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Saudade

  • Dec. 6th, 2009 at 10:27 AM
saudade, n., Portuguese: a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. -A. F. G. Bell, as quoted in The Untranslatables, by C. J. Moore.

I read this word in a bookstore in Oxford and did the mental equivalent of pumping my fist in the air, because that's it. I've tried to explain this to people - about, say, I know one wouldn't want to live in the forties because the forties were a sexist racist homophobic oh-I-know-let's-nuke-Japan! mess; but all the same I'd really like to walk into a photograph of the forties and live there. Everyone looks so happy! - because they're smiling for the camera. The shutter clicked, and then Judy turned to Joe and snarled, "You're stepping on my foot." And Joe smiled his confident quarterback smile and ground her toes down just a bit more before he moved his foot.

And I know that; but I still believe in the photographs.

Incidentally, I found this word right after I went to the Steampunk exhibit - and Steampunk is an example of saudade if there ever was one.

Goggles and steampunk iPod. You know you want them. )

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Sun playing truant at Ragihalli

  • Dec. 6th, 2009 at 3:53 PM
I saw, on the bngbirds egroup, that someone called

R. Padmanabhan, a doctoral student at IIT Madras

....who belongs to the Madras Naturalist Society, had asked if anyone could go birding with him to the Bannerghatta Forest area. To me, this is like someone asking if I want chocolate. I promptly emailed him, and this morning, he came with three friends of his who were going for the first time. (Of them, it turned out that Sandhya was my daughter's junior at Sacred Hearts School, and has been reading my blog.)

Yesterday at Bheemannakuppe was FRY day not Saturday, as the temperature was uncomfortably hot...so, naturally, today was chilly and it was so misty that it took quite an hour or so before the birds on the Ragihalli route even woke up!

So while I was waiting....I took the birders:


sandhya padmanabhan kavita ? 061209


The sun was in bed, too, on a fine mattress of mist:


ragihalli scenery 061209

It was rather reluctant to come out:


ragihalli sunrise 061209


And even when it did, it had fine veils of mist over it, like a shy woman covering her modesty with filmy cloth :


ragihalli mist 061209


Mist may make for lousy bird photography...but the scenery does make me misty-eyed!

The Black-Winged Kite

  • Dec. 6th, 2009 at 4:44 AM
The

BLACK-WINGED KITE

(earlier called the Black-Shouldered Kite, which I think is more accurate)

is easily one of the most handsome common accipiters in the Bangalore outskirts....

You can see the black shoulders clearly as it lands on the insulators of the power cables:


bw kite landing on insulator 051209


this kite flies itself )


But back it came, to land on the wire again:


bw kite landing 051209

More photos from our Bheemanna Kuppe Kere trip (thank you Sangeetha!) on Saturday....coming up as soon as I can upload them...! We were 4 NTP members in a group of 7.

Here are two different worlds.

one is broad, gray, cold, free, wild, lonely, beautiful )

The other is an interior world. It's warm, intimate--but a little strange.

When I was very young I used to take a hand mirror and point it up at the ceiling. Then I'd look in it and walk around the house, as if I was walking on the ceiling and the whole house was upside down.

here is a kitchen in upside-down land )



York again

  • Dec. 5th, 2009 at 11:29 AM
The highlight of the trip to Oxford: lunch at the Eagle and Child, the pub where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings hung out in the forties and fifties. In the room where they met. I sat in the corner by the fireplace and drank mulled cider and tried to write. As I was in a state of nervous exultation it did not work too well, but I got this:

"Griffin, Griffin, where are your wings?" said the cat.
"Well I can't very well wear wings after Labor Day," Griffin said.


One hopes there's more to that.

Otherwise I did a lot of walking. Aside from the Steampunk exhibit (!!!!!!!!) at the Museum of the History of Science I couldn't settle down enough to go to any exhibits of anything. But I did walk across the Christ Church Meadow, where Lewis Carroll used to walk with Alice Liddell; it was early in the morning, and the frost had not yet quite burned off.



It was a nice trip, and I enjoyed myself; but Oxford is a cold city. The colleges are almost all closed to the public, and it makes the place feel hard and mean.

I did run across one that was open, though: Hertford College, which was having a cake sale, with the college choir singing Christmas carols to attract attention. They sang beautifully, and I stood a long time in the courtyard to listen.

Not Mr Clean!

  • Dec. 5th, 2009 at 4:34 PM
Tiger Woods accused of five more flings

There should be many more I suppose, one in each city like the proverbial sailor.

Jet Airways Boeing 777 with Gulf Air livery

  • Dec. 5th, 2009 at 12:10 PM
Boeing 777-35R/ER aircraft picture

This is a Jet Airways Boeing 777 in Gulf Air livery when it was on lease to them for 6 months. Note the Indian flag and the Indian registration VT-JEJ on its tail.

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Mansfield Park and Mummies

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 3:59 PM

My opinion of Montebank of America is already noted, so I won't go into that. If you, like me, are sometimes inclined to give them the finger, I know of no better way to keep it personal than scoring Vera Nazarian's Jane Austen and Supernatural Creatures book, Mansfield Park and Mummies. Some good people get a little money and BoA is "Curses! Foiled again!"

I call that win-win.


The Cloud Gleaners (story snippet)

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 7:35 AM
We went out as soon as the rain let up to collect whatever wisps and trails of cloud we could. I had feared there wouldn’t be anything; I thought maybe the cloud harvesters wouldn’t have bothered with this last storm—no glorious towering cumulonimbus pillars, no strange and silky mammatus undulations, just lowering nimbostratus clouds, heavy and thick.

But with a bolt of even the plainest cloth of cloud trading for hundreds of dollars, I needn’t have worried. The harvester ships’ reaper blades had cut the clouds from the sky, leaving it naked blue and scattering their leavings here below.

clouds on the street

Nini and I filled our buckets with these muddy, dripping bits of cloud. They’re hard to wash and they’re tricky to spin by hand, but you can do it with practice, and it’s worth it. What’s spun can be woven, and the little ribbons and kerchiefs we make bring people swarming to our stall at the farmers’ market. Genuine cloth of cloud. Ours doesn’t shimmer like the bolts from the Kings of Air cloudweaving mills—those looms can turn even the heaviest, gloomiest clouds into cloth that catches the light like rainbows, and what they do with rainbows will take your breath away. But even handspun, handwoven cloth of cloud has that unearthly feel.

“What did you do to your fingers?” Nini asked.

“Hmm?” I held up a hand. My fingers were bleeding. How did that happen? There are thistles and thorns growing round about, but I would have felt the prick. Sometimes there are broken bottles along the road, but I hadn’t mistaken a piece of glass for cloud. Some of the blood had gotten on the cloud in my bucket, too, damn it. In examining the bloodstained cloud I saw what had happened.

Read more... )




I am now un-cancelled!

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 4:42 PM
Last month I had told you all about Kavya's "I am cancelled!" x-mas dance project. The teacher had told Suchitra that she dances well, and that she would have loved to have her in that dance. Anyway she was in the school Annual Day dance for her class, and that she had done very well, so much so, that even though she was taller than the other girls she was placed in the front row by her teacher [confirmed later by her teacher].

Two days back Kavya comes home to tell us that her teacher has taken her into that dance project. So Suchitra tells her "You dance well, so which is why the teacher has selected you!" for which Kavay says "It is all your fault, since you had given me the 'teacher's pet' t-shirt to wear after the annual day dance was over!"

So as of now she is back in the X-mas dance with the teacher this time cancelling her cancellation;-)

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Sehwag misses his 3rd 300!

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 9:35 AM
Virender Sehwag 293 [254] caught and bowled Murali. Murali will sleep well tonight!

He was just 7 runs away from history!

Good show Sehwag!


Married on Facebook

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 8:42 AM
You know how Facebook keeps publishing your updates. Suchitra created her FB profile after two of her classmates asked her to. And so we were able to our name in the married to box. After which this is how Facebook put it. As far as the comments go, besides the one Nair [Diji] all others are LJers.


path to the sun

  • Dec. 3rd, 2009 at 7:19 PM
You mustn't look straight ahead as you walk along this path, or when you arrive at the sun, you will be blind. Just glance to the side, or keep your eyes closed, or look down, and by the time you get there, your eyes will be strong enough to look at things directly.

path to the sun



LiveJournal: The First Decade

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Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to [info]ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first [info]lj_photophile poll.

We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!

Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!


Squeak's Wedding

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 2:19 AM
Here's the radiant bride:


kala kumar bride 031209

The handsome groom:

adarsh srinivas groom 031209

And one of the ceremonies (in Aryan culture, the important one) that makes them husband and wife:

pANi grahaNam ("acceptance of the hand")

(see the wedding rituals )


pANi grahaNam 031209 kala adarsh


the bride's hand,holding a sacred coconut and betel leaves, is placed in that of her father, and then placed in the groom's hand...the bride's mother then pours sanctified water over it...as the water pours from the bride's hand to the groom's, her care and welfare passes from her father to her husband.

The Knife-Sharpener

  • Dec. 4th, 2009 at 12:03 AM
knife sharpener


Though the small streets and the lanes he goes,
His voice echoing around.
He calls aloud, this sharpener of knives:
They hear him, the mothers, the sisters, the wives:
Each busy housewife knows
That he'll set the wheel on the ground:
The sparks will fly as he steps on the pedal:
Sharper and sharper gets the now-shiny metal:
He pockets the small sums that he's paid,
Perhaps drinks a cup of tea that someone's made...
Then he's off again, with his clarion call,
Whoever needs his work...he goes to serve them all.


I heard his "clarion call" (in Chennai, what he calls is, "katthi shAAAAAAAANAAAAA!") and rushed out on to the balcony to photograph his retreating form...my sis in law didn't want any knives sharpened that day!

On the way to visit the Jayamangali Blackbuck Sanctuary, we were negotating a badly dug-up stretch of highway, and I found this notice:


pune go slow


Now,


this link

tells me that Pune is 835km (about 519 miles) from Bangalore....

I wonder if the guy who put up the notice HAD to give the way to Pune, but doesn't WANT us to go there....?

Holding Up The Sky...

  • Dec. 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 PM
Holding up the Sky

I took this photo during my first trip to Bandipur. To my best recollection I had recently bought my first cellphone and was very thrilled to experience it features (wostly wrt the camera).

It was a little past noon and a few friends had stepped out with me to explore the edges of the forest. I saw this bare tree and thought it made a perfect subject.

I loved the photo the moment I took it.

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Muralidaran hits another century!

  • Dec. 3rd, 2009 at 4:44 PM
Muttiah Muralidaran 19 0 118

Second time in this series Murali gives away a hundred runs! In just 19 overs that too!

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