning, of adjoining areas. (But believe me, the pictures look equally good with that illumination) 

The first one was captured on June 11, 2010. This one struck right behind the Harneshwar tekdi and I captured it from my balcony. Since it was pitch dark, the camera couldn't focus well enough.
 

The second one was taken on September 28, 2010. This lightning was snapped over the trademark mountain near Talegaon, around which Indrayani meanders. This lightning seems to be a cloud­-cloud discharge. I captured this from my terrace.

 The third one was photographed on November 21, 2010. This one's similar to the second in location. However I got really lucky with (wonder of wonders!) three lightning strikes in the captured frame. I was literally jumping with joy and singing merrily for the rest of the day!
 

Here's some of the exif data for this image if anyone's interested.
Exposure Time: 13 sec.
ISO Speed Rating: 200
Flash Fired: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode.
Metering Mode: Center­Weighted Average
Exposure Program: Manual
Focal Length: 9.9 mm
 

One interesting capture in this above image is the region in the vicinity of the mountain surface and the tail of the rightmost lightning. The air in that region seems to have been blown away or vastly influenced by the lightning strike. I wonder what the effect actually is! (Maybe related to streamers...or...impact..or..anyway) Here's that zoomed part.
 

Lalit had written a very interesting and informative post on lightning and related observations in his blog some time ago. Here's the link for that article.

- Vindy :)

उत्तरायणं

(The Sun completed his northward journey for this year on 16 July 2010. Here are some pictures from his journey. The snaps have been taken from my balcony)

The April Spring

I behold the nature's palette,
And my heart so yearns to write
It's this spring that blots my mind,
And drapes me in delight!

With its gifts of hues enchanting,
That the petals wear and beam
And in sprightly waves they shimmer,
Like my silly eyes would dream
It's those happy hundred hues,
That fill me and my sight
It's this spring of swinging colours,
That drapes me in delight!

The warm air seethes with passion,
To pluck the naked petals
Their fragrance wets the shadow,
Where the floral sheath now settles
I feel the silken layer,
With steps so soft and light
It's this spring of tender carpets,
That drapes me in delight!

The rays embrace the country,
Enthusing life and mirth
And lend all warmth and verve,
To the fertile rufous earth
Our plains and lofty mountains,
Bask in the sunshine bright
It's this spring of sprouting hope,
That drapes me in delight!

The restless birds of plumage
Call for their love to mate
And flit through cups of nectar,
With not a while to wait
On the wings of gleeful sunbirds,
My heart too takes a flight
It's this spring of love and laughter,
That drapes me in delight!

Clouds are too sparse and scattered
Their caravan's yet too far
And so the sky so blue and smooth,
Sails sans a single scar
The sun saunters and splashes,
Shades of orange at twilight
It's this spring that sings in silence
That drapes me in delight!

Then the night of moonlight murmurs,
As we sit on the easy chair
And we watch all the moonlit silence,
And sigh at the pleasant air
Upon two eyes so grateful,
Maidens of sleep alight
It's this April spring tonight,
That drapes me in delight!

-Vindy :)

Some Spring snaps from IISc taken last year...

A Joy Forever

My eyes pray and pry at that swerve on the way
Where, when and why did its wings take away,
From the forlorn catenary,
Shorn off its lovely cherry
My lovely kingfisher that made my lovely day!

Or the damsel in those auburn, swinging in the breeze
Spilling forms of beauty, with the twitch of every crease
In that smitten gallery,
In my 7:53
Was her maddening spell of beauty, that would never ever cease

That monsoon of our life, when we all set out together
Midst the wafting scent of spices, blending in the weather
And lo! The clouds did a shutter,
And flung us in a flutter
That wraps me still in smiles, as the clouds stay to gather

Before the shrine of stone, when I bathed under the skies
And my joy sang in tears, from the corners of my eyes
By two little stones of hail,
My heart was in a sail,
Shower from HIS eden, all HIS bundles of surprise!

Such moments filled with honey, of an old sweet flavour
That lingers on the mind and leaves you never ever
From the bounty of the nature,
A person or a creature,
All HIS things of beauty! All a joy forever!

-Vindy :)

John Keats was spot on when he said, 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'. Recently, on my daily route to my office, I saw a beautiful kingfisher perched nicely on a transmission line at one of the turns. The sight was so unexpected and such lovely that it astonished me and ever so pleasantly. The kingfisher is now so firmly etched in my mind that I look out for it at the same turn everytime I pass from there; and the smile on my face is unmistakable.

This took me back to all such things of beauty which have struck me out of the blue and stayed with me, for me to experience them again and again, whenever I think of them. This poem is a culmination and a collection of a few of such experiences and a celebration of the fact that the small things of beauty that the Providence has bestowed upon us are indeed a joy forever.

The first stanza talks about the kingfisher. The second is about a beautiful girl I had once seen in my daily local train, during my engineering days. 7:53, as some of you must have guessed, is the timing of the local train at my station, which also doubles, as an unwritten rule/convention, as an alias for it. This sighting is much celebrated in our circles, much due to the nature of description I had provided to my friends. That face is still vivid in my mind and yes, she was beautiful!

In the third stanza I recollect, with great fondness, the surreal experience in Madikere in that June of 2007. Me and my friends had gone to this place, in the western ghats and were enjoying a zingy, rainy evening in the 'Raja's Seat'. Looking down the valley, we saw only the moving white mass of clouds. And all of a sudden, the clouds cleared for a brief few seconds, as if opening a shutter, showing a clear, breathtaking sight of the valley below. We were exhilarated and had jumped and shouted like small kids, out of glee.

The fourth stanza speaks about IISc and the main building there, which I call the shrine of stone. On one of the evenings on the campus, when it was raining mad, I decided to go to the main building and enjoy a drench myself. It rained as if it was raining for me and I felt the whole existence around me was singing and jiving with me. Then, out of nowhere (actually down the sky, I know), came two little hailstones, one after the other and fell on the stone portico under Tata's statue. I instantly picked each and popped them cold and happy. The rains, hailstones, thee feelings running inside and everything around was amazing. It is one of my best experiences, when I had cried out of sheer jubilation and the overwhelming enormity of the place, time and the environment around me.

I realise that whenever I visit any temple, say like Tirupati which I visited recently, the brief sight of the Lord's form gives a similar immense sense of joy and satisfaction. In fact, this might be the feeling that has taught me the essence of joy. In a world of rationals, the small things that don't find their reasons and results give us some pleasure to treasure for long and forever.