Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Stairs, Steps, Ladders

This week’s topic is Stairs, Steps, Ladders.  The different ways humans have discovered to move up and down to get from one floor to one another.  Stairs, ladder, escalators help us out in so many ways.  Not everyone is a rock climber and these methods help us have a more convent life.  Have fun with this challenge this week.  Use your imagination if you want for this theme.  The thing is to have a lot of fun with this challenge.

Up the stairs, a good place to watch 🙂

Steps to a temple 🙂

Walking down from one of our temples.

Celebrations in a temple near our place.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Stairs, Steps, Ladders

 

 

 

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The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Narrow

This week, let’s keep things narrow (but not narrow-minded!): share a photo with your take on the theme. You could focus on a slender object, or shoot an image where your field of vision is restricted. Alleyways and half-open doors, seesaws and water slides, spaghetti and electric cords… the world is full of narrow things. I can’t wait to see which one you’ll pick for your entry.

The areca garden in our village is at different levels. It has been a part of my father-in-law’s life for 91 years. The house where he grew up is in the valley and in early seventies he built his own house at a higher level, in another end of the garden. Every day he has been going up and down these narrow steps.

Narrow channels have been made for the water to reach all the trees.

Stopping cocoa pods which have fallen into the channel.

There are some tunnels through water flows out , the narrow openings. Long back we had walked through the tunnel :))

The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Narrow

The Daily Post Discover Challenge : Shared Journeys

For this week’s Discover challenge, tell us about one of your shared journeys. It could be an actual journey — a road trip with your friends, your honeymoon, a walk in the woods with your parents. But you might also choose a less physical journey, from adopting an animal with your partner to finishing a collaborative creative project. You’re also welcome to share a contrary perspective and insist on the merits of solitary exploration.

I look forward to your posts — which can come in any form, genre, or media you prefer to publish in.

 

Life is a journey

Some are a part of it

From the beginning,

And others join us later,

And remain to share

This journey of ours

Till the end.

Along with them,

Books have been a part of my life,

And have shared my journey

Through the years.

Books have come

And books have gone,

Some have left their imprint

And others forgotten.

Books and their authors

Have taken me to different worlds,

To different times,

Have allowed me

To share their journey.

I cannot imagine

Life without books.

We have walked together

Over the years,

This shared journey of ours

Has made life

So much richer for me.

The Daily Post Discover Challenge : Shared Journeys

The Daily Prompt : Sanctuary

A house becomes a home

When there is peace and harmony

Within its four walls.

It then become a sanctuary,

A safe harbor,

Against all odds

Of the outside

And the inside world.

People living in that home

Are individuals,

With their own way of thinking.

But there is understanding,

There is space for everyone.

This leads to harmony

And makes it possible

To face all ups and downs

Which are a part of life.

Because in the background

There is that home,

That means togetherness

And is a sanctuary,

A safe harbor,

Against all odds of life.

The Daily Prompt : Sanctuary

 

 

The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Cherry on the top

This week, share an image of a finishing touch from your own life. Maybe it’s a photo of the blooming rose bush that’s the centerpiece of your garden, or a shot of the sunset that was a perfect end to a wonderful day. Perhaps it’s a snapshot of the glowing grin on your daughter’s face after she achieves a longed-for goal, or a picture of the statue on top of a beautiful old building in your city.

Show us the detail that made a good experience a truly transcendent one — let’s celebrate the cherries on top! I’m excited to get inspired by your photos.

The pool in the areca garden in our village. The green above and the green below makes the place extra beautiful, cherry on the top:)

One morning just before sun rise we were on our way, I was taking photos and this photo was by chance, cherry on the top 🙂

One more beautiful photo, sunrise and a bird flying across, cherry on the top:)

This photo of the shadows of my mothers and mine is special for me:)

The best cherry on the top, when our grandson was born:)), on my lap for the first time.

The Daily Post Photo Challenge : Cherry on the top

The Daily Prompt : Clock

The hands of the clock

Keep moving on,

Reminding us of the words,

‘Time and tide wait for none’.

Some look at the clock

And say there is no time,

To do all that we want to do.

Others say what to do with time?

What do we do to pass time?

That is a sad reflection

Of our state of mind,

When time hangs heavily

On our hands.

The minute hand of the clock

Does not seem to move,

We keep looking at the clock,

Urging it to move faster.

But time moves at its own pace.

What we do with time

Is in our hands.

The hands of the clock move on.

Even if they stop, time does not.

‘Time and tide wait for none’.

The Daily Prompt : Clock

 

 

 

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Tracks – trains, rail tracks, etc.

This week’s topic is Tracks – trains, rail tracks anything to do with tracks

The Railway station in Kannur.

Not far from our home.

( During the monsoons the tree on the right has been covered by a creeper and looks like a mammoth:) )

In London .

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Tracks – trains, rail tracks, etc.

The Daily Post Discover Challenge: The Things that we leave behind

This week, create a post about something you’ve left behind. What is your existence like without it? What is its existence like without you? What does revisiting it make you feel? What does the future hold for it? Will you ever look back at it again?

These words took me back in time to those days that we lived in the campus. My husband is a professor in the dental college in this small town of ours. There are different educational institutions here. We got married in 1982 and were allotted  quarters in the campus. It was a one bedroom house. Over the years we shifted to a two bedroom house then to a three bedroom house. Our children were born there. They grew up with their friends. Their home friends and school friends were the same. All have now moved away to different parts of the world but the childhood bond remains strong. Campus life is special. We built our own house not far from the dental college and shifted in 2005. We left behind  campus life but memories of our life there are very good ones. Through Facebook I am in touch with many of my campus friends and friends of my children. They have their children now. Life has moved on, but that base, campus life, is still strong. Almost every afternoon I volunteer in a Home for the Mentally Challenged. It is at one end of the campus. I walk back home in the evening and pass by those houses we lived in. Though we have left behind that life, it is still a part of my life.

The playground where our children played 🙂

Their school 🙂

The Daily Post Discover Challenge: The Things that we leave behind

Mirror mirror…

Mirror mirror…

I am reading this very interesting book by Jorge Luis Borges called ‘On Writing’. It is a collection of his essays. I loved these lines from the essay, ‘Ultra Manifesto’, “Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment’s objectivity or the individual’s psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges- beyond spatial and temporal prisons- a personal vision.”

I do not know why but these lines took me back to childhood when fairy tales took us to a different world, a world of imagination where anything and everything was possible. I remembered ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. Fortunately in those days we just accepted a story and all that happened in it. We never analyzed. Now, reading those lines by Borges, I thought the wicked witch desperately wanted to be the most beautiful woman. The mirror passively reflected her desire, her obsessive desire. We always see in the mirror what we want to see. The advertisements of all those ‘Fair and Lovely’ creams come to mind. In our country a lot of importance and appreciation is given to those who are fair. It is unfortunate. The manufacturers of these creams take advantage of people who are not happy with what they see in the mirror.

Going back to the wicked witch, the moment she saw Snow White, she realized that there was someone more beautiful than her. The mirror reflected her thoughts. Once again I am thankful we accepted stories just as they were and enjoyed ourselves.:)) Too much analysis spoils everything.

Unlike mirrors, prisms are so alive, the light that passes through them seems to have a life of its own. In a way the prisms do not show what we want to see, we have to accept what they want to show us. Thinking about mirrors and prisms and glasses my thoughts went to my laptop and Skype. We talk to our daughter and grandson and we can see each other. My father-in-law was filled with wonder to see his great grandson in his room through the screen on the laptop. When we first started to Skype, our grandson used to say he would walk through the screen and come to our side. At that stage of life we believe in everything. There is no limit to our imagination. In those days prisms had their own fascination but even the mirror had a life of its own. My younger brother, till the age of four or five used to act out many parts in front of the mirror. :)) I have seen our grandson stand before the mirror and remain in his world of imagination.
We move on and our way of looking at life changes as life changes.

‘Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.’ ~John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells

The Daily Prompt : Unpredictable

Human beings are so different
And in many ways so similar.
One reminds us of another,
And their way of functioning
Seems predictable.
But there is the unpredictable
Which makes each individual
Different from the other.
It is the unpredictable
Which surprises us
And keeps on surprising us.
It is the unpredictable
That leads to tragedies
And paves the way to hell.
But it also leads to heaven.
It is the unpredictable
Which adds to  variety
And makes life interesting .
Without it, the sameness
And everything predictable
Would make life unbearable.
It is difficult to imagine life
Without the unpredictable.

The Daily Prompt : Unpredictable