Ponto de Vista

And the monsoon clouds are back. Here, we rejoice the months of rain that breaks up our two seasons – hot and hot. I don’t miss the cold rain of North America at all.

Does this look like a painting or what? It’s actually a photo of an artist painting in Seville’s Parc de María Luisa one hot summer day last year.

of the year, I start to miss the summer so I can go swimming again. This was taken last monsoon, when the drops on the water made me think of sparkly, pointy, kingly crowns like we saw in our fairy tales.

how awesome would it be to live amidst this – where peacocks roam and jacaranda bloom under a summer sun that shines until 10 p.m.? Taken at the Alcazar, Seville.

Under the benign gaze of a very handsome (and lean) Shiv, this monkey saved the Ganga from pollution…she single-handedly (ok, she used both hands) pulled out two mangoes in a plastic bag that a family was chilling in the river. She saved us all from the menace of plastic and ate both mangoes herself (as the family looked on, helpless to rescue the mangoes from her avarice) 🙂

so if you can read Hindi, I’ll assume your first impulse was to take your tea and snacks down to the Ganga’s  edge, along with your trusty cake of Medimix soap, and then really laugh loudly and kick up a huge ruckus. Even if we weren’t already laughing out loud, everyone who read this sign out loud was laughing by the time they finished 😀 Big Brother is Watching Mother Ganga!

Rourkee station, a sudden storm of freezing cold rain. The mendicants and homeless huddle. And this magnificent Brahma bull with them.

We reached Haridwar and got to the jetty for crossing the Ganges by boat and clapped eyes on this sadhu, smoking a chillum as he surveyed Ganga Maiya. What was he thinking?

Finally, inspiration for what to do with the only shape and size of anything I can kinda crochet. I found this in a very badly named children’s furnishing store (“SotoMoto.” Yes, that tells me everything about what you retail. Not.) in Delhi’s Hauz Khas village. I thought the lamps were delightful and inspirational. Yay! Finally something I can make that is useful (as opposed to scarves, which are ridiculously impractical for the climate of Mumbai). 😀

Indians never fail to amaze me. We want to etch our names on every space we can find – “Yes, I was here. I really was. So what if I’m never coming back and that it destroys the serenity, sanctity, authenticity, or aesthetic of where I am. Dude, *I* was here!”
I’ve seen celebs try to talk sense into the junta, I’ve heard academics discussing white boards and pin boards at monuments so people can scribble on those rather than the walls, but this … this is the first time I’ve seen something like this and it’s all over the Hawah Beach area of Trivandrum’s Kovalam beach. Unbelievable!