deponti

Here's the radiant bride:




The handsome groom:



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 )





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.

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





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....?

We were pretty lucky with our sightings and observations on the Manchinabele trip on the 21st of November; apart from the

TAWNY EAGLE



I also got, thanks to Manju, a first-time-ever sighting, and observation, of the

WHITE-NAPED WOODPECKER

high up in a

TAMARIND tree




( more here.... )


I compare my learning to this shoot, reaching beyond what's old to something new and fresh:




Here's a 360-degree view of the Manchinabele backwaters, with the beautiful

LITTLE EGRETS floating in to land...





A beautiful place, and an enjoyable outing...I took the train to Chennai feeling very happy indeed.

I took the morning off, last Saturday after some more dental torture work, to go with the BULBs, and visit

Manchinabele Reservoir area ...the dam is built across the

Arkavathi river .


We took the turning when we saw the signboard:





( manchinabele scenes )

the weather was like this most of the time: sunshine through the clouds:




I'll post about the birds and (a few) other creatures that we saw....next!

I had showed you Romance Tailors in Mylapore:




But who will actually DO the romancing? Here's who






"Gents specialist" doesn't mean they are gay, but that they are men's tailors....

But, if you happen to think that to err is human, there's a place for you, too, in Bangalore, where you can stay in comfort:




If you don't like that, you can take this auto and growl...





I am feeling rather growly myself, and going "grrrrr" at all the things I see going badly around me...

...you use an

inflatable kayak

Here's Kiran, who met us near

Manchinabele Dam backwaters





( kayaking )


Here's Kiran, paddling off:




Thank you, Kiran and Manju...I had never before seen an inflatable kayak, though no doubt it is old hat to several readers!

Kiran and Manju tell me that there are about 20 people who regularly meet at Manchinabele to kayak together.

When I asked where I might hire such kayaks, the kayaking/rafting organization they mentioned is

Adreno

Notice that it's in association with

Jungle Lodges and Resorts !

amoghavarsha says this pic is washed out...but I was shooting against the bright late morning sky..and this is what I got!



Nodding off as I type....the rest of this trip later, in detail!

Another lake has disappeared...

http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2009/11/22/kommaghatta-lake-in-kengeri-area-suddenly-disappears/

and

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/blogs/show_entry/1561

Do we have NO means of protesting or reversing this?

One, while waiting at Central Station, Chennai:





I can just imagine the criminal innocently sitting in front of the camera which, of course, knows immediately that this person is a criminal, and starts watching him...


The next delightful thing was in my coach.



It says, "Hammer for breaking the window glass during emergency".

Now to find a hammer to break the glass of the window in which this hammer is kept...


And the last...make no mistake, there will be no teetotallers on this train...

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/1543-bengaluru-photographers-to-shoot-leonid-showers

However, the title I had chosen was...Shooting Stars Shoot Shooting Stars".

We thought the mist on the hills would prevent us from spotting birds. It didn't. We thought it would prevent us from photographing birds. It did.

But then we realized that the mist, in itself, was a thing of beauty.




( more images of the mist )

And just to see how it would look, I decided to take one image of the passing scenery through the rain-washed window of the car:






And finally, you can see the way the rainclouds are moving ...gliding...along the hilltops...












Rain and mist make for beautiful photography....!

It was raining in Bangalore. It is raining in Chennai. Well, it held off long enough for me to take a long walk last evening, but this morning it's pouring again.

Here's an image I liked, from the Nandi Hills trip, of Garima holding out her hand to feel the raindrops...







Off to do various duties now...back later, when I can...

If

Karthik

comes, can moths be far behind?

Yesterday, he told us that this beautiful

OLEANDER HAWK MOTH

was sitting on the staircase of my apartment, so mohanvee and I went off to photograph it...





Meanwhile, he had also spotted these two...a lovely gold-and red one:





and an even prettier "pied" moth....





I guess all moths and butterflies know an expert when they see one, and consider Karthik a kind of foster moth-er....

Couldn't resist that!

It was an amazing sight, as we returned from Maidanahalli, to find the sun setting to our right,





and the moon (nearly full) rising to our left...





In Tamizh, dusk is called "andhi sandhi koodum vELai" (the time evening and night meet". This was a beautiful meeting.

We often speak of "shedding light on the subject"...the coming of light is also associated with acquiring knowledge and dispelling ignorance. "tamasO mA jyOtirgamaya" is part of our daily prayers.

Here's the light arriving, on the sheet rock on the Ragihalli Road, in the Bannerghatta Forest area:




I experimented with shooting into the sunlight, instead of the recommended "shoot at an angle"...and am happy with the results.


( more of light from the sun )

It was shivakumar_l who showed me how he uses backlight....how, when one is using light, can that be a.....real de-light?

Insomnia seems to have become a permanent friend...but I had a great day yesterday (early morning birding, some torcher, afternoon play and a lovely time with friends) and I am looking forward to my trip to

Maidanahalli

in a few hours with

Garima

and others from the BULBs (Bangalore Urban Lady-Birders...we have co-opted some male members, such as

Rajneesh Suvarna ,

though!)


I am sitting in the dark with just one goose-necked lamp...and was musing about light and darkness. That darkness is associated with evil both in terms of the lack of colour (making it black) and lack of light. The dispelling of darkness often signifies the dispelling of gloom, despair, and anything not good.

On my way up the stairs in our apartment complex, I found that someone was celebrating a festival unknown to me (probably it was also the Tamizh festival of kArthigai, I don't know...), they had set up this little shrine outside their home with lights to dispel the darkness:





It was rather unusual to have the puja display outside the home rather than inside it...but it made a warm, appealing picture!

And then, of course, my asakiyume picture...in this one, the light is fading and yet the gathering darkness seems no portent of evil, but rather, the peace and rest that come after happiness and work well accomplished:





Sunset on a daily basis is echoed, in my mind, with the fall season, where the days draw in, there's a sense of things ripened and replete...."season of mists and fruitfulness", as Keats puts it. To some people, of course, the lesser amount of light is depressing...but to me, being a person who loves the rains and the monsoon, it's not of any negative connotation.

"and leaves the world to darkness and to me", writes the poet Thomas Grey...and the peace of that statement is tinged with melancholy, and the name of the poem is "The Elegy"!

It perhaps takes someone in a tropical country, who bears the harsh sun, to appreciate lack of light, and the dimness and coolness that accompany it.

To me, the fall, the Sisir Ritu, and the evening, are wonderful times.

I went to the

Indian Institute of Science

campus

to attend the

5th International Canopy Conference

....there were demonstrations of

tree-climbing

( all about today's tree-climbing )



It's a question of, er, getting the...hang of it!







Here's Edward, running around the branches of the tree and then letting himself down to the ground with the greatest of ease:




It will be many births before I can become a creature of the canopy like that....!

On both my visit to Bannerghatta, and to Turahalli, Galibore, and Ramnagara, I noticed a wide variety of butterflies flitting along in their various colours. Of course, the time of day (mid-morning) was not ideal to photograph them, as that is their nectar-gathering time and so they were most restless, and would hardly settle for more than a second or two anywhere.

So of course it was the butterflies' fault that I got mediocre pictures....having allocated the blame correctly, here they are:


The

BLUE PANSY





( a list of fritillaries )


Let me end with this beautiful


BLUE-WINGED WASP





This post is dedicated to


Karthik

who is an authority on butterflies!

Update:

My NTP friends, Vikram Hiresavi, M V Shreeram, adarshraju ,Vineet, and Uma
have all, as usual, taken the trouble to help me out with the ids. :) Thank you!

Though the bird sightings on our Saturday trip were very sparse, I was thrilled to have a good sighting of the

SIRKEER MALKOHA




I have seen this bird once before, at Turahalli, for a very brief few seconds; this time, it was right out in the open, and right next to the road! We all got out for a few shots, and I also took this video of the bird preening:








Immediately afterwards, we saw two BLUE-FACED MALKOHAS, but they vanished in the tangled shrubbery before we could even get a proper look! That's the way birding goes....