ramya's photo journal

Tag: ruins

  • Scent of the Monsoon

    “A cool breeze, grown pleasant through contact with the scent of the earth refreshed by your showers,
    which is inhaled by elephants with a pleasing sound at their nostrils, and which is the ripener of wild
    figs in the forest, gently fans you who desire to proceed to Devagiri.
    There, you, taking the form of a cloud of flowers, should bathe Skanda, who always resides there, with
    a shower of flowers, wet with the water of the heavenly Ganges.”

    ~ Excerpt from Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta , Verse 45. Translated by McComas Taylor.

    monsoon-colors-july2011-1.jpg

    I find the rain washed colours of nature so enthralling that photographing them is something that I crave for. It’s the whole sensory experience – the monsoon air, the smells of the earth,  the textures of glistening rocks, the brightest of greens that surface, forgotten things that come to life and the clean washed feeling that prevails both inside and out.

    A  quick note about the excerpt above : I was recently skimming through a translation of Meghaduta by Kālidāsa (who is considered to be one of the greatest Sanskrit poets) and absolutely loved how it represents the Indian Monsoon – in it’s hauntingly mythic manifestation. It narrates how Yaksa, one of King Kubera’s (god of wealth) subjects in exile, pleads a passing cloud to carry a message to his wife residing in the Himalayas.

    I enjoyed the parts I read and couldn’t resist sharing a piece of it here. Image was photographed in the Bisle Ghats in Hassan, while exploring the luscious rainforests there, and chasing that passing cloud above us :)

  • Sri Lanka : a journey with the monsoon

    [issuu width=600 height=410 backgroundColor=%23222222 documentId=110910155445-e4195f45a40348bb888191112636c91f name=srilanka2 username=ramyareddy tag=ramya unit=px v=2]

    Hello everyone,

    My blog turns one this week and I wanted to share a special post that I have put together over the last few weeks. It’s a sort of a photographic journal from a beautiful trip to Sri Lanka last December. It was the time of north east monsoon there and the island was rich with color. This compilation is also a small tribute to one of my most loved topics – the monsoon and her colors.

    I hope you enjoy it (be sure to view it in full screen) and I look forward to posting a lot more this year ! 

    Thank you for all the love and support . . .

    ~ ramya

  • Quiet Wisdom

    ” Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”  
    ~ from The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway
    boat-copy1.jpg
    Muttom (a Tsunami hit village near Kanyakumari), December 2009

    Old things and all those that have lived to tell the tale, stand tall and beautiful in my eyes. I have a fascination for them and a reverence that cannot be expressed in words. I was going through my archives and found some such treasures that I had photographed months ago . .  On a gorgeous winter’s day last year, when walking about the Tsunami hit shores of a fishing village on the southern most tip of the subcontinent, that I met these wonderful old souls — wrecked fishing boats that have had to endure much in silence over the years. They stood still but I could feel them breathe.  And rooted deeply to their land and ocean, the winter skies bathing them in a surreal light, adding to their otherworldliness. Quiet, wise spectators of life as it carries on; past all the things and hardships they have endured.