46 - 31st - Pigeons

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 31st Jan'08

"Pigeon" is the most common variety of "road-side" birds in India. I went to a nearby temple when I saw this group of pigeons feeding on the grains sprinkled by some devotees. Such flocks of birds feeding on the offerings given by people can be seen at many places throughout the city of Delhi and for that matter, all over India.

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45 - 30th - Giant symbol of faith

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 30th Jan'08

Akshardham temple in New Delhi has recently earned the distinction of being the world's largest "Hindu" temple. Situated on the banks of river Yamuna in east Delhi, this temple provides a magnificent view to the people touching the adjacent highways and connecting roads. A huge lush green premises and a monstrous concrete structure, the whole view is hard to be contained in a one complete eye-span.

I was passing through the area when I stopped on an adjacent flyover and took some photographs. Though I couldn't capture the temple right from the front due to angle restrictions, the side-shots didn't come as bad as expected :)

Click here to see one more shot of the temple.

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44 - 29th - The "Blue" God

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 29th Jan'08

City of Delhi, as almost all other cities in India, is full of big and small temples. At every second corner and on every third street you can find some fourth god glorifying the place. The idols vary in shapes and sizes and so do the temple premises. Given the variety in the forms Hindus have given to their faith, you can find a potpourri of different divine residences.

I found one such temple on one of the back-streets of east Delhi. Instead of sitting "inside" the temple, I found this magnificent figure of Lord Siva blessing the mere mortals in and around the place.

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43 - 28th - Delhi chill

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 28th Jan'08

January has almost ended but there are no signs of retreat of the cold wave in New Delhi. Temperatures in the evening frequently touch a low of 2-3 degrees and steaming tea with hot omelets is still a favorite road-side snack. Some people can be seen enjoying the chill while some others who cant afford the enjoyment are seen struggling with the limited resources they have to fight the cold.

I saw a group of some children surviving the extreme cold and chilly wind by standing besides the burning fire. While I was cosily comfortable in my warm clothes, this bunch of some not-so-fortunate children was keeping itself warm by burning whatever it found "combustible"

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42 - 27th - The bridegroom

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 27th Jan'08

After a long long time I attended a wedding yesterday. Weddings are essentially occasions for celebrations, feasting, family reunions and all sort of festivities. North Indian wedding are particularly famous for their wild celebrations and a week full of hundreds of different associated rituals.

I took this photo just before my friend was going to get over that ill fated mare :) (For those who don't know, the groom is supposed to reach the bride's place riding a horse)

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41 - 26th - Cute

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 26th Jan'08

The invincible shine in their eyes, the incredible innocence on their face sand the overwhelming emotion of happiness they make you feel - they really are bundles of joy.

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40 - 25th - Tiny fingers

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 25th Jan'08

Just think about the feeling you get when a bunch of tiny fingers grab your palm. You find your heart filled with immense joy and an unusual sense of happiness flowing through your body. Thats the magic the touch of a newly arrived soul spells on you.

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39 - 24th - The aerial view

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 24th Jan'08

As my flight soared into Chennai's afternoon sky, I was ready with my camera to to capture some aerial scenes. This one was the best of all. The infinitely extended coast-line of Chennai along with a clear blue water sheet was a perfect panaroma.

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38 - 23rd - The feather

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 23rd Jan'08

The close-up of this peacock feather highlighted the hidden color pattern, though the picture wasnt uniformly lightened from all sides. :) Of all the macros I have shot, this one was the toughest one to shoot & the results also weren't that satisfactory, but it was good enough to be here as the post of the day.

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37 - 22nd - Colors at the sea-side

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 22nd Jan'08

The Elliot's beach in Chennai is never short of a vibrant display of colors. Colors take different forms; balloons, face-masks, toys & obviously the various forms colorful mother nature.

While others are enjoying the nice weather and the cool ambiance of the beach, this girl was waiting for her first customers of the evening. The same place is a playground for so many different motives and ambition.

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36 - 21st - Close up

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 21st Jan'08

I took this close up of a plant kept in my friend's balcony. The focus came just perfect to give the whole picture a perfect "macro" look. The trick of clicking it with a manual focus instead of auto worked wonders for the overall texture of the picture.

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35 - 20th - The book store

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 20th Jan'08

I visited a nearby book store today to buy some gifts. For me, it is really a very absorbing experience to be in book-stores and libraries. The urge of reading and also buying books is suddenly rejuvenated. I can spends hours there, just having a look at different book sections and browsing through the titles. I hope I will succeed in regularizing my reading some day. I love reading, but not able to find enough time to do it :(

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34 - 19th - The bouquet

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 19th Jan'08

I attended an anniversary function in the evening today. The day was about to get over and I was still searching for the image of the day. Suddenly a bouquet of flowers kept on the table caught my attention and the next minute I was busy finding a good photographic angle :)

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33 - 18th - Morning prayers

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 18th Jan'08

Different people start the day in different ways. Some sleep out the whole morning, others hit the gym while many can be seen thronging their abodes of faith. This small next street road-side temple can be seen flooded by early morning devotees who prefer to offer their prayers to the almighty before proceeding with their daily chores.

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32 - 17th - Autumn tree

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 17th Jan'08

Its Autumn in Germany and all the trees around my hotel premises were standing examples of the same. I went out for a stroll in the evening when I saw this tree against a colorful blue and yellow background. On a chilly evening, this tree stood, waiting for the "greener" days to return.

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31 - 16th - Lonely light

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 16th Jan'08

I took this photo on-board my flight from Mexico to Frankfurt. When almost everyone was in deep sleep, the shining spotlight on one of the seats was giving a perfect "clickable" view. While this man was busy reading something in the wee hours, I was busy clicking the photographs. After all, there was nowhere else I could have found my "image for the day". By the time I would have got down from the plane, it would have already been 17th Jan :)

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30 - 15th - Cholula

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 15th Jan'08

This is Cholula - The biggest pyramid of the world. It is just an hour drive from my hotel. If you look at it from a distance, it will look like just a mountain. But it had a big network of underground tunnels and a large cultural heritage. There is a church on the top of the pyramid from where you can see the whole city of Puebla.

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29 - 14th - Painted in Blue

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 14th Jan'08

Once I downloaded it to my system, it never looked like a photograph anymore. It appeared like a painting. I felt as if someone has just dipped a brush in blue and white and painted the whole sky. So clear and so colorful, straight out of the dreams, almost surreal. Mother nature truly is an artist.

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28 - 13th - Chalupas

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 13th Jan'08

This is one of those Mexican cuisine sensations which has hit me recently. Recipe - baby tortillas (chapathi) fried and dipped in red & green salsa and served with threads of meat & finely chopped onions.

On a chilly evening in downtown Puebla, this is the best food you can get for a meager amount of 10 pesos. The steaming chalupas served on the side-walk in Puebla downtown on a windy evening, just melt into your mouth and can tempt you to eat 3 servings even with a full stomach.

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27 - 12th - A Mother's love

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 12th Jan'08

I took this photo in one of the nearby wild life parks in Puebla. Mother's love is universal - across all species - humans and animals alike. The picture proves the well known fact.

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26 - 11th - Downtown eat-out

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 11th Jan'08

The eating out options in downtown Puebla are really exciting and utterly picturesque, specially the restaurants which sprawl out in the open. They have sheds spread out in the open with neatly arranged chairs and tables giving you an amazing atmosphere to enjoy your drinks and food. The space doesn't belong to any particular restaurant. You can buy from anywhere and sit anywhere.

The way the whole place is set up - the furniture, the dresses of the waitresses, the food - all makes you feel as if you have gone into an entirely different era. I fell in love with the place at first sight & even after 4 trips, I still can't get enough of it.

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25 - 10th - Ganpati in Puebla

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 10th Jan'08

God is everywhere, they say. Proving their omnipresence,a group of Hindu Gods presented themselves to me in various forms on a road-side stall in Puebla, Mexico. They were present on t-shirts, on books, posters, bedsheets and their favorite form, idols. Puebla has no Hindu temple, and most of the people don't even know of a religion called "Hinduism", but still Ganpati can be spotted at more than one places.

I saw him at a wildlife park, where a big idol of his was present along with a beautiful fountain. I saw him one of the malls, where he was sketched on the walls in the form of paintings and drawings. Then I saw him at this shop, adorning the sideway of the local market.

To the people in Puebla, they are nothing but an abstract form of art. But to people like me who can associate themselves with him, he is the ever ubiquitous "God".

Providing below links to some random shots of the place.
Photo -1
Photo-2
Photo-3

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24 - 9th - The colonial hint

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 9th Jan'08

The old city of Puebla still maintains the colonial look attributed to it by the Spanish occupants hundreds of years ago. Most of the buildings, hotels and most noticeably the cathedrals still don the beauty of the medieval architecture. You enter the place and you can immediately feel the difference.

"Zocalo" as it is called, has its own look, its own feel and its own "festive" atmosphere. This part of the city always seems to be drowned in joy and celebrations.

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23 - 8th - The orange sky

Originally clicked & uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 8th Jan'08

Yet again, I feel i was lucky enough to reach my hotel room just in time to take this shot. After 10 minutes, everything was dark. :)

The sinking sun was throwing its orange rays laterally on the clouds to paint the whole sky with a magical touch of mixed colors. It was literally looking like a painter's canvass.

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22 - 7th - The odd one out

Originally broken, arranged, clicked & uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 7th Jan'08

Nothing more than just an abstract thought of mine. I came back from office and was thinking about the image of the day when I saw the tray of eggs in the drawer. I decided to click something abstract. So I tried arranging the eggs here and there but nothing was fitting in well. Finally I came up with this, which in the end turned out to be quite nice.


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21 - 6th - The Sketch

Originally drawn, clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 6th Jan'08

I decided to do some sketching today. Just took out my colors, took a sheet of paper and put some colors here and there. This is what I ended up making. Nothing with too much depth or an artistic touch, but just an expression of a thought floating in my mind.

Then I decided to combine the sketching with some photography. Took some shots from different angles, creating varying magnitudes of depth and varying effects of light shades.

Here is how the full sketch looks like.

Here are some more shots of the same
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3

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20 - 5th - The 'Moon'rise

Originally clicked by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 5th Jan'08

I sometimes feel lucky to capture such shots. I feel lucky because I am at the right place at the right time. I was just having an evening walk on the by-lanes of the city when I saw this 'perfect' sight of the full moon rising in the dark cover of late evening. I just stood there for some time and admired the beauty.

I took around five different shots, but thanks to the 'night-blindness' of my camera, this is the best I could get. As D00d has rightly said, somethings are just for the eyes to admire.

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19 - 4th - Road show

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 4th Jan'08

Its really thought provoking to see what people do to earn a mouthful of bread. In continuation to my previous posts - Tough life & The old lady - showing the tough way of life people have, I am posting here yet another example of some hard earned money.

At almost every other signal you can find someone doing something to attract the attention of people waiting for the signal to turn green and then asking money for what they just did.
Most common of them all are these jugglers, dressed as circus jokers and trying to impress people in a short time of hardly 90 seconds they get before they have to vacate their stage for the traffic to move on. Once finished, they pause at your vehicle for a second with a 'needy' smile on their face and if lucky, receive a peso or two from some generous onlookers.

In contrast to just begging their way out among the cars stopped at a traffic signal, I find this much more respectful thing to do.

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18 - 3rd - Little Artists

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 3rd Jan'08

I went back to my school days on seeing these young painters, when I used to be so excited about the yearly drawing & sketching competitions. I used to think about the topic a week in advance and used to make sure that I have the correct set of colors and drawing material before I leave from my home.

I saw these kids, at a local mall, painting on their cute little canvasses with utmost sincerity. There was such an evident innocence and purity on their faces which just made me stand there and admire them.

Running along with the fast pace of life, I left somewhere far behind, this passion of mine. These kids reminded me of something I need to get back to.

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17 - 2nd - The cleaning lady

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 2nd Jan'08

She is the lady whom I have been seeing for the past 5 months now. She is from the house-keeping section of the hotel and comes to clean my room daily. Most of the days, I don't meet her, because I leave my room early for work. Today, being down with fever, I took off from work and so I got to see her after a week or so.

She always has a sweet smile on her face and is very very humble. She doesn't know even a word of English, so when she has to convey something to me, she writes it on a piece of paper and I translate it using Google. Compared to other rooms, my room always has some extra work, because of all the cooking I do inside the room. But I have never seen her complaining or frowning for anything. She does her job to utter perfection.

Now, the reason for which I like her the most. From the day I saw her, I developed a sense of attachment and respect for her. She is such a 'motherly' figure, and love and affection just flows along with her words. Sometimes, I feel really bad when I see her doing all this work. Somehow, I dont like giving money to her, because by doing that I feel like insulting her, like giving money to my mother for doing something for me. But I know, that is the only way I can show my appreciation and that is the only way she will feel happy too.

I asked her for a photograph today, and she readily agreed. Her face actually reminds me of my grandmother; and I told this thing to her after I took her photo. After five minutes she knocked my door, handed me a note and then left. I translated that and here's what it said :-

"I know you miss your family, so far away from your home. Tell your mother that I will take good care of you."

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16 - 1st - The holy candles

Originally clicked and uploaded by - Pratosh Dwivedi - 1st Jan'08

I visited a church today, in Puebla downtown. I decided to light a candle, hoping that it would give me some peace of mind. There was a strange feeling of peace and calmness at that place. People sitting on the long benches and praying to father God with their eyes closed. Candles burning all over the place and the church bells ringing outside.

I took this photo at a secluded corner of the church. In almost complete darkness this table filled with glowing candles was a magical sight.

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