Green is an all time favorite color and Nancy’s photo challenge this week is a Green feature – Dark Green. So without any further ado, here goes:
Isn’t it nice and green? Even the water is green 🙂
Some light greens along with darker shades of green. These photos were taken at Botanical Garden at Shibpur, Howrah near Kolkata, India.
Thanks for visiting – hope you liked. Have a great day. 🙂
Cee’s Black and White photo challenge is all about things made by human beings. Interesting topic and quite spoiled for choice – for once 😉
Let me start by shedding some light on it:
Got your cup of tea? Okay let’s move on to the next one
A replica of the Taj Mahal at the Delhi Airport – gift wrapped for Christmas 😀
And that’s the Taj Mahal Hotel at Mumbai – pretty imposing isnt it?
Just next to it is the Gateway of India, a monument which overlooks the Arabian Sea.
How did you like the collection? Too many structures right? Hmm even I think so – how about if I sneak in a tree?
Relax! I am not breaking any rules – this too is man made by the one and only Nek Chand, at the Rock Gardens, Chandigarh. I was quite fooled by it and took me quite a while to accept it wasn’t real or alive. What about you?
Thanks for visiting and don’t forget to leave me a note.
Rock, Paper Scissors – Yep believe it or not that’s what this week’s err last week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme was!
Hmm, lemme see…rocks I can manage 😉
Too literal huh? Okay one more – something different
Like? Now for the tough one – Scissors
At a wedding venue, I caught sight of several decorators with scissors but it was tough to catch them in the act. And I am not even thinking of what the others thought of me clicking the behinds of unknown guys 😨😝
Ahh finally caught one in the act and those are paper roses! 😅
A bonus picture of the final finished decor. Not bad huh? Err I am not really sure if those are paper roses or plastic ones – but that’s my story and I am sticking to it 😉 😀
For readers of Moonshine, here's Chapter 104 and Calvin and Hobbes
I wish I was like Mark Twain who said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education”. But since I wasn’t as smart, I will settle for his other quote:
“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.“
The theme for the Daily Post Weekly Photo challenge is New Horizons. We are challenged to think ahead, perhaps make resolutions, or just express our future goals and targets.
As this year draws to a close and I complete just over a year of blogging, all I want to do is to be able to see things in a way I have never seen before and be able to give voice to unheeded thoughts and emotions that lie just below the surface, hover over the edges but are resolutely ignored or overlooked just because of a deeply ingrained need to conform to perceived expectations.
And also, write shorter sentences.
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” ~ Albert Einstein
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler
“To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.’ – Leonardo da Vinci
Thanks for visiting – have a great day 🙂
Thank It’s been a while since I participated in Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge. Funnily enough, that’s not because I didn’t have photos, but it’s because I was spoiled for choice 😀
Anyway enough of dithering and vacillating, off we go hand in hand 😉
Don’t miss the red shoes matching her red dress 😀
“We must begin our practice by walking the narrow path of simplicity, the hinayana path, before we can walk upon the open highway of compassionate action, the mahayana path.”
Chögyam Trungpa
“What you’re missing is that the path itself changes you.” ― Julien Smith, The Flinch
“You never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.” ― Tom Hiddleston
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
― Gautama Buddha, Sayings Of Buddha
Thank you for your company on my travels 🙂 Will be back soon for my usual virtual tours.
Traveling by road, these two caught my eye and somehow appealed to me. Surprising considering I generally focus on trees. I blame credit Cee 😉 😀
I wonder what it was? Though it reminds me of a missile (the one in my imagination) 😀
Poor thing looks exhausted and quite depressed doesn’t it?
For Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge 48
A visit to the beach is always relaxing 🙂
I envy how the seals can relax and doze off even while upright
Playgrounds are usually high-energy places but this one looks peaceful and relaxed. I was really tempted to try the see-saw 😀
These two boulders look as if they are relaxing against each other don’t they?
Akka Thangi Gudda (Sister Stones or Jealous Sisters) is a natural rock formation. It is a landmark on the main road to the temple town of Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India.
There are several stories associated with this rock formation. According to one of the most popular legends, the two stones were actually two sisters who bad-mouthed and ridiculed the beautiful town of Hampi. Angered, the reigning Goddess of Hampi cursed the two sisters and turned them into stones.
Have a relaxed week ahead 🙂
This week, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge – Musical Chairs was a tough nut to crack. I was quite resigned to not participating what with continuing net woes.
But I managed to pull it off – or did I?
At a roadside joint- nice colorful chairs. But lacks the thing, doesn’t it?
Guess who’s playing hide and seek or should I say musical chairs? 😀 Remember an earlier post – Cat-a-log? Well there was a repeat performance another day, but this time I extracted my pound of flesh. That is as much as I dared to get close – besides she had my sympathies. Even I am camera shy 😀
Now for some music! You may find this photo familiar – I had posted a picture of his in Glimpses of Durga Puja. But if you remember, he was playing a single drum, while here he is seen beating two drums and the hazy picture is because he was spinning around at top speed. Quite a mesmerizing performance that he continued despite a bleeding ankle.
A music performance at a traditional Tamil wedding. The Nadaswaram, a double reed wind instrument is among the world’s loudest non-brass acoustic instruments. The Nadaswaram (in the center) is considered to be very auspicious and is the key musical instrument at weddings and temples across southern India. It is usually played in pairs accompanied by a pair of drums called thavil.
In the backdrop is the image of Natraja – the Lord of Dance and pretty much everything – God of the gods – Lord Shiva.
Do let me know if I passed and thanks for visiting 🙂
This photo challenge is a toughie – Any Geometric Shape. Especially given my mathematical abilities 😉 Let me see what I can come up with – Cee has promised to be lenient and hope you are too 😀
Will this do? Some unidentifiable remains of the Diwali celebrations. Oh well…
Drum circles resting before the Durga Puja festivities.
Howzz that?
This one in black and white gives nice (geometrically) eerie feelings doesn’t it? 😀
Some straight lines from the Rock Garden – remember Junk Art? Yep the very same place.
More from the Rock Garden – take your pick of geometrical shapes of triangles, squares, rectangles, pentagons and hexagons. Can you find them? 😉
Thanks for visiting – any observations or favorites?
Ready for a peek through the window or at the window? Let’s take the bus first 🙂
There’s something about mountains and water – I am irresistibly drawn to them. This is taken from the window of a bus.
Traveling by car, we stopped at this roadside restaurant at an unearthly hour. Windows were being washed – doesn’t it look as if the water is washing away the colors of the flowers too?
This is a double window view – through the (transparent) window of the dining hall and of the reflective windows. Let’s hop on to a flight now 😉
To see another type of window – the gorgeous stained windows at St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague.
A typical small town railway station – Deoli perhaps? 😀
A glimpse of the kanwariyas from the train window. Kanwariyas are devotees of Lord Shiva who undertake this annual pilgrimage to fetch holy water from the Ganga to bathe the Lord who resides in their hometowns. If you look carefully, you can make out a colorful and decorated ‘burden’ on the shoulder of the devotees. That’s the kanwar – a pole, usually bamboo, with two pots hanging on each side for ease of carrying.
There is an interesting story behind this custom – I find Indian mythology fascinating and can’t get enough of it 🙂
Briefly, once, the Devas and Asuras (supernatural beings who represent good and bad respectively and are incidentally half-brothers i.e share the same father and mothers are sisters – all this happened when the earth had just begun to be populated) joined hands to churn the ocean to extract its hidden treasures, including Amrit or ambrosia. [On a side note, the churning of the ocean is believed to represent the process of self-analysis to enable oneself to move from the darkness of ignorance to the light of self-realization. Only when we overcome the mental poisons (of anger, greed, lust, ego) that pollute our psyche can we reach the real treasures that lie within us – and that self-realization is equivalent to Amrit.]
Anyway, coming back to the topic, when the sea was churned (another captivating story!), the first to be released was poison, which threatened to destroy the three worlds. Lord Shiva (God of the gods),stepped in. He drank the poison to save the world. But he didn’t swallow it. Instead, he held the poison in his throat, which turned blue – and hence Shiva is also known as Neelkanth or the Blue-throated One.
So powerful was the poison that even the Shiva was not unaffected. To ease His pain, the ten-headed Asura King Ravan (the primary villain of the epic Ramayana), Shiva’s greatest devotee, brought water from the holy Ganga on a kanwar to cool the Lord’s brow. Since then, every year devotees of Shiva walk hundreds of kilometers to bring water from the holy Ganga to anoint Shiva’s resident idol in their respective hometowns.
I do have a bit of a doubt though – Lord Shiva holds Ganga in his locks and is called Gangadhar so why would He need water from Ganga? I think Ravan just wanted to show off his devotion and concern to Shiva 😀
Oops that wasn’t very brief was it?
Hope you enjoyed looking through the window, have a look at Cee’s Challenge for some stunning photos.
Stories and more 