A Wandering Mind

The monsoons have arrived and we breathe a little more easily, in spite of the flooded roads, and a power cut die to a short circuit somewhere.....Having nothing much to do with the current gone, I spent some time taking snaps of the skies from our window........ Here are three snaps taken at different times of the day - the view is the same, but how different it looks each time! This is why I love monsoons, and am willing to put up with any discomforts, from wet clothes to wading through knee deep water.... Its all worth it! For more skies around the world, go to Sky Watch Friday

I first started writing stories when I was in school. Of course, then, I never dreamt of being an author – it was just something I did when I was in the mood. All I was interested in at the time was physics, and all my dreams were of publishing some wonderful scientific articles in the leading journals. All those dreams came to an end when I decided to dump my Ph.D, but then my old pastimes came to my aid and I started writing again – both, travelogues as well as stories. But now the dream raised its head again – of being published, not just on the net, but in print! One part of this dream came true when my travelogue was published in the Sunday Herald (you can see the article here). But the larger dream came true this week when a collection of my stories were published in a book! I was approached a few months back by an organisation named JK Yog . They had read some of my stories for children, and wanted me to re-tell some stories from Indian mythology and folk tales for their boo...

I took this photograph more than 2 years ago, on a trip to our home town....Before any of you think its a normal thing, well, for us, it isn't! It is our 'home-town' only in name, for we have no 'home' there..... we just go there (or rather try to go there) at least once a year to visit the temple there...... As it happens, I haven't visited the temple since then, but have a real yearning to visit again, which has only intensified after seeing this pic, which was taken just after we left the temple... It was a wonderful trip, which we made as a family, visiting almost 75 temples in just 10 days!!! Wish I could make another such trip again!!! For more skies around the world, go to Sky Watch Friday

After the heat of the past few months, the rains are a welcome sight indeed...... Over the long summer months, what we missed most were the birds which thronged the trees outside our window... What with the leaves being shed in the extreme heat and the lack of water, the only birds we saw were crows, pigeons and sparrows! The crows finished up all the food and water we placed for the birds, not letting any other bird anywhere near..... The pigeons were the boldest, trying to grab a morsel while the crows were busy elsewhere..... as to the sparrows, they simply had to settle for the leftovers, since they were severely disadvantaged by their size! When the Indian Laburnum (Amaltas/ Golden Shower) bloomed late in may right outside our window, we  were thrilled, for we imagined that the bright yellow flowers would attract some birds...but alas, the crows played spoil-sport, not allowing any birds anywhere near.... I hung around with my camera, trying to get some interesting photos,...

We are a family which speaks   more often in English or Hindi than in our mother tongue – Tamil. We are more comfortable in these languages, and don’t even know to read and write Tamil properly. But there is one field in which our mother tongue comes first, and we discovered that when my son was born! We most often spoke to him in English/Hindi, but when it came to playing with him, the first songs which came to mind were the ones our grandmothers sang – in Tamil! We had to try hard to remember the words of some of the songs and rhymes, but somehow, we enjoyed those a lot more than any English rhymes we could sing….. In fact, for the first time I realised how wonderful they were, and thought of recording them for posterity. As things happened, we had no time for that, and we soon forgot all about them as my son outgrew that stage…. Thanks to   Tulika, and their fourth blogathon,   I now have a chance of re-remembering some of them…. so here I go…. Note:   please exc...

Yesterday was Buddha Poornima .. and the full moon looked wonderful! Some welcome clouds kept covering it, and the sight was really beautiful! Unfortunately, as I tried to take some photographs, my batteries gave way - not just one, but every single one..... and I wasn't even able to take one photograph!  However, here is another full moon for you . .. this one at Binsar....... it was wonderful night, the stars clearly visible in the complete darkness, and I could just sit there for hours, looking out at the moon shining brightly against the utter blackness of the night.... For more skies around the world, go to Sky Watch Friday .

Usually, when I return from a trip, I can’t wait to write about it, but this time, I somehow seem to be terribly behind….. My Binsar trip was in March, and it has taken me almost 2 months to complete the travelogues…… Now it’s time for another much overdue travelogue, but this time closer home – our trip to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park with Nature Knights. I had heard of Nature Knights from Bindhu and Unny quite a while back, and was interested in their Mom and Kid programmes, since I can’t possibly send Samhith alone for a camp yet! However, it took me a full year to find time to join them on a trip, and I signed up for their Sunday jaunt into the Sanjay Gandhi national Park, more popularly known as Borivli National Park . We started off early in the morning , the bus conveniently picking us up just a few minutes from our house. The journey to the national park took almost two hours, picking up more people along the way. Samhith of course, slept through the whole journey...