Maredumilli

When I resolved to trudge down the side of the small bridge into the marshy stream below, I did not know what I was looking for. I walked down the path, feeling somewhat brave and courageous at the thought of the path being strewn with gigantic moths and other such creatures. I wonder sometimes, what this “other such creatures” are. I have never got a convincing answer though. What else am I afraid of? Maybe I am yet to encounter it. Anyway, to resume the tale of me climbing down the side of a small bridge, down what I would like to believe was a treacherous path, I had reached halfway down when I realized that the amount of water the bridge was stretched over was, in fact, much more than it had appeared to be. I saw the thin stream broadening in parts, meandering up ahead into those very secluded parts of the woods that we could not hope to discover by foot. Just beyond the first bend of the shimmering green water, I could see a part where the stream widened the most. That puddle, as I looked at it, started to ripple. Things happened fast after that. I was standing there, mesmerized with the now moving large puddle of water. Three giant bodies of mud rose from it, proceeding, with respectable speed to the spot where I was standing. As they clambered up, their resemblance to buffaloes became alarming and a distinct alarm went off in my head. “Rooted to the spot,” that’s a useful expression to describe what had happened to me at that point. I simply could not move. They moved fast, faster than you would expect such large and clumsy-looking animals to move. I started running when they were about four feet away from me. I ran into the densest part of the undergrowth in hope of losing them. I heard them trampling everything on their path and after a few minutes realized that they had gone far away from me. I had reached the enchanted spot that I caught a glimpse of from the bridge. It was a muddy, shallow part of the stream, free from undergrowth and shrubbery. Across the river a rather large black butterfly flew rapidly over a small cluster of plants. I crossed the river to find the beautiful Papilio polytes (Common Mormon) settled on a plant seemingly tired of its morning escapades. Of course, this was merely a ploy, a way of lulling me into a sense of security. By the time I had switched my camera on; it was flying three feet above me. As I stood there, in ankle-deep water, the world started coming alive around me. There were yellow and blue streaks everywhere. For a minute or two, I decided to stand still and let the surroundings sink in. It is always better; I have experienced, to know the “heart” of a place before you start shooting in it. At the end of 15 minutes of shooting I had the Papilio polytes, the Graphium doson (Common Jay), and the Euploea mulciber (Striped Blue Crow) framed successfully.

Baby Blue

Guess I got what I deserved
Kept you waiting there too long, my love
All that time without a word
Didn't know you'd think that I'd forget or I'd regret
The special love I had for you, my baby blue
All the days became so long
Did you really think, I'd do you wrong?
Dixie, when I let you go
Thought you'd realize that I would know
I would show the special love I have for you, my baby blue
What can I do, what can I say
Except I want you by my side
How can I show you, show me the way
Don't you know the times I've tried?
Guess that's all I have to say
Except the feeling just grows stronger every day
Just one thing before I go
Take good care, baby, let me know, let it grow
The special love you have for me, my Dixie, dear.

Multi-level Frog-Spotting Contest

Slide

Underneath many layers of snowy boulders,

Beside the roots of the tall cedar,

With the strangers all bound with love,

A love for the white linen snow,

Love for the thrill of speed on its virgin skin,

Lies my friend from long back.

He has forgotten now what the amber of the sun felt like.

Beautifully enveloped in the soft white linen of snow,

Years of playing children,

Heaps of demolished soulless snowmen lie on top of him,

Carrotted hatted and scarfed to perfection,

Crafted with the love of cold wet hands.

Underneath the muffled cries of many gleeful sleigh rides,

He lies crushed and broken in the virgin snow.

Now it melts in the heat of imminent spring.

Gray like the tabby cat’s underside.

It threatens to expose the sins of winter

And reveal my crushed and broken friend.

Rudely wake him from his extended holiday

Under the stiff comfort of forty feet of snow.

Theatre of the Absurd

a drama of oddities awaits me everyday.
In life in sleep in the air that i breathe
there is a swirl of sensation,
a theatrical presentation of the absurd!
i dont know what to call it-
it supposes a different form every moment
and demands a different name.
Living alone for a long time
one tends to forget a couple of details,
overlook a few important parts
that make up a common life.
I have in fact forgotten and let it slip by me
that the life that i lead is not wholly mine,
and will never be.
Right now I am overwhelmed by the bids of some,
tomorrow I will be enveloped in the whims of others.
these phantasmagoric visions, images
will fever my mind forever,
and one day i will be startled
with the sudden and complete pause.
There will be nothing left to claim then
nothing that has not been labelled already
as someone else's precious memory.
All I will be left with then
is a point of view.
A daughter's, a wife's, a mother's.
And borrowed fragments of images.
I will jostle for space in a crowd
and wait for the auction to begin.
Then I will pretend to be satisfied
with the vestiges i am able to gather
with my limited resources.

Nightmare

I dreamed this dream and it refuses to leave my head Now I lie awake in fear of it I stopped it midway and now I’m afraid it’ll start exactly where it was rudely interrupted Everything repeats itself in a moronic way in it Everything is bound in a circle of mindless time If you want to know how it ends You have to see it from the beginning And if you are curious about the beginning You have to be there until the end After ten such continuous circles You will wake yourself up Once you are awake you will think of it until you are dizzy Once you are dizzy, exhausted, you would have to give in to sleep Then the dream, the never ending list of dreams You may even be glad when it comes back to you

Color Blindness

A lot goes unsaid in trips of ecstacy
Without you without me
Without this intangible faith
The difference between a trip and a dive gets erased.
While you are staring at the vast skies
Looking for a spot of some particular color
Or hunting wildly among the grey-green grass
For the flying fantasies that you so love
Do you remember that that color
Is a combination of two pairs of eyes?
Do you remember the way it seemed
When u saw it alone?
And how you struggled to describe it?
You need me to be there
It's orange it's yellow it's red
Wont it all be grey otherwise?
Or was I, in my naivette, unaware?
Tricking myself? Were you all this while
Only pretending that you did not know?
You can tell between the colors now can't you?
That's why you dont need me anymore.

Nightmare, Fuseli

Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892















Henry Fuseli, Nightmare, 1781

Damselfly

A few months back, looking through my friend's remarkable website, I came across pictures of an insect called the "damselfly." Beautiful long, slender body with colours on it which seemed to have been painted on by a Color Field painter. They look, admittedly, a little unreal, almost as if a photographer who got bored of the dull colors around himself wished them into existence. During a 'wildlife trip' with the same photographer friends, I, for the first time, saw a damselfly. You have to be in love with these delicate creatures to even spot one. They are extremely difficult to spot, but once you do find one they are like fragile, tiny epitomes of ephemerality. Gorgeous! My eyes had to get used to the macro way of viewing things to keep track of the little fairy. It was literally skipping from blade to blade, throwing a challenge to huge fumbling clumsy human beings.

Most people probably do not even know of their existence. And with their appearance they seem to be effectively keeping things that way. Even if you happen to see one, before you know it, it's not there anymore.
Just for the sake of information let me include some details about this creature. So, although not many seem to have heard of this species, there are more than 4 and a half thousand species of damselflies worldwide. As adults it is fairly easy to distinguish between a dragonfly and a damselfly. The damselfy, as i said before, has a long slender abdomen, and at rest it hold its wings to its sides unlike a dragonfly which spreads its wings on either side straight out. They are extremely strong fliers, and can perform awesome aerial aerobics...! However, possibly because of their larger size and greater body mass, dragonflies are better fliers than damselflies. It is believed that they have great eyesight, their beautiful compoud eyes have up to 28 thousand individual facets. each of these facets points to a different direction and produces a tiny image which its brain then puts together to form the larger picture.

The suborder of the damselfly is Zygoptera, and they belong to the order Odonata along with dragonflies.

The photograph above is something I took sometime back, but if you wish to see really awesome pictures of dragon and damselflies, you should go here.

Rhiannon

Fleetwood MAc's song...Rhiannon..the original version

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn't you love to love her
She rules her life like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover...

All your life you've never seen
A woman--taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven
Will you ever win...

She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark--
And when the sky is starless--

All your life you've never seen--
A woman--taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven
Will you ever win...

Dreams unwind.
Love's a state of mind.

Stevie Nicks wrote the song after this book called Triad by Mary Leader. Nicks had not heard of the Celtic myth really before she read the book. The novel is about a woman named Branwen who is possessed by another woman called Rhiannon. Although there is some mention of the myth in the book, Leader does not seem to have alluded to it too heavily. I think Nicks did not have the myth in mind while writing the song, but later when she read up on Rhiannon she found that somehow she had managed to fit the celtic myth into her song.