chakravyuha

A awesome set of Diwali picture from the always excellent The Big Picture blog. Be sure to check them out.

Amazing pictures of a burning gas crater in Turkmenistan.

[via]: IndiaUncut

A sound scape of the box of spicesThis image shows a box of spices. There is one big box and every individual spice is kept in its own box. You will be able to sense the different circles belonging to different boxes.

… art, because Jackson Pollock pulled this off.

To all the desis out there… Happy Holi !! 

My brother is not particularly fond of the Holi mess and sometimes the celebrations can turn rather nasty (what with people sailing on bhang and all that) but I love it and that’s one of the things that I miss living here in the US. Just try this Flickr link for tons of Holi photos from India and elsewhere.

Wheel valves for the uninitiated

A picture of pipes and veal valves on my terrace. These valves resemble miniature steering wheels. They are used to control the flow of water A overhead tanks to my house.

A water tank and it’s associated down take pipes

Sound scape of water tankThis image is of a water tank on top of my house and it’s down take pipes. This was the first image I took using the latest version of the vOICe and my Nokia E51.

Terrace panorama

A view of the Street facing my house. This photograph has been taken from my terrace. The image is extremely complex because it shows a variety of vehicles and I suspect, parts of people.

Entrance to one of the hostels at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

I’m in Calcutta right now and it amazes me how much of the city resembles Bombay. Like Bombay, the city has a lot of character and driving here is far less aggravating than in Delhi (where I live), although the roads are as crowded as in Bombay. Like Bombay, it has the same narrow roads winding through old dilapidated buildings. More often than not, when you enter these buildings you’ll find the inside is maintained very well. It’s not uncommon to see a spanking office that has not been painted for years from the outside. The reason, methinks, is very simple. The inside of a building, be it a house in an apartment complex or an office in a larger commercial building, is managed by the people inhabiting it. They have every wish to make it appear neat and clean. However, when it comes to the outsides, nobody cares. It is a symptom of how we Indians lack a civic sense. Somehow, we never developed a shared interest or stake in either the development or the maintanence of these non-private areas of a city.

Sidenote #1: Calcutta is now called Kolkata and Bombay is Mumbai but I hate those new names.

Sidenote #2: Here’s a picture of a shopping complex called Newmarket. It’s called Newmarket, but it’s freaking old. The place has a very old bakery called “Nahaums” that has the best Brownies that I have ever had, and I have had brownies in a lot of cities in the world.

Courtesy Abhishek Narain.

Trucks in India have the weirdest of slogans printed at their backs. Here’s a couple of pictures of their wise posteriors after the fold. These are from my trip to India in September of 2005.

There is the customary suggestion to “Horn Please” and to “Keep Distance”. Seriously wouldn’t we have been so very poor at driving were we not drilled with the wisdom to “Use Dipper At Night”? Then there is one in Hindi that spells “Hawa Hawai”. That is so very hard to translate. Let’s see, Hawa means wind. “Hawai” is not really a word. But it probably means like the wind. So what the driver is trying to say is that despite everything the truck will go like the wind! Really, they are all such terrible drivers.