Hoo's tales :)

Clowns, story tellers, puppeteers, mimes and a whole lot of happy kids:
That was Hoo’s tales in Cubbon park this Saturday.
In the age of Chinese toys and Playstations a story telling fair may look a little out of place, but the children definitely seemed to be enjoying every bit of it.
To tell you a secret, I did too. :0)

Mehndi!

What do you do when you’ve had too much action last weekend? You rest yourself.
But he bad thing about resting is that you get bored sometimes.. and worse still, you run out of fresh pictures.
This shoot came as a surprise – of the good kind, though.
A friend had once mentioned that one of her friends would like to have me shooting her at her mehndi, but like everything else, I had forgotten this as well.
So this evening (after being reminded and surprised the previous day), I quietly slip out of work for a rendezvous with the bride for some green room action.
Considering that I had no strobes, softboxes or diffusers, and was shooting out of the equipment in my office backpack, I am pretty happy with the way the pictures turned out.

A Gentle giant, and the 100th post

In the moist evergreen forests of Kerala, it is an overwhelming feeling just to be – you do not necessarily have to see it all to believe it : the fact is that you couldn’t, even if you wanted to.
The air is always heavy with the sounds and smells of what is on the other side – of a tree trunk or the thick undergrowth - of creatures watching your every move.
There is a rhythm ( I’d even go as far as calling it silence) to the noises of the jungle; for when there is a crackle of branches and a rustle of leaves, you will turn and look, and you will probably spot this colorful bundle of fur on a leap that is nothing less than unbelievable.

The giant Malabar squirrel is quite huge as the name suggests. What is unlike how the name sounds though, is that he is a particularly cute fellow.
It builds nests on intricately branched heights of trees, and hardly ever comes down : a reason why the creature cannot be spotted very easily.
The natural predators of this threatened species are leopards and large birds, but the real threat is from the two-legged cousins that live on the other side of the tree line.

Don't expect a loner to behave.

At first light, we still had a few minute’s drive ahead of us before we reached the first check-post into the jungles. Force of habit is an incredible thing to be working against - the otherwise interesting discussions on quantum physics and philosophy do not really work while your body keeps repeating just one word : “Sleep”.

And then our senses were yanked wake by a sight least expected. We were taking a turn when we saw a young bull elephant around the corner – a shy loner with piercing eyes.

The place was an isolated patch of wilderness – not inhabited, but with a lot of human activity along the road. There was no food in sight, and this was no known migration route. The herd was nowhere to be seen: this guy was danger.

The engine was turned off, and for a longer-than-usual minute, we waited as he surveyed the scene, and then slowly crossed the road to disappear into the bush alongside.

The opportunity was too good to be let to pass – a few cameras exited the car, and the men behind them inched forward slow as snails, trying not to infuriate the tusker. The car’s engine went on, ready for action if the need arose.

Amidst the clickety-clack of shutters the elephant turned around, and that is when I noticed the smudged swelling on the side of his head – This was a loner in musth.

Musth (or, alternately spelled, must) is a periodic condition in bull elephants, characterized by a thick, tar-like secretion called temporin from the temporal ducts and, far more notably, by highly aggressive behaviour. …

…scientific investigation of musth is greatly hindered by the fact that, once under the influence of musth, even the most otherwise placid of elephants may actively try to kill any and all humans.

The bird-man by the road

The man is a bird. But the bird man cannot fly. He does not chirp or sing.
His parakeet (with clipped wings) can pick my fortune out from a stack of cards.
The bird man tells me I will have three children, and that I will marry a dangerous woman : dangerous in a nice kind of way (he winks as he tells me that).

Ah, I can hardly wait!! ;))

The Old Tomato Woman

Well, I took a sabbatical.
Life was coming too fast, and me - I needed my break.
Honestly, I am busier than the average man of my age. I realized that squeezing time out to post pictures was not working for me anymore. So I stopped.

But with that, I also realized that i had slowed down on my pictures, and that I also stopped reading what some very nice people wrote.
So I am back - With the old tomato woman.

Lots of love..

May all things beautiful be with you this new year - and a jumbo-sized helping of love.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone. Stay happy!

Oh, what a movie!

How can this movie not be loved!
When you work with dedication, a story that wouldn’t fill half a page turns into a brilliantly scripted, shot and presented masterpiece . Tare zameen par is - without doubt - the best movie this year.

I had a lump in my throat the entire time I was in the movie hall, and I am sure so would anyone who used to be allergic to books, to homework, and the system.
The trauma of the kid (at least to me) is of being judged by the world’s standards - Of slaughtered confidence, of being told he wasn’t good enough – And that is the beauty of the movie, if you ask me. It lets you think without making you look at your watch - The pace was a breeze and there is plenty of room to contemplate. The music isn’t redundant, is well timed, and actually good.

There is so much attention to detail - the titles just blew me away.
I walked in on someone else’s ticket (thank you Maneesha), and I was charmed from the first second on.

Oh what a movie!

Back to show-and-tell ;)

When the excitement of anxiety is spent, and there is no new game to learn,
light seems to shine from the corners, and you look on from your favorite window.

- Ammooma, Kerala.

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alternate image here

The blogger you are looking for may have been removed, had his name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

He left a picture, though. ;)

Little princess likes to pose

(If you cant see that picture, an alternate image is available here)

What you see here is one of the most difficult models I've ever had - Yet another one from the family day last weekend.
Lesson learnt: Child portraits are no child’s play – I could hold her attention no longer than a few seconds, and just when I decide to release the shutter, she would turn to answer some imaginary voice.
But I think the picture was worth the effort.

The wide eyed girl

The wide eyed girl, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

There is nothing more satisfying to me than people in my pictures.

I may wander, but I always have to come back to them. :)

The bullet and the rosary

The bullet and the rosary, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

The bullet and the rosary – would that not make a good name for a book?
(Apparently Google doesn’t think anyone has written that book yet. Maybe I should.)
The Royal Enfield bullet has been a motorbike of every young Indian man’s dreams – me included. The chrome, the thump, and the no-nonsense build. As a kid, I used to be so in awe of the loud machines that rode past my house. Now in a city that is louder, the glint of steel, and the steady deep noise of an approaching bullet still makes me turn. And watch.
I’m buying one. That’s on top of my to-do list right now.

Boys and girls, Let it roll!

let it roll, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

Diwali is here. And here’s my own hand crafted card and message to all you good folks.

Cheers to everyone!

[I made that card at a 15 min make-a-card competition at work. :) The card was later presented to my all-boys lunch group. By the way, that won the second place. ]


PS: For the less informed, Wiki sez: "..The festival marks the victory of good over evil, and uplifting of spiritual darkness. Symbolically it marks the homecoming of goodwill and faith after an absence.."

The Sunset beach

splash!, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

..And when it is time to die, I will die in style.

From burning orange to an eerie purple all the way till darkness starts creeping in from the corners - I cant think of a death as grand as the death of the day.

Ripples on the pond

ripples on the pond, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

Good times are back - And I'm having a lazy week away from work, doing what I love doing : watching it rain.
It is November (well, almost) and it is pouring as if it were June.
With the moss on the walls, and the color of the grass, it even feels like June - and I am loving it.

If I get one clear day though, I'm heading out to the jungle.

Playing with the sea

cme n get me, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

I’ve had more than enough,
Too much.
Stop playing with me,
Come and get me!

Hot-dog does the dive.

Free style, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

Contravening instincts bred into him by millions of years of evolution, you see Spark doing another one of his water catching performances here. (And you, like an idiot thought all dogs run away from water.)
And he goes: “Yo, check it out, Gs, Damn. I be attendin' to bidness 24/7, and I almost forgot about evolushan! “

Spark says he’s working on his other ‘bad habits’ like sniffing feces on the sidewalk, licking his own groin, and wolfing down his food.

When he has all the hot-dog ingredients, it should be ok for him to take a few exceptions, don’t you think? (“Unless you wants every hole in yo' body stapled shut, y'all best not make no wisecracks.”)
Spark is a good dog.

:)

[he was a few days old here. ]

Earth, water and light

, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

There is something exquisitely romantic about love by the sea-side, something far more poetic than by the park bench – especially so on this day when rain clouds covered the sky, and sunshine, trickling through the clouds painted a picture of gold.