Navarathri Golu - 2017

We are currently celebrating Navarathri (nine-nights) and the Golu visits that come with the celebration. 

The women and girls (and their drivers by induction) are dressed nicely. 

There is high octane fuel.. err Sundal to feed the traveling beauties and chaufers.. 

Some fine singing by the kids in front of the doll displays and 

the doll displays themselves.. a thing we look forward to in this household. 

For those of you who are new to this blog, here is the background. South Indians celebrate Navarathri (Dushera, Durga Pooja in other parts of India) with elaborate doll displays on a staircase pattern (padi) and make some yummy treats with various legumes on 9 nights of the festival. They invite ladies and kids to visit their house, they sing in front of the deities, eat the snacks and are off to visit other folks. The ninth day is a prayer to the godess of learning, Saraswathi and the tenth day is celebrated as the day of Victory (Vijaya- Dasami).

In most houses where there has been a death in the family that year, they skip the display in their house and visit other folks. In some rare cases, where families found that the first year they kept the display as a newly wed family correlated to a death of a closed one, and I use the term correlate with a lot of hate given my applied math background... they watch cautiously. 

My grandmother apparently lost three kids to three years when she tried to keep the golu and decided that keeping the golu was not auspicious for the family. Since then (60 odd years ago), there has been no golu in this house on any paternal desencents. Any woman who gets married to a guy in this family, is promptly brainwashed irrespective of her education level and is told "not to tempt fate by keeping a golu". 

Let's just say that everytime I piss a flamingo dies. Unfotunately piss I have to. Out of respect for my elders (let's call it that) I am just happy visiting golus and taking photos of my cuties in different dresses. . . and of course documenting the golus from bay area which are frozen in time.. the Golus in Chennai seem to have morphed into some advanced concepts in terms of themes, dolls and partying! 

This is typical of any immigrant community that evolves on one side and supresses evolution on other fronts to keep things "authentic".. 

This year we managed one family portrait..

and visited 10 or so Golus over the weekend. I will miss the rest of the golus because of work. It is what it is.. Have asked Jr. to take some nice pictures of golus they attend and show me and I can add it to the slideshow below..

This year I also got to take pictures of the Dasavatharam set (10 avatars of Vishnu) from different Golus (where it was possible to take a picture). Given the circular golus and a shallow depth of focus, some golus were a challenge to capture.. next thing I know, we might need drones to take ariel views of the golu and add videos. Golugraphy has to make its technological advances, no?!

Talking of technology, the kids are taking their science projects and making the Golus interesting. We were witness to a volcano demonstration as part of a golu. Every visitor gets to see the volcano. Just think of how much fun Golus are becoming! 

Here they are...

Given that kids place the dolls and there is sometimes breakage in transit, it is impressive that the golus make it with all 10 avatars. Sometimes folks place it in the wrong sequence while majority place it right. Have written about this in a FB post before.. but there is a logic to this. My grandpa taught me that the 10 avatars of Vishnu is our forefathers way of teaching us evolution. The puranas that talk about the 10 avatars pre-date Darwin by 100's of years. 

The idea is :

life started in the ocean.. the first avatar is fish

Life moved to amphibians .. second one is a tortoise

Then it came to be ground feeding land animals .. third one is a boar

Then came a predator .. Vishnu as a Lion

Then came a pygmy or dwarf .. Vamana

Then it is all homo sapien transformations with a man who is mentally unstable (but physically a man as we know it) - parashurama (violent man)

followed by Rama - man with ideals

then Balarama -- a man with a plough (he has now settled and has figured out how to tame rivers and do agriculture.. non nomadic man)

then Krishna (god who does anything he has to to win and in the process sets up the downfall of man)

Finally Kalki, the doomsday avatar of Vishnu who finishes off what Krishna started. (Last year I had made fun by saying Trump is Kalki and regret that.. he won as I predicted and given where we are.. he might actually be the 10th avatar of Vishnu.. given God comes in all shapes, sizes and colors..even orange)

It is interesting to see how sometimes we miss the bigger picture or the hidden lessons! 

As usual, look forward to next years's Golus.. 

Sunsets..

Given a choice, I would go with my family to the coast and take sunset pictures. But recently that has not been possible with travel. There are amazing sunsets no matter where I am.. so here are some sunsets taken with the iPhone from car rides from airports to hotels, which invariably happen during sunsets!

These were all taken over last two months from moving vehicles.

There were also taken with the iPhone but didnt have to deal with movement..

Sometimes the best camera you have is the one in in your hand!

Once in a lifetime.. or maybe twice

As a child I vaguely remember going through a total solar eclipse as a kid of 8 or 9 in India. The local priest had said that the eclipse was specifically bad for my birth star of "rohini" and I had to be kind of quarantined.. or maybe it was my brother that got quarantined and I was in by association. Total solar eclipses meant folks stayed indoors and the ones whose birth star got a hit stayed 16 stories underground.. no I am kidding. They also stay indoors but get to cover their forehead with darbai grass (which apparently can absorb harmful radiation).. 

That was in those days. Last month I got another chance in this lifetime to "see" a solar eclipse that was spectacular. I had plans to even drive somwhere to see the totality, but my office did not plan for it. We had a meeting set for 10-noon. As a photographer, even if not Oregon, at least I wanted to go to some local mountaintop, set up the camera and go for some kind of time lapse composite shot. On a whim I took my camera bag with me.

When I went to work, we were in for a nice surprise. All of us got solar eclipse goggles and we were watching it from the parking lot. I just set up the camera in my office and took shots through the window.

everything looked unreal for those two hours. the colors on the trees and cars were so vivid ! 

Threw in all ND filters one on top of the other (ND2, ND4 and ND8) and it was still not enough! The sun is very powerful.. so I waited for clouds to cover the sun partially and got some shots! 

but the one above was with my iPhone! one of my colleagues pulled out his Huawei phone and got some amazing shots. That thing had a leica camera on it with shutter speed and aperture controls! I could not match those with the iPhone.. the 5D mark ii with a 70-200 and 2x extender.. that got some decent shots..

Was very happy to be able to see this. It was also a nice experience sharing this viewing with colleagues. Bunch of geeks enjoying an eclipse together!

Who knows, maybe time and space will be in my favor and will get to see an eclipse in totality in some part of the world sometime!

Was worried that in spite of the ND filters the lens would have been damaged. So far it seems to be okay on subsequent portrait shots!

Golden temple by day

The previous post on this series is here..

We got up early in the morning and went back to the Golden temple. The tour guide said that if we go early enough walking bare feet on the roads and in the temple will be easy on the feet. The kids co-operated and got ready early. 

The previous night we had visited the golden temple and on our way out had a late dinner at a Dhaba right outside the temple. Let's just say that everything was "extra buttered" and extremely delicious. It was a miracle we got up in the morning at all after all that food. 

Golden temple by day is as magnificent as it is by night. There was a one hour wait to go to the inner sanctum, even early in the morning. We stood in line, said a prayer and came out. Then we walked around the entire temple, sat there to gather in the vibe of the place and that was that!

Here are some of the pictures that made it interesting for us. Will always cherish this pic of me and San as well as this one of the ladies walking out. They were already tired as it was getting pretty hot. Amritsar in summer is hot!

The little one looked sooo cute with a head scarf that I kept calling her "bittu". All the shop keepers there were calling her bittu! 

The rest of the photos are on a slideshow here..

We also got to go do some shopping at the stores that line up the walkway to the temple..

The next stop for the morning was the Jalianwalah bhag memorial which is right at the edge of the golden temple. . .

Golden temple by night

After visiting the Wagah border we drove straight to the Golden temple. We were told that the temple is open 24 hours a day and the view is mesmerizing at night. 

There were hundreds of pictures from the one hour spent in the temple that night.. but these three are my favorites. They go first!

We were not disappointed. Walking in through the cleanly swept roads was in itself an amazing experience. The cute statues gave the MIL and Jr. some ideas..

It was almost 9 PM when we got to the temple. The minute you see the temple from the entrance, it takes your breath away! We also got to walk past "appu bakers" and were giving the little one a hard time with jokes about her baking and staring a store there. 

There was a long line and the wait to go to the inner sanctum was more than an hour. So we took pictures and walked the outside perimeter. The standing in line would have to wait for early morning.

We got to see the temple again, bright and early the next morning. . .