Saturday, September 22, 2007

The Ganesh Festival- Pune's time in the sun.

Its the middle of the Ganesh festival here in Pune and as usual the streets are rocking to Himesh , AR Rehman, Anu Malik and who ever the latest as we say in Hindi "dhinchak dhinchak" music star is . The great Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak started this in the late 19th century as a way of national integration , introspection and a way to unite our disparate masses. But now in the name of tradition and culture we are carrying this a bit too far with all the extravagant spending, the extortion in the name of the pandals, loud music from walls of speakers and drunken dancers in the middle of the street even at midnight.

Its fun for some but its definitely not my cup of tea. Ofcourse the pandals by themselves make for fantastic photographs at night but when there are suicides by farmers in the countryside and powercuts and black-outs for nearly 12 hours in the rural areas of Maharashtra it seems quite hypocritical to indulge in such forms of fun.

Having said all that however the amazing energy, the crowds , the sheer joy of watching different plays, acts and themes for the idols of Ganesha is an experience worth having. As usual I suspect I'll be going along with a group of Swedes and explaining the stuff having not done this in ages. Its time to bring on the D50 .

Monday, September 17, 2007

Tosegarh and Thos waterfalls.

[Enter home at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning after a long week's work . ]

Roomie : What's up for tomorrow ?
Me: Nothing much - gotta get back to office and work on some cool optimization. What are you upto ?
Roomie: Me am off to Tosegarh, Sajjangarh and the valley of flowers at 5:30 a.m. Wanna come
Me : What the heck - lets go .

And so began an amazing journey worth 250 photographs all shot on my magnifique Nikon D50 . Tosegarh and Sajjangarh are located off Satara in Western Maharashtra on the beautiful 4 laned NH4. Getting there was easy, we'd hired a Scorpio to drive us all the way around . It was interesting though with the driver providing us anecdotes about gruesome accidents on highways and driving at maniacal speeds on narrow mountain roads that I thanked my stars for reaching back to Pune in piece.

Tosegarh is nestled in the hills behind Satara reachable on an amazingly picturesque drive. The monsoons have left the hills with copious amounts of water which comes down in the form of a huge number of waterfalls which end up forming the river Krishna which flows through Andhra and 2tmcft of which reaches Madras through the Krishna water scheme. He he all you madrasis watch out for water that we bathed in yesterday ;) . Getting around in the waterfall is an amazing experience. The water was icecold and was gushing along at a merry pace . Getting inside the water was like getting a full body massage albeit by cold water with 15000 masseurs. The scenery as most parts of Maharashtra in this time of the year was awesome and made for some amazing photos. It sure as hell beat working on a Saturday and made for a nice break .

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Come September

What do we remember September for - Ganesh Chaturthi , Gokulashtami, 9/11 , friend's birthdays , OSIM ?

I would remember September for the Pune Festival associated with the Ganesh Chaturthi. In as much as I hate the noise and the ruckus they create - (after all Ganesha didn't ask for the walls of speakers with Himesh Reshammiya blasting away at the top of his nose (err voice) ) , the grandeur and beauty of some of the pandals make for an amazing walk through the most crowded areas of Pune and excellent photographs.

Its been an interesting week or so. Rediscovered that the College of Engineering has a boat club from where you can get some amazing pictures. I need to cart my camera along the next time I go just to photograph the birds (of the winged variety). Just watching the egrets and the Eagles swoop over the river in an amazingly tranquil environment is rather neat. I have done some work on addressing mode generation for GCC that seems to improve performance a bit . It would be interesting to see the benchmark results that should be out tomorrow.



So September bring it on ....