Standing still in eternity...

Had visited this amazing place a few days back called...."Rani ki vav" ~ A place from the long lost and forgotten past looking at you straight in the face...a place situated in Patan (Gujarat).

A 'vav' is a step well which used to be build in the olden days for water sourcing. How these 'vav's used be be ornated with intricate carvings of Gods, Goddesses and human forms has to be seen to be believed ! Here are a few pics from that trip in the past ~

The statues were beautiful and seemed real in an amost eerie way...

Just imagine ~ these statues have been standing there for centuries.... seeing everthing happening around them, people coming-going, people who had created them dying, dynasty after dynasty of rulers perishing ! But they are still stnading there.

Everything around them since the time they were built has changed...they are are a witness to the changing of the eras, but they are still the same, standing there quietly ~ observing everything, knowing everything...

It seemed as we they are living in their own world in that structure...

Standing still in eternity.....

And whispering to each other the secrets of those ages, which these days would never know...

~Lilies On My Terrace~

Yesterday morning went up on the terrace after many days.....and got a beautiful surprise ~ Lovely Lilies were blooming on my own terrace...! I had planted these long back and then had forgotten all about it. And just when I was not expecting, here they come in all their splendor... ! Isnt it so much like things in life......?

Their sight reinforced my belief in life and its beauty....

And the feeling that even when things seem too bad, and everything seems to be falling apart, there is someone who is taking care of things, even when you are not aware of it.

You just need to hold on.........................

......................... am trying to hang on to that thought and that moment.

~Looking upwards~

Today again looking upwards,
At the source ~
Of all things visible and invisible,
Existing and non-existing,
Of wantings and blessings,
Of singings and wailings,
To blow the wind of rythmic madness ~
And drench me with the music of life...

Pachmadhi ~ Water, Fog and Greens...

Just back from a rejuvenating trip to pachmadhi ~

The senses are still filled with its emerald greenery, mystic fog and refreshing water...

The place is beautiful and worth visiting without a doubt, but for some reason other than this, the place brought about the much needed peace and calm to my mind...

Here is some freshness of those greens...some droplets of those water falls and lakes and some magic of the fog ~

At Pachmadhi Lake

A place in between somewhere to nowhere

A carpet of green spread for anyone who wishes to tread and do himeslf a favour

Some wild berries

Some unknown meadow on the way

Some unknown meadow on the way

View from the top of Pandav caves

On the way to Apsara falls

The affair of the droplets of water and the leaf...

~ A wild flower ~ The reckless beauty of the wilderness

At Apsara falls

The Bee Falls

The other colours of the place will follow in the coming posts...

Alone...

Born in this world alone,
Someday I shall die alone
In the moments gone ~
I was alone
In the moments to be ~
I will be alone.....

If only I could accept it.......

After a long time...

Had gone to Alliance Francaise (A.F) on last to last sunday to pay a visit to the library with firm determination to work a little on my french. But as they say "Man (also woman !) proposes and God disposes..!". The library was closed and was not going to be opened that day. I had my camera with me, which I had carried with me just like that. Not knowing what to do with my firm plan disturbed, I was just walking around in the premises of A.F and reached up to the small garden behind the building. Well, needless to say what happened then. A happy hour and a half was spent in taking pictures of the flowers and leaves in the garden. After a long time spent sometime with myself. After a long time picked up up cam and did some involved clicking. So even if the pictures that have come out are not extraordinay, I felt satisfied with the way they turned out.

The hours which were going to be spent in french grammar surrounded by books got spent amidst nature into photography. C'est la vie..!

Here are a couple of pics from that afternoon ~

Glasses at the water cooler ~ loved the red here !



Life ~ making it's way through ~

Harmony ~

Bouganvillea ~ The happy flowers ~

Heart of a flower ~

Lost ~

Waiting ~

Barefoot on the soft green grass on a hot afternoon...ahhhh..what a feeling.....

We got our house painted recently...after little more than a year of having shifted in this place....It is a good feeling to see the place full of colours as opposed to how it was earlier- plain white. I'm posting a few pics of the newly done house ~ mainly to highlight the colours of the wall and also to make a collection of some of the corners that I adore in here...

This is the main view of the dining passage which lead to kitchen on one side and the other rooms on the other.

This is a close view of the passage...I like it as it shows little bits of colour of the other rooms..

This is one corner that I particularly like. We had picked up the green lamp from Nainital on an instinct and the clay models were picked up from a handicraft exhibiton.

This painting has been made by my mom. It is made from coloured sand. This is something that my mom specializes in besides making yummy food :)

This is a corner that I particularly like from my mom and dad's bedroom...

This table piece was gifted by me and my sister to my mom on mother's day some 3-4 years ago. She has still kept it by her bedside...while cleaning the place up, for taking the photograph, i happened to read it after years....and it wet my eyes....some things are so precious in life...

This is one little corner of my room...(the cleanest that i could find..!) I had fallen in loive with the violet when I had seen it in the shade card book...glad that it turned out as expected...

And this is the area dining passage leading to the kitchen...

Thinking of the colours to choose from, deciding on some, short listing a few then cancelling the whole scheme and thinking of another set of colours...finalizing on them and then again rethinking the whole thing ~ whew..! the last few days did see a lot of brain storming and peeping into others houses :) to zero in on the colours to put on the walls...

But i guess after everything done ~ and on feeling harmonious with the colours you see when you wake up, makes the whole effort worth.... :)

"My weekend out" ~ In Mumbai

Sometimes unplanned and unthought out events turn out be the much better than ones where we have done a lot of advance thinking and planning. This is what happened in this recent trip I made to Mumbai. On an instinct I had decided that I would go to Mumbai and see a performance that a dear friend of mine was participating in. I didnt have any idea or plans about what I would be doing in the rest of the one and a half days there. Not that I dont know anyone in Mumbai, I have a lot of friends there but "meri jaan, yeh hai mumbai..!" With its fast paced life, everyone has some or the other plan worked out for the weekends. And not having chceked with anyone in advance I ran the risk of having to spent the time alone in the city. But in my case that was not much of a problem as I am quite friends with the city. In the time that I was staying in mumbai, I had developed quite a close relationship with the city, it's people, its local trains, its vada pavs and its fast paced life style. So I guess I was not much worried by the thought of whom I would be able to meet or where I would be spending the time. I had the city and it's magic which I could re-explore, and I had my camera with me. I couldnt have cared less!

And so as it would turn out, I had a great time there. Roamed around in the areas i love in mumbai ~ Churchgate, Bandra- Hill Road, caught up with friends, and spent some relaxing and rejuvenating time with myself. On one of the local train stations came across a book I had been wanting to read since long~ Shantaram by Gregory Davit Roberts. Picked it up and spent the saturday afternoon in the colourful ambiance of Churchgate Mocha with this book, a black currant ice tea, and great music in the background.

I was alone with my thoughts and my book but there were people around with chatting, laughing, chilling out, talking about their own stories. There was something very relaxed and positive in the atmosphere. There was hope and dreams and ambition and style and charisma. All of this along with the memory of the times I used to hang out so much in this place earlier did something very positive to me. It somehow charged me up from inside.

The evening was spent in Bandra at my friend's program, which turned out be a wonderful experience. A musical drama based on the stories from the Bible, replete with angles and demons. The dances were beautiful, the music peppy, the acting of the cast perfect and the light effects were amazing..! And off-course the whole thought behind the play with it's script was touching. So, all and all it was a wonderful experience!

Some glimpses of the show ~

The next day morning was spent in a shopping spree at Alpha- the duty free custom shops, which are quite poplular in mumbai, though i had remained unknown to them when I was staying in mumbai. Actually I had gone there with Nishu's mom, who had a lot of things to buy. I had just accomapnied her. She had a huge of things to buy from toys, to watches, to footware, to chochlates, to toiletteries to dry fruits to...the list goes on and on....! Though I didnt have to buy anything, I had a super time ! Well, I am a girl, and so am genetically inclined to love shopping! And in the process I did buy a couple of things for myself too ~
Soft comfy, cushiony bathroom slippers, a Nike deo and a Garnier lotion...
I guess, the cushiony slippers were my best buy..!





Lunch was with Sonali's (the friend whose program I had come to attend) family. Yummy hot puris, palak sabzi, some mix dal, mango pickle and cool kheer! It was delicious, and I couldnt have asked for more. Since I was meeting her parents for the first time, out of hesitation I missed out on taking a snap of the food. Though the hot round puris completely deserved and demanded to get captured in the cam, but I dont think Sonali's parents would have agreed with me! They would have thought I was nuts, and you see the first impression matters ! So, i would leave it to the imagination of whoever's reading this. Her parents and brother were very nice to me. Very simple and loving people.
Here's the snap I took of them for remembrance ~



Spend the whole afternoon with Sonali. Lying on the cool bed, sipping tea and chatting about everything from guys to God ! This is generally the range of our discussions. Needless to say we both had a great time. While talking on something suddenly out of the blue she remembered about a book that she had begun to read. And she had liked it so much that she wanted me to read it to. So, she insisted that I take this book with me, read it and then send it back to her. The book is "The mind is a battlefield". I have a theory that for myself that a book enters my life only when I actually need to read it, or when I am prepared to read it. So, I took this as a sign that maybe it was destined that I read this book at this point of my life.

The evening and the subsequent dinner was with another close friend- Asha, who stays in Borivelli (W), near the station (thankfully!). She used to work with me at Astron and we shared a good bond. This is was the first time I was meeting her after her marriage and after she left Ahmedabad. So it was a treat to catch up with her ~ to fill her up with the latest office gossip and to listen to her new life. We ordered pizza for dinner and had it in the comfort of her house. My return train was at 10.50 pm from Borivelli station, so finally I picked up up bags and headed for the return journey.

And oh yes, before I forget, I also bought these lovely colourful bangles, while travelling in the local trains ~






So this trip did bring lots of colours in my life ~ some old , some new.

.......