Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Sid.

Next time I come back from Mumbai, it will be bit difficult for me to accept this flat as 'house'! No, not because you will not be there, but there will not be any stuff lying around on sofa, bed, chairs, no fan running at full speed, no shoes scattered everywhere on floor. And surprisingly, somehow, to me, it will look like no one stays here! Without the dry daaru bottles and drying utensils, the kitchen too will look empty. I will not have to remember to close the gas knob before I go to sleep, neither will I have to think whether to keep the outer metal door open so that you can come in anytime at late night (rather morning). It will be like, I will have nothing to do in this place still called house! (oops little too senti!)

It's not that I have never stayed alone in this house before, but then I always knew that you will be back sometime, may be we will even see and talk to each other once in 3-4 days at least. Even when you had gone for your long jaundice holiday, I still didn't feel like I feel today (not for you, for myself). Sadly, I also feel that it's not because you are leaving, but because I will be alone, that I am sad. But I guess that's the case with everyone in this selfish world.

When we were classmates in NID, I never imagined I will spend so much time with you after NID! At the end of these 4 years (f...o....u...r.... years!) of sharing a house (and few other things, like your laptop charger and my laptop), I still find it surprising that we actually did! And if someone asks me what made you two stay together for this long, I have no answer! I wonder how come we even never had any fight or argument!
As if this feeling was not surprising enough, as I am writing, I receive an SMS from a very distant friend,"Some reasons definitely make relationships strong, but the fact is, only strong relations will remain forever without any reason!"
aamen
take care
bhavin

Epilogue: This reminds me that I will have to buy a new laptop charger now! :( This post would have been a much better read, had someone paid me to write it. I might have even taken little effort to find and photoshop a good picture of yours then, and name this post as 'an open letter to my house-mate' etc. Jokes apart, there were so many things coming to my mind as I thought of writing this Sid, but somehow its not possible and even required. To some extent this whole blog itself is somehow related to all the time we spent together, all the things we did, from chatting on our own blog comments, to bike rides, photography, to window shopping, movies (and writing the reviews on blog!)..... I have to stop writing now as the dictionary meaning of epilogue uses the word 'short' write-up. I also have to spend some time talking to my next room-mate, a much better one! ;)

Saturday, April 23, 2011

will miss you!

The window....

 the view......
 the moon......
 the river.... the bridge...
all this as seen from my bedroom, I will miss. Strange enough, we are shifting to a new house which is just next door, same floor, same building.... and still I will miss all this..... Truth, they say, is stranger than imagination! I hope the change will prove to be nice in some other way, unknown yet!

(more about the bridge here.)

Friday, July 16, 2010

Bridge, The time

How many times have you woken up in the morning, sat on the edge of bed facing window, and kept looking at the golden reflections in the river? How many times have you returned home in the evening, looked out from the window and searched for your camera to capture all the heavenly shades of light in sky and the dancing reflections in the river? I have experienced that for almost an year till date!
Even after spending 2 years in this apartment on the bank of Sabarmati River, I still find it so amazing to look at the bridge from window or balcony... almost every day! The bridge, I feel, is something which has it's own character, feelings, moods and I like to relate to that at different times. The bridge has taken me on many thought journeys, some stretching to hours! The bridge is really capable of taking me to the other side of time.
Following are some of the pictures I took over a period of more than a year, in different seasons, or time of day. There were many more moments worth sharing, but they are captured only in my mind, completely unexplainable in words!

On a rare rainy night in Ahmedabad.

The undisturbed patch of water below the bridge.

On a cool morning in July 2009.

A warm winter evening.

A sunny evening in this monsoon.

10 minutes ago!

:)

Friday, July 02, 2010

Pure Italian

If you are from the world where JLo stands for Jorge Lorenzo, this is a big news for you!
Valentino Rossi shifting to Ducati from the next MotoGP season!
The news that every Italian was waiting for, for many years! It seems finally their dream is coming true. Finally.... Italian flag and the Italian rider on the Italian bike.
Finally.... no confusion being Ducati fan and being Rossi fan.
Ducati Desmosedici and Valentino Rossi... what a combination!
Finally, it will be Red + Yellow... ( do I mean orange? ;) )
I am waiting for official news and next season!
(somehow I still continue to like yamaha also... at least untill I afford a Ducati)

Monday, March 15, 2010

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Complan mom...

Kim Clijsters celebrating her victory in US open 2009 with her 18 month daughter Jada. I don't follow tennis, but found this picture very very cute. She is only second mother to win grand slam in last 29 years! But considering that she is only 26 year old, this is a great achievement!
(by the way I found that she is exactly 1 year younger to me! Forget the cup, I don't even have a daughter)

Friday, August 28, 2009

(un)dressed to kill...

It takes a lot of talent to make a naked streetfighter bike look presentable! To make it look seductive requires even lot more efforts and understanding of proportions. And proportion does not necessarily mean golden proportion! Because as Francis Bacon Sr. says, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion". This is the Deus Ex machina SR542, based on Yamaha SR500.


Monday, August 17, 2009

Viramgaman

"Little more than 60km from Ahmedabad, there is this place Viramgam, an ancient town with fortification having five entrance gates. Munsar Tank, the finest example of civic architecture, is located on the western edge of the town. This is one of the largest man-made tanks in Gujarat, dating from the 11th (or 12th?) century. The tank epitomizes the fusion of hydraulic engineering and architectural aesthetic values of Minaldevi, who patronized the construction of this tank. The architectural style is similar to the Sahastralinga Talav of Patan. The shape of the tank is not a perfect rectangle, but like a Conch or Gomukh. Originaly there were 520 shrines on the bank of Munsar Tank, out of which 360 survive. Most of them are Shiva Shrines, along with a few Vaishnava Shrines. These shrines are typical of the early Chalukya architectural style. Each Shiva Shrine has 3 niches housing images of Mahakaal, Bhairava and Natesh. Two large twin temples, located in the middle of the south side, are also of great tourist interest. "
OK, what you all read above is taken from the great internet! So even I was quite eager to visit this munsar tank since a long time and finally managed to do so on 15th Aug 09. What me and sid got to experience can be best described as the pic below!

I mean, can you imagine the feeling of witnessing a dog peeing on the sexiest bike available and that too owned by you! But thats characteristic of this place! The carvings, sculptures, architecture is really good as described on the internet, especially the bigger twin temples with that layered wavy roof. We didn't count the number of small temples around the tank, not just because they were too many but because, to move around the place we had to be extremely cautious... some part of the place was functional as open-to-air public toilet of Viramgam! Sid and I was quite happy that the two girls, Pogo and Poorva refused to join us at last minute! But apart from the Munsar tank the trip was very nice, thanks to the extremely ride friendly weather and good road throught the ride! Even Sid was happy to ride whole 60km in one stretch which I never expected! :) ( may be because he was not riding his oldy goldy TVS victor but my Yamaha FZ... yes sadly the bike in the pic above!) The experience of riding on confusing narrow lanes of Viramgam was interesting, and so was the discovery of Sid's capability of conversing with buffaloes! We managed to enjoy. :)

For some good pictures visit my album on Orkut, and sid wil paste a link to facebook album in the comments, with some more interesting insights I guess.

(above pic is clicked by my 'dear friend' sid when I was on phone. Don't know whom to 'thank/blame', sid or the dog! both found the golden mean of their own passions)

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

My 10,000 km on Yamaha FZ 16 :)

4th Nov 2008 - 4th Aug 2009.
9 months 10,000 km Rs 10,000 of petrol!
everyday morning trips to office. :)
Dholka, Thol lake, Indroda nature park, Adalaj, Hathisinh temple, few aimless night rides. :)
photography (sadly I haven't clicked her enough properly, still searching for the dream model ;)
Top speed ride to Gandhinagar for Tabala concert.
one frightening oily skid recovery, :o
Please don't cut trees, they fall on bikes costing Rs. 3000 :(
my favourite slow turns, one crazy hairpin leaving NID parking challenging maximum lean angles. ;)
little tyre burnouts, hard front braking and clutchless gear-shifts (but still no stopies!) :(
everyday fast overtakes from Neharu circle to Shivaranjani bridge ;)
some of them causing my heart to beat as hard as enfield.
my pillion riders (almost everyone I wanted to be) ...... ;)
my dream pillion riders (menaka if not keira knightley) hehehehe ;)
Waiting for winter again, Modhera, Nal sarovar, Munsar tank still on plan only... :(
still planning for new paint scheme, performance kit, silencer etc
wish Vijay, Akash, sanjeev were around for unplanned trips... :(
Anyway now that I know her quite well, should take the experience few steps up ;)

Following is a video of my trip with Poorva on the never-ending thorny road (?) around Thol lake. The lack of road is quite visible, but it was a very amazing experience to ride to go nowhere....

Monday, January 26, 2009

Thol Lake revisited.....

The first thing to notice was.... it was a completely different place this time!!!
Just compare two pics of the same tree shot on 23rd Nov 2008 with its highly interesting reflection and the one shot today on 26th Jan 2009 with bikes parked around it!!! For most of the initial time we spent there, I kept on telling Poorva how and how much the difference is and then realized that I should just enjoy seeing what we can, at that moment!

The interesting part of this visit was a lonnnnnnnggg walk 'inside' the lake (obvisiously not covered by water now!!!!) in an attempt to reach the other end of lake! But the small pack of Poorva's biscuits couldn't energise us so much! ;) And sadly we couldn't go far enough from the loud firangee music played by gujju families talking and eating..... wherever we went.
The last part of this trip was also quite nice, since as I had wished last time, we rode to the other side of entrance... around 4km.... again in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the other end!!! :) The ride on 4 feet wide kachcha road surrounded by thorny shrubs was quite interesting. We did discover a nice place there with 2-3 small boats, cool breeze (and gujju famiies having food). Poorva didn't seem to have any problem with these people talking so much... as she was quite busy clicking her favourite subject..... kids playing!... :)
At the end of the day... there is still so much to be seen at Thol lake!!!!

(this is the link to my last visit post)

Sunday, December 28, 2008

crowd at 'adalaj ni wowwww'

Sid being out of station, I am not supposed to explore any new place (supposedly DHOLKA) this sunday! I took this opportunity to go to 'Adalaj ni vav' (stepwell, some 27 km from NID) which almost everyone in ahmedabad has already seen.
Surprisingly this was quite a big and wrong assumption of mine. During the 3 hrs we (Purva and I) spent there today morning around 150 school kids and 30 other gujaratis visited the place. At one time the place looked (and sounded) so crowded that I immediately escaped to the ground level from bottom-most level for fresh air. (after some time I found Purva climbing up with a very very sad face, the reason being ' there was a very nice (small) boy in the crowd whom she tried to photograph under the sunlight from main opening of well, but his teacher just took him away with her. I quietly listened to this atleast 4 times on our way back! so the boy must be really NICE!!!)
Anyway, this place being so popular and very much photographed already, I am just posting few random and hopefully strange photographs here.
(and don't miss the photograph with a horse sculpted in a row of elephants may be because there was no enough space for one more elephant!!! )

(CLICK to enlarge)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Reflection

Water always attracts us! So much that 4 lazy people actually got up at 5 in the morning (sunday morning!) and went to the Thol Lake some 30Km away from NID.
Its a surreal place... Just take your eyes away from that camera screen, look at what you wanted to show 'others', pause for a minute, forgetting people around you.... the place will talk to you.... just listen... and you realize it's your own voice! the one which you couldn't hear in your daily routine noise... trying to say something, something about yourself.... or may be it is asking you the truth... which even you want to know... You start delving into your mind (or the scenery around? doesn't matter)... If you are lucky this conversation can go on and on... but I was not! This place is quite famous among youngsters and many of them manage to come there before sunrise. So you cant really keep talking to your reflection peacefully.
There is this tree on a tiny island in Thol Lake, bent on the edge and trying to converse with its reflection... endlessly.... I wish even I could do that!
May be I should go back there... alone.... on the other side of lake... cause I still don't know whats there (or within myself!)....