A Brown Study: Dry Skywatch

Brown skies, blue thoughts
dragonfly flits away: rain
will come another day





More Haiku My Heart at Recuerda Mi Corazon

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Aurora Surrealis?

Sunset on November 2, 2009
Aurora Surrealis?

This was the biggest and the grandest sunset I ever saw in my life. And no, don’t even bother to ask - I had stepped out without a camera. These pictures are all that my phone (Sony Ericsson) could manage. Not that my camera could have captured the scale or the intensity of the colours in there. About half of the sky was covered by this spectacle. The lit up clouds were dazzling with broken rainbows - something like a petrol slick on a puddle. It’s not a very poetic similie, but I only saw this sunset because I was on the highway!

This was over a large open area to the west of the highway, over the burial ground from which the tea garden gets its name (Moraghat, place of the dead) In the distance there was a small graveyard, with all the graves freshly limewashed for All Souls' Day. In the East, the full moon of Karthik Poornima, birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, was rising.

Overhead, there were fluffy cirrus clouds, looking like tiny lambs. The quality of the light was such that you could sense the distance between the clouds and the sky beyond. Now that's a thought for All Souls Day.

My husband was on his evening round of the division to the East of the highway, and I called him so he could join me, but he was deep inside the garden. The sunset would end by the time he reached me, he said. So the driver, who'd been taking me to the wool shop in Binnaguri, and I, stood and watched.

A few buses rolled past. Two men on a bike stopped and one, like me, took out his phone to capture what he could.




Sunset on November 1, 2009

To quote from Notting Hill, 'Surreal, but nice.'

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Jalpaiguri : Jurassic Park and Lost World

Sitting on a Park Bench


Topiary


This Was : The Jalpaiguri Club


Sunset over the Teesta River


Three Friends

These are pictures I took on a visit to Jalpaiguri town. This town came up when tea was planted in the region in the nineteenth century. It was almost destroyed when the Teesta River flooded it in 1968. Businesses moved out and relocated to Siliguri. Jalpaiguri is still the headquarters of the district administration, and the 'official' quarter of the town is full of colonial buildings. The Teesta flows to its south now, behind an embankment.

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Two Silhouettes

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Sunrise on the Morning of the Harvest Moon


Samtse Sunset

One evening, we went for a ramble in the little town of Samtse, Bhutan. Up in those hills, the sky seemed so much closer.

Please click on each picture for an enlarged view.
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SkyWatch Football

Last week, I put my sunrise and sunset pictures aside for the time being, and went to a football match with camera in hand. The match had some exciting moments, but we found time to look at these lovely skies as well.

Centre Field

Shoot!


Word Games

Half-Time

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A Himalayan Sky Watch

One of the things that makes the place where we live special is that it is just below the Himalayas. We cant go very far North without climbing them. This picture was taken near a little stream that flows into the Teesta River. It is as if the monsoon doesn't want to leave us - we had a rainy morning and it was a cloudy, breezy afternoon when this picture was taken.

This picture was taken the same afternoon, and it shows the Eastern skies. It is one of my favourite vistas - of the Teesta River as it leaves the mountains and flows into the plains. Below, a close up of the same view.
Please click on each picture for an enlarged view.

Site for the retirement home of our dreams!


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A Light Moment

Searchlight : After the Rain

On some evenings there are moments which are sheer drama : fleeting and spectacular, they leave you with a sense of having been a part of some celestial phenomenon. It is a matter of timing; you have to be on the spot, and it has to be one of those 'happening' days.


Soul Searching

The second picture is about evenings when nothing happens. Nothing, that is, other than the daily marvel of day turing into night. The silence lingers as the world slows down, and the pensive soul can gather its thoughts and feel the presence of another, deeper, silence within. These are moments in time and yet out of time, for time itself seems to stand still, and the moment can last forever in a memory.



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Highway to Heaven

Follow the Sun


Angels and Demons

Young Bala, who's in his early twenties, drives me around to the points on the road where I can get the best views and the best shots of sunsets, clouds and trees. Over the last month and more, he's turned into an appreciative and committed skywatcher.

Bala on alert!
It's been interesting to see this young fan of Bollywood film stars turn into a lover of the skies. He takes the Ambassador car up to the highway at top speed, finds the best locations, lurks at a protective distance from me and expresses impatience if I miss out on a moment -- or a 'scene' -- as he calls it. Today the camera's battery was dying faster than the sun, and Bala was really upset that I missed the red glowing bars of clouds with which the evening signed off.
Please click on each picture for an enlarged view

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Moraghat Tea Estate: Sunrise, Sunset

Sunrise

The real hero of this piece is the sun. But the splendid creature who dominates our front garden year round is this towering specimen of Albizia Chinensis. We call this tree 'Kala Siris' here. It is a variety of mimosa, and in the months of May and June it produces lovely scented 'shaving brush' flowers which are light green in colour. The species is prone to canker, and a goodish bit of the tree had to be lopped off two years ago. In spite of that, this grand old tree still towers at around 60 ft and hasnt lost its beauty.





My husband and I saw the sky suddenly turning pink on the evening of these pictures and I ran out with the camera. The little white bit to the left of the pillar in Picture 2 is my husband, standing in the porch. Hardly any time passed between shooting Pictures 2 and 3. Someone else who was moving around was quicker than me and managed to turn on the lights outside the bungalow. So they figure in Picture 3.
Please click on the pictures for an enlarged view.

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More on the Dooars

Close of Day's Play : Bhutan and Dooars

Watching the Torsa River run
My mother taught me, when I was quite young, to look out for 'special effects sunsets' at the end of the monsoon every year. As the monsoon clouds begin to gather up and withdraw before giving way to a new season, the evening sky becomes dramatic, while the weather turns milder.


A Little Heaven


Panning for Gold?


Sea of Tranquility


A Volcanic Cloud?


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Dooars Sunset

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