deponti

Very long post, read only if you have some leisure.

I do love my country, which often has its flag represented in unique ways:



And I like walking through its cities.

Each city in India is quite distinct from the other; not for us the bland homogeneity of a skyscraper downtown and sprawling suburbs...I find Indian cities totally fascinating.

Like all Indian cities, the architecture in Chennai is an often astonishing mixture of old and new idioms, which are radically different from each other. It's fascinating to watch...and there are also the this-es, the thats, and the others as I walk. I decided to take my MLC for a walk, too...and we went together, through a few roads in

Mylapore (town of the peacock), now called Thirumylai or the place of the divine peacock

( walk with me through Mylapore )

Think about the beauty of seeing a small temple, that's traditionally built under a spreading young

Peepal Tree



...and make my way home....


Some more on Mylapore

the walk without photographs

Mylapore Tank


New Year in Nageshwara Rao Park

Chennai vignettes

Mylapore Tank

And if you STILL have patience for more,

here !

The Marina Beach in Chennai

is one of the public open-air spots in the city that gets a lovely sea breeze in the afternoons, and is a popular spot to visit.


It has a line of statues, that the wiki link above lists; and here's the sunrise on the statue of


Kamarajar (kAmarAjar)






The beach faces east, and sunrises are beautiful...when there's a sunrise, can thoughts of asakiyume be far behind? :)

Here's the "Gandhi silai" (statue of Gandhi) that stands at the junciton of the Beach road and Radhakrishnan Road:









True to his reputation for simplicity, Gandhi walks, while all around him, the rich park their cars to come and walk, too...!

I will be documenting that morning walk of mine...yes, I did take along MLC2 yesterday.

But some things are even more eye-catching than others...


As I turn from Santhome High Road on the Marina, into Radhakrishnan sAlai (erstwhile Edward Elliotts Road), I find that I am suddenly in New York!

( see New York in Chennai )


Well, I was not in a militant mood, I was...affable...!




In Tamizh, the sign says "appapuL" (in Tamizh, "f" sound is written,somewhat awkwardly, with a "therefore" sign written before the "p" consonant...but that wasn't the case here). So, I was appapul instead of affable.



I do enjoy taking my MLC along!


It's beginning to pour with rain again...I'm going to enjoy going to get some vegetables now...

The weather finally let up a bit today, and I went for an hour's walk; went down to Luz, down Katcheri Road (or Cutchery Road), down Santhome High Road to the Marina, along it and back through Sir Radhakrishnan (earlier Edward Elliotts) Road.

Didn't take a camera, but the images are vivid....

Newspaper vendors, with piles of the day's papers, busy putting in the advertising leaflets, and sorting them out for quick delivery.

Large piles of milk sachets...also being taken for delivery, or being sold as they are, on the pavement.

Several people who are still fast asleep in shop doorways or on the footpath. Some are just waking up, and retying their lungies.

Tea-shops along the way, already bustling with activity; knots of people standing around, eating small biscuits and sipping tea.

Stray dogs everywhere, approaching hopefully, but yet too scared of having a stone chucked at them.

Walkers and joggers in their "uniforms" (branded tees, branded running slacks, branded shoes, and sometimes caps....also branded...) walking or trotting along, also with umbrellas.

Beggars who share the road and footpath with these walkers, yet occupy a different planet.

A tourist taxi that has "Do Before Die" painted on its side. (I wish I had brought my camera after all.)


Women making kOlams along the pavements in front of their homes.

The cars of the rich, parked along the Marina (to have a healthy walk, it's necessary to pollute the atmosphere in your car.)

The autos, getting down to the first demand and bargain for fare, of the day.

Push-carts and "fish carts" (they are "mini carts", which got abbreviated to "min carts"...and "meen" is Tamizh for "fish", so then they became "fish carts"!) and pedal carts with vegetables on them...beginning the day's sales.

Dirty roads and footpaths, with LOTS of plastic and trash.

Puddles that I step over, skirt, or step gingerly through.

The realization that pedestrians have NO rights here. Footpaths are often just that...a FOOT in height from the road level, and difficult to get on, or off.....on the Santhome High Road stretch, often so narrow as to be unusable....

A lone raptor (NOT a Black or a Brahminy Kite, but too far away for id) flapping its wings slowly, fading into the sky.

The glass architecture on Radhakrishnan Road. Some old, gracious buildings, in bad shape.

Grey, leaden sky, not warm at all...but still, humid and sticky.

Traffic increasing as I walk towards home.

Pot-bellied police constables, who, to their credit, are alertly on duty on the roads.

Flower-sellers already displaying their wares...garlands and lengths of jasmine carefully preserved from yesterday.

The realization, once again, of how much I like walking....I am happy, content....and I head for home, coffee, and the day's newspapers.

While in St.Louis, I


walked for ALS


...and later just before leaving, I took part in the

Walk for Autism

on October 10th.





The turnout for this walk was phenomenally large compared to any of the other fund-raising walks I have been participating over the years. Obviously, the problem of

autism in children

strikes a very responsive chord amongst people.

Here's the official tee for the walk:





You can see just how crowded the walk was!





Another worthy cause which I could not join (I had already done an hour and a half of walking in the Park, and was meeting people for breakfast) was on Oct 17, the very next week.

This was the

Second Wing Lung Walk


Second Wind Lung Foundation






This walk is to benefit those who need a "second wind" that a lung transplant can give them.

Here are the details of the walk:



The slogan is, "Every breath counts"...and indeed it does...it's up to us to make each breath count, not only for ourselves, but for those less fortunate than ourselves, in so many different ways.

Such walks help me realize the extreme good fortune that I have in my good health...

Walking for a cause is such a great way of combining exercise, meeting people, and contributing your litte mite to research.

I went alone to Forest Park to see the launch of the balloons, and it was a trip well worth it, to see these colourful globes rising serenely and majestically into the cloudy,overcast, intermittently rainy sky. I'd been afraid that the wind would cross the 10-miles-an-hour limit beyond which the launch would be aborted, but it didn't happen....

here

is an account of the race by the St.Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.

Here are a few balloons:




( some more.... )


As I left the field, I saw the lovely sight of this little girl and her dog, amusing themselves:





A very enjoyable afternoon.....I have never seen such crowds in Forest Park, and what fun it was to walk back past the cars jammed into loooong lines, on the way home!

Isn't this a lovely photograph of shadows and light and angles?




But look carefully at what's in the centre of the photo!

And here's some more...




I find it utterly fascinating to speculate how pieces of false teeth are lying in a bus stop in broad daylight....apart from the mundane explanation that two people had a punch-up (imagine punching someone old enough to wear false teeth!)...hey, what are YOUR stories? asakiyume...birdonthewire...latelyontime... and the rest of you....let's have your imaginations up and running...!

As I walk in Forest Park, so many images fall on my mind's eye, and only a few of them are on camera. This post is mostly for myself, to look at later and recreate those magical evenings when the light melted into the purple dusk, the air held a hush, and I felt totally at peace....


I see very few butterflies, but I managed to get this tiny BLUE...



( some random images )

And this one is my favourite for the memory it brings back....the thundercloud was looming up, all the sky was a luminous mauve and purple, and the evening just glowed... the boat-lights shone dimly upon the waters of the creek, and the cool breeze was building up into a wind...dusk was a beautiful time to be there!

It's very enjoyable to see a lot of art and sculpture as I walk around (before or after Forest Park, I walk around the University City area.)

In fact, just ten minutes' walk from home brings me to Delmar Station, where this sculpture was installed day before yesterday:




It doesn't seem to have a title...I am calling it the "Popcorn Tub Aggregation"!

( more about sculpture, and lions )

...well, after my usual morning walk, I came back with the papers, and read in the St Louis Post-Dispatch that there would be a walk to help defeat ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease ...the most famous person suffering from this disease is Stephen Hawking , which shows how important it is to find some treatment or cure for this disease.

On the spur of the moment, I decided that having missed so many walks and meets for various causes in Bangalore, I would go for this.

The Visitors' Center in Forest Park was the starting point, and that's just a shade over a mile from home. Well..."shade" is the WRONG word to use for today's walk. The temperature certainly FELT like a hundred degrees, even though it might not have been...and though I had what I call my "firefighting equipment" ready (parasol, photochromatic glasses, a nice summery hat, a full water bottle, and a wad of damp tissue that I kept passing over my face and neck), it was NOT an easy walk!

Walking is SO pleasant in cool weather...and sooo enervating in hot and humid climes!


Well, here's one of the posters at the venue:



And one that puns on the fact that we were using our feet:




( read about the ALS walk )

However, the most telling poster against ALS, that progressive disease, was this one:





It was awfully hot, but I enjoyed that walk as I have not enjoyed aimless ones!

Having walked all over Forest Park when I read in the local newspaper that there would be a guided walking tour in the Park, I could not miss the opportunity

Tuesday was the only day they had a walk in the evening...with the temperatures in the high 90's, there was no way I was going walking in Forest Park at 10 am or 1 pm!

I was at the Visitors' Center at five minutes to six, and met Harry Leip, a volunteer, whom you can see just outside the Center as we started our walk:






Yes, indeed he was Harry Leip:




( some more images.... )


Oh, well, it was the end of another day!

I have stopped taking MLC2 out with me on my morning walk these days....it's summer, and I have to leave really early to get back before the temperature rises to uncomfortable levels, and I don't feel all that safe to be carting it around. But a few days ago, I did, and here are some random things that I caught...


A lovely Cardinal that needs the wind to move:




I took up a challenge that I have to prove...

I said I'd link up these pictures with verse..no matter if my readers see red, and curse!


( Read more... )

These lions are celebrating one hundred years !







I did it, I did it! :)

This morning, it seemed quite cloudy, but it didn't rain up to nearly 6.30am, so off I went for my walk...and at 7 am, when I was in the middle of Forest Park, and the only shelter was the trees under which one must NOT shelter in a thunderstorm, it broke.

There was an incredible amount of wind; it got up so suddenly. (Of course, there wasn't the kind of dust that is stirred up by such a storm in Bangalore). The scudding clouds massed together, and the rain began..in large drops, and then harder and harder.

Then the hail began. Small pebbles and large ones struck the grass and the path, and I was finding them so amazing that I just stood still for a while as they dropped in their thousands, all around me. I tucked MLC2 into my jacket (which is mainly rainproof), turned my umbrella back outside in (I do take an umbrella with me all the time, that's what saved me from utter drenching)...and walked on.

The lightning was terrific. The dark skies lit up in huge flashes of light, and I wished I had the courage to take the camera out and leave it outside long enough to try and get a shot of the lightning, like this


wonderful shot

by

kaadupapa


(who no longer posts on LJ)


Well, obviously not like that, but at least, capture ONE of those ribbons of electricity...but I didn't want to literally drown the S10, so it remained within my jacket.

The hail stopped, but the thunder and lightning put up their awe-inspiring display while I slowly walked back against the wind and the sleeting, heavy rain, across the sodden grass, under the swaying trees that were shedding their leaves in the gale. My shoes were squelching wet, and my umbrella dripped five cataracts....but I was so caught up in the storm that I did not think about it until later.

As I neared the roads, and came near an intersection, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps my family had woken up and might be wondering where I was; but I decided that they would not know where to hunt for me; I rarely take the same route each day, on my morning walks.

I walked home, still wrapped up in the storm...and when I opened the front door, A and KM were very concerned, and D had woken KM up to ask if I was still sleeping; they found I was not in the house (usually everyone else wakes up at least an hour and a half after I get back) and he took the car and went hunting for me. Where he went, I don't know, poor guy, where did he think I might be? I think I wasted a LOT of his time. I called him up immediately to tell him I was home safe; KM made piping hot coffee for me, and (once I had changed from my soddenly dripping clothes) A put down her baby, and gave me a nice hug.

Nature's fury still had me in thrall, and it was a while before my mind joined my body inside the calm, dry warmth of the house.

MOTS (Moral Of The Story): I won't go out without the mobile again. When it is needed, it's just not worth giving so much trouble and worry to others.

For several years now, I have been a proponent of what I call the WBC..(Walk,Bus,Cycle)...so it was very nice to see the St Louis Metro also having a similar initiative:





I do like the name a lot! Though it started just before we reached St Louis, I saw it only when I went to the Public Library yesterday, and I am registering for it, since I do exactly what the initiative is asking...use my feet and the Metro!

This morning, I was walking and thinking about the baseball team that's named after the RED CARDINAL :





I looked to up to see the amazing sight of a skein (it's a "skein" in the air, a "gaggle" on the ground) of CANADA GEESE fly past in the typical "V" formation




It was uplifting to see them, and it wasn't only my head, but my spirits too, that was (were?) lifted up!

And then, as I continued my walk, I was able to spot (and actually photograph, before it flew off in a flash, in the drizzling rain), this beautiful BLUE JAY (there's also a baseball team named after it in Toronto, Canada!)...




Thanks for the id, chaibacca.


The crest that the wiki clearly shows, was probably wet in the rain...the bird was, quite literally, crestfallen! :)

I found this cross spray-painted on the footpath sidewalk as I walked:





What is it, what does it mean? Is it to do with the sewers or electricity?

But it looked beautiful...


( some licence plates here )


But what I really liked was this sign...




How on earth can someone say 25% off, when he has not even given his charges at all? Talk about the recession!

As I opened the front door, this HOUSE FINCH (thanks for the correct id, yathin ) greeted me in the little tree right outside, with its bright, beady eyes...




As I crossed the road, I realized that it was going to be quite cold, as these cloud formations (that's ice causing the rainbow effect) portended:





( more random images and thoughts )

And yes, I saw the the legendary sword of King Arthur :



I did like the message at the bottom! When things are tough...do just that...shut up and hold on!

http://gaur36.livejournal.com/96568.html?view=59704#t59704


What a pity that we squander our treasures and our good practices to the excitement of aping western ways...

Today I walked to the Farmers' Market in the Loop,






and walked back with my purchases; the fact that I had 3 bags (one backpack and two carries) attracted a fair number of curious looks. I realized that no one is used to carrying groceries or vegetables/fruits and walking around. Walking is an activity engaged in only for exercise. It is NOT a form of locomotion unless one is too poor to afford anything but public transport...

When KM and I told people that we walk from home to the St Louis Galleria (no.1 on the map), and back, we got a lot of "wow" reactions!,

I was walking to see the Stingray exhibit in the St Louis Zoo, and on the way, I spotted the KILLDEER (what a funny name, that wiki says that's what their call sounds like!):





It was accompanied by another one, and they kept running fast, and then "couching" down on the wet grass like this:



The wiki says they lay their eggs in the grass, so I thought, when I saw the first one sitting that way, that it was on its eggs....but no, it wasn't; they kept running and sitting alternatively. Wonder what this behaviour was.

Update: Here's the short video that I took:






Then I saw this one, which both yathin and Dave Pierce of the St.Louis Audubon Society id'd as the EASTERN KINGBIRD :




I do mean to walk a lot more in the park area and see what other birds I can sight, but it's going to depend on the weather (very rainy lately), the sun (don't want to walk in the hot sun, either!) and Eli's demands...today she kept me all afternoon, glued to her side!


And since I have talked about her, here she is, with some very easy-to-follow instructions on her little dress:




And she's saying, "give me five minutes more to sleep, because I am.....





to wake up immediately!"

I read in the newspaper (which I go out and buy every day) that for the first hour of the Zoo's opening, the Stingray exhibit would be free (entry after 10 am is $3, which is not much, especially when compared to the $35 per-person ticket at San Diego Zoo ), I decided to combine it with my morning walk in Forest Park.

So I went as usual to the Wash U campus area, bought my newspapers, and went off to the Zoo, which said on the website that it would be open from 8 am....but when I reached there, I realized that would be only from May 22, so I had an hour to spare...so I sat down near the water body and got myself the only piping hot beverage there is in this country (which cannot be cooled down by adding cold milk!)...a big mug of hot chocolate, and sat down to peruse the news...





This duck (a female MALLARD, apparently) with the distinctive blue stripe was hanging around nearby...





On the way to the Zoo, just past the St Louis Art Museum , I decided to photograph the Henry Moore sculpture that's there:




I saw two new birds, and the Stingrays (visitors are allowed to TOUCH them...mamtanaidu, you would LOVE this!) , but am too sleepy to keep my eyes open, so that will be for the next post...meanwhile, I will post this picture of a PEACOCK with the most lush plumage I have ever seen, which was at Grant's Farm when we visited there on 240409....




Life is pretty hectic, but am managing to keep up somehow....