Bacchu's Hall

Bacchu's Hall

Same day 4 years back I shot this photo. We were at Sudhagad organizing a running race. Kaka Joshi was in charge. It was a lot of fun as we impressed the villagers with my Toughbook. heh.

Sunset Colours

sunset over Goregaon


“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~Rabindranath Tagore


Today was another magnificent sunset over the dindoshi depot. I got to it at the fag end.

view large


- next morning update!

This is another angle with more sky.

magic flower

wildflowers


the rain that we chased
on the distant horizon
the water thundering around
my mind confused, my senses crashed down
I just wait
I just wait for you

the cold blast of the winter wind
takes my breath away
the mystic smile on your face
takes my heart away
I just wait
I just wait for you

that mad dash southwards
to the room with the silent face
your whispers in my ear
and that magic flower
I just wait
I just wait for you


hehe, silly old stuff. but I did have that magic flower, for a long time ... but then the one who had given it to me asked it back silently, so I gave it ...

In Memory: Chandrakant Gokhale

Chandrakant Gokhale

This veteran passed away at 1830hrs on Friday, 27 June 2008. He was 87. We have lost a pillar of society in him. This is in memory of him. I shot this on the sets of the marathi movie "Dombivili Fast". I am honored to have got the chance.

Wildflowers

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, find you a lover
Go away somewhere all bright and new
I have seen no other
Who compares with you

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
You belong with your love on your arm
You belong somewhere you feel free

Run away, go find a lover
Run away, let your heart be your guide
You deserve the deepest of cover
You belong in that home by and by

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worries
You belong somewhere you feel free
You belong somewhere you feel free

~Tom Petty

Legacy code (and thoughts)

fun times

Yesterday I attended my first Techcamp after Cleartrip. It was a talk given by Michael Feathers titled "Working Effectively with Legacy Code". It was nice to meet old friend Sandeep Shetty and meet a few new people too.

The photo above is the name plate we had for our Mahalaxmi Office. That was the time when a simple printout did not make us feel too small. That was a great time at Cleartrip.

Sunday Flower

Bougainvillea, from the gardens of Anarkali, Mahabaleshwar.

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."
~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Sunset Colours

sunset over goregaon

Slowly but surely I have stopped worrying about what I am doing or what I am supposed to be doing. :) Today the sky was rampant with colour. I watched as it slowly merged with the darkness which crept in from the left and the right and above ... as if the sun took away all the colour with it when it went yonder ...

x

Sanket has a voice which goes to my heart. Once, sitting on the steps of closed shops on the naka he sang my fav song of his for me. It was an old gazal... I recorded on my phone .. Then later I devised this video around that song .. from arbitrary clips I had shot with my k750 phone camera over the year. Those where the days of a lot of questions.

This is the story of a guy and a girl - but mostly the guy. He has questions ... he is unsuccessful in love, then dark side tempts him and he goes awry ... but his luck is in ... finally he finds peace ....

Vasu plays the hero.

Bijapur. Road Trip, April-May 2008, Part I

Sunset on the Deccan. The flat hinterland.

Prelude

It's been a couple of months since I have got back from this trip and finally I take it upon myself to note down the trip least I forget about it or the minor details which enriched it.

I had been looking forward to a trip for quite some time. I tried to rope in friends and other to plan one, but nothing happened. So I took leave and decided to drive. I took my brothers Honda City as my Esteem was at the garage and moreover had old tires.

So I drove down to Poona. Cousin Unmesh from Solapur met me there having come from Pundharpur where he studies. The journey to Poona was uneventful - it was not the first time I was doing Mumbai-Poona alone. Met Unmesh at Swargate and we immediately headed for Solapur.

The 250 odd kilometers to Solapur was extremely hot, but uneventful. Temperatures in the shade exceeded 40 deg C. I was traveling this arid flattish landscape (called malran in Marathi) by road after more than a decade.

I spent a couple of days in Solapur visiting relations - I was born in this town. Aniket my young cousin had just finished his exams. We visited the Nannaj bird sanctuary and sited the Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps, Maldhok माळ्ढोक in Marathi, also Sonchiriya locally).

So on 22/4/08 at about 1600hrs me and Aniket headed for Bijapur.

Bijapur

The road to Bijapur is the NH-13 going south. The hinterland is flat and mostly barren. We reached much after dark and started hunting for a place to stay. The hotel we found was pretty good but only had one suite empty. So we forked out 1200 bucks to stay in a large room with A/C. The temperature at 10pm was 38 deg C so the A/C was pretty welcome.

In the morning we started. After some consultation with the reception, we decided to start with the Upli Buruz and then head further to the other places.

Bijapur is a quaint old town and one gets the feeling that it is still living in the past. There is poverty everywhere and old derelict building. This was the seat of the Adilshahi dynasty from 1490 to 1686. Yusuf Adil Shah was a governor of Bijapur for the Bahamani empire before he broke away and created the sultanate of Bijapur. The dynasty ruled the sultanate till 1686 when the Mughals conquered it.

The last three sultans, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, Mohammed Adil Shah, Ali Adil Shah II, build most of what we see of Bijapur today. It is some of the best deccan Indo-Islamic architecture.

The Upli Buruz (80 ft) is a massive buruz (round bastion tower) built on a relatively higher part of Bijapur by Hyder Khan. It is also called Upri or Hyder buruz sometimes. It has 2 cannons on top, one of which is really massive. You can see most of the town from the top. But buruz is surrounded by the encroachments of the city .. the gutters the overhead wires the animals.

Form here we walked down to the Malik-E-Maidan ("lord of the battlefield", "The Monarch of the Plains") Cannon. This cannon is 4m long, 1.5m in diameter and weighs about 55 tons. It is build of some alloy metal which has not rusted in all these years. It is housed on a platform specially built for it on the Sherza Burj. This gun was brought from Ahmednagar in the 17th century as a war trophy.

The sun was getting higher and temperatures were touching the 40deg C mark. So we decided to hire a tonga. The old man of the tonga said he would should us the rest of the monuments for a 100 bucks. We jumped in and headed for Ibrahim Roza.

This monument was a shocker for me in terms for the grandeur and size. I loved it. The twin buildings are similar and distinct at once. This is the mausoleum of Ibrahim Adil Shah II. It is said to have inspired the Taj Mahal.

From here we headed for Bara Kaman. This large melancholy structure stood stark in the noon sun like a bleached skeleton. It had got extremely hot by now and impossible to bare the head. This is the mausoleum of Ali Roza.

From here we visited the Chand Bawdi (water place) and the Jod Gumbaz. Both were ill maintained and dirty. We also visited the Jumma Mashjid. This is a beautiful structure which is used even today for prayer.

Then we headed for the Gol Gumbaz. But it was past lunch time so decided to eat before entering it. We had lunch in a small restaurant outside the Gumbaz gates. The tonga man was delighted when I tipped him 50 bucks. It had been a good ride through the old city.

Gol Gumbaz is the second largest dome in the world. It is the mausoleum of Mohammed Adil Shah. I have visited the Gumbaz as a child. The area around the monument has been very well maintained. The Gumbaz itself is massive. The 4 corner towers are 7 stories high. It was a crowded day and because it is so famous it is difficult to photograph this massive structure without being cliched. One has to visit it to feel the grandeur.

We wrapped up pretty quick as we had planned to head for Badami and did not want to be too late ...


p.s
I have freely used the wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijapur,_Karnataka) for reference.



Loaded!



The Upli Buruz


The large cannon


Structure which houses the Muluk maidan cannon


The muluk maidan cannon


The head of the cannon


At the Mulluk maidan cannon


The tonga wallah



The tonga and the horse



Ibrahim Roza


One of the buildings of Ibrahim Roza


The other building


The Adilshahi architecture


Inscriptions


The tombs 'thadgi'


Ibrahim Roza


Barah Kaman


Jumma Mashjid



Chand Bawdi



Gol Gumbaz


At the gol gumbaz


Massive construction


Whispering gallery, Gol Gumbaz



The flickr set for Bijapur is here

Kanheri Stream

It was raining hard. I watched it from my 11th floor window on the hill overlooking the bus depot. The few buses left looked like wet hens. The rain made me restless. So I headed for the park. It was raining hard. The only company I had were lovesick wet couples trying to find some privacy. I walked on to the low bridge.












kanheri stream in monsoon glory

Sunflower fields

The day was nearing an end. I had driven the whole day and was all in. Then in the Badami hinterlands we came across this sunflower field ... this glorious vision of innumerable specs of brightness. Here all the flowers were wide and happy.

The sun was going down.

I had to stop.

Freedom

Free as a bird, they say. High above, seemingly at peace in a vast space, without restrain, without paths, without signs - at will. But the bird is tied to its mother, the earth, by an invisible force. It has to keep flapping its wings least else it will fall down. But the force is not the villain here - it is life itself, or maybe, love - in restraining the bird it also protects it from the infinite space beyond. The bird would not be 'free' as a photon is not free, even though it travels across the universe. The bird's freedom is defined by its boundary. Without context there is no meaning. Without boundary there is no freedom. The choice is not if we want boundary, the choice is in what boundary we define. And we keep redefining the boundaries when we feel the urge to venture beyond or within.



I was going through my old emails ... and I found the above piece I had written for someone dear on 22/4/2005. It is quite interesting and sometimes funny to read oneself after a gap.

Poona

Puneri Pati

Couple of weeks back we travelled to Poona. Went to Appa Balwant Chowk to try my luck with books. But all I found was old outdated computer literature. Stopped there to eat bhel and saw one of them famous "Puneri Pati"'s. On the way back to Mumbai, the sky was so clear the we could see miles and miles. It was just amazing. I dont think I have seen Duke's Nose this clear before ...



A decked up groom



Duke's Nose

All photos with SE K790i phone camera

Restarts in Common Lisp, A tutorial.

My good friend Chaitanya Gupta has written a very good introduction to Restarts in Common Lisp. He explains with an example.
You can find it here http://chaitanyagupta.com/lisp/restarts.html
Check it out!