A Photo a week Challenge : Saturation

sat·u·ra·tion (saCHəˈrāSH(ə)n/) noun
the state or process that occurs when no more of something can be absorbed, combined with, or added.

There is a man-made lake in our place. During monsoon water flows in from different places, channels have been made for this. During peak monsoon, water reaches to the brim, to saturation level.

The first photo is in the first month of monsoon season, last year.

This photo is in September, October , 2014

The lake is full , to saturation point and water overflows to the other side through a channel.

Now the water level has once more gone down and by May, it will become lesser, but water will not dry up completely. Then, once more the monsoon season will start 🙂

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Bikes and Motorcycles

This is our Ind Suzuki bike which we have since 1985, we bought it a few months before our daughter was born.This photo is sometime in 1988.

Now her son is enjoying a ride on this bike, which is older than his mother 🙂 It is a part of our lives and there have been many  wonderful moments .

Stories and the Story teller

Stories are a very important part of life in any society, in any age and in any part of the world. I just cannot imagine life without stories and story tellers. We grew up listening to stories from our Epics and Puranas. Our grandfather, my father’s father, was the story teller. I can still picture us sitting around him and listening to stories. And that love for reading and listening to stories continued.

Devdutt Pattanaik in his book, ‘Shikhandi and other stories they don’t tell you’ tells us stories in India are never original: they are always retold. For example, the Gita we read today- the narration by Sanjaya to Dhritarashtra in the battlefield of Kurukshetra is a modern interpretation of a 700 verse dialogue from a 1,00,000 verse epic called Mahabharata. It was first recorded 2000 years ago and that was recorded much earlier in the Naimasha forest to Shaunak by Ugrasrava Sauti . He heard it from his father ,Lomaharshana, who heard it from Vaishampayana. He heard it from his teacher, Vyasa who narrated to his scribe, Ganesha.   We have to allow for transmission loss.’     :))

When I read that, I think of what A K Ramanujan has said about our Ramayana in his essay, Three hundred Ramayanas, ‘The Rama story is told in so many languages that it makes one gasp. Through the centuries each of these languages have hosted more than one telling of the story. Sanskrit alone contains some twenty-five or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres like epics, poetry, puranas, plays, dance dramas, folk traditions and so on. He says it would be interesting to sort out how these hundreds of tellings of a story in different cultures, languages and religious traditions relate to each other : what gets translated, transplanted and transposed.’

Thoughts about stories and story tellers came to mind as I finished reading a delightful book called ‘ Blue -Tales of Reddumone, The Two faced by M R Sharan. The last section of the book is all about story tellers. People who listened to the story teller felt something change in their life, something stirring awake.

We too felt the same when we listened to stories and enjoyed living in a beautiful world of imagination.In that world everything is possible. Our Epics and Puranas are such an integral and living part of our lives. They are thousands of years old but continue to inspire every generation. They are not rigid in their tellings and people through the ages have been able to relate to them. They represent every facet of life – the good , the bad and the ugly. I think that is what has kept them alive.

( The photo is of my father with his great grandson, life goes on.)

A word a week photograph challenge : Broken

There is this beautiful tree in front of our home, it looks like a giant yellow bouquet when in full bloom-

In 2013, during the monsoon season, there had been heavy wind and rain. One morning we heard a loud sound and to our sorrow we saw the tree broken into halves.

It has now grown back and is looking nice and green, but it is yet to flower.

The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is a photography concept that puts the subject of the photograph off-center, which usually results in blank space in the rest of the image. If you focus closely on your subject and use a wide aperture, your photograph’s background will also be beautifully blurred in that blank space. The blurred area behind your focal point is referred to as bokeh, and when executed well, it adds depth and artistry to an otherwise simplistic photograph.

This photo is of my husband and in the back ground is the building behind the house, in his village where he grew up. Earlier the building had been used to store farm products like coconut, arecanut, paddy, etc.

The  plant, the spider and the spider’s web

The sky, the branch and the bird at the end of the branch

A Photo a week Challenge : Siblings

My children with my daughter’s son in 2013

This photo is in 1986 my son with his little sister

A Word a week Photograph Challenge : Frame

This photo is in a playground, below the slide. Our grandson .

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge : My Favorite Things, Chorus

This is our last week for the song theme.  I hope you all have enjoyed my musical theme. Next week we will be of just some fun topics.

Our song this week finishes My Favorite Things with the Chorus.  So read the lyrics (in italic below) and see what you can come up with for a topic.  Have fun and remember to find a theme within the verse. Most of all I hope you have fun.  This is definitely one where you can add photos of your favorite things.

When the dog bites, When the bee stings, When I’m feeling sad,

I simply remember my favorite things, And then I don’t feel so bad.

The feeling of wonder when I could take this photo:)

Sunrise , beginning of a new day 🙂

Boiled rice cooked in the traditional way 🙂 its taste is beyond words and is part  of childhood vacations spent with grandparents ,

some of my  favourite things:)

The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Symmetry

Symmetry (noun): the quality of something that has two sides or halves that are the same or very close in size, shape, and position; the quality of having symmetrical parts.

For this challenge, share an image of symmetry. Don’t limit yourself to architecture — you can bend this theme in any way you’d like.

A portrait of your twins? A window grille? The yellow lines of a busy road? A row of sharp points along a metal fence? Let the world inspire you.

Temples are a very important part of our lives. There is a feeling of serenity , peace and reflection. Everything is so symmetrical. Maybe that adds to the feeling.

A Photo a week Challenge: Smooth

“Textures are fun to play with in photography. The more types of textures in our image, the more interest it has. For this week, find the unique and interesting smooth textures around you. ”

This food item is made from rice and ripe jackfruit, which is mixed, wrapped in banana leaf. It is then steamed. It looks so smooth and it is very tasty too:)

A wild, edible  berry, smooth, round and colourful 🙂

These days different materials like granite of vitrified tiles are used for the floors. But earlier there were  this red floors . They had to be polished manually to its smoothness. This photo is in my parents’ home:)