“With a little heartache;
Gone with the time,
Are certain memories,
Intricately designed.
To call & narrate
A story of blissful sunshine.”
― Somya Kedia
Light is one of our favorite themes. Delve in more.
Slipping to the Dusk
Clouds of Fire
Scurry home
Sprouting Skylines
Orange creep on swirling clouds
The flicker of leaves
The golden lamp
Camels on the horizon
“A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess
One of my long time read is the beautiful blog Notes from the Road. It’s written by Erik Gauger and it is an excellent road travel writing blog. I love the aesthetics and the overall way in which content is articulated on this page. Not sure if this would change in the future, but it looks stunning! What I like the most is his philosophy of travel writing at the core. If we read online, pure travel writing is a treasure to find out. My dad was a forest officer and may be due to the opportunities that I had with him to visit some of the most remote hill stations in South India, I am very much enticed by travel narratives when done well. Erik has done a wonderful job in narrating his travels and as he himself writes on his website,
“At Notes from the Road, I try to stay grounded in my original vision for what travel blogging can be: independent, visual, personal. Travel writing has never been about hotels and reviews. It is, and always has been, about ideas, people, and faraway places.”
– Erik Gauger , author of Notes from the Road
Another example of how beautiful things can get when somebody puts his heart and soul into what he does.
Yes, that’s right. A weird combo of fresh mango juice sprinkled with white chocolate. Let’s file this into ‘Culinary Experiences’ , a series of visual stories that we started on our website for journaling some of our best ambrosial culinary experiences, be it the finest cordon bleu delights of a master chef or a cheesy experimental simmer at our little kitchen. We are trying to scribe it humbly here. This is not intended to be a recipe archive or a cookery show in case if you wondered. We’re only sharing the experience of trying.
Ep 5 – Dum Biriyani
Ep 4 – 32 – Netta’s First Cake
Ep 3 – Armenian Herbal Tea
Ep 2 – Nthree – Kuwaiti delicacies
Ep 1 – A Piece of Happiness
This is a photograph from a couple of years ago that’s really close to my heart. When I had traveled to Netta’s place during the initial years, I was not familiar with that place. Neither am I now. After an afternoon tea with family, me and Netta went to the town aimlessly and I was looking for a beach nearby and on a random search, I got to know about Payyoli beach which was so close to their home but the fun part was that she hadn’t been there before. What welcomed us when we aimlessly drove in there was a very wide, serene beach with not a single soul in the premise feeding in the vibe of a private beach. (No, those were not Corona days. I’m speaking of sometime in 2017, on a guess). There were fishing boats parked there and we had witnessed a blissful sunset together sitting on a boat. That moment in time is captured by this shot. So you see, every frame has a story weaved within it. Even if I’m put in a dungeon with a handful of photographs, I can sit with them with a cup of tea and write story after story behind each of them for weeks 😀
The legendary photographer Ansel Adams kills it with his timeless quotes. He once famously said, “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
We love stories. Would you love to read more memories?
Waiting for your stories. God bless.
After over 6 months, I decided to do a deep clean of our little tank and re-scape the entire foundation of the tank. Took more than 3 hours from the deep cleaning to the removal of stains and dirt from the tree barks. I was literally surprised at the amount of dirt accumulated with wooden blocks submerged in water. After a thorough cleaning process, I removed one of the barks and decided to go with only one bark to give a more roomy and wide space for the Neon tetras to swim around. Upon reading somewhere, I learned that Neon tetras are more comfortable with open wide spaces. The half-moon betta is not in the photograph, and it seems to be unwell for the past week or so. I doubt it’s related to the chemistry of the tank, as I’ve been using some new conditioners for curating the water quality in the tank.
I’ve been reading and watching a lot of aqua-scaping tutorials on different layouts possible in a smaller tank and I was inclined to a more simple one as opposed to the seemingly dense option we had previously. After removing the dirt from the soil bed, I filtered them out by removing floating watery dirt with a manual water pump by water cycles of over 8 to 9. Later, I deep cleaned every single element in the aquarium and separated flora which was affected by line algae which were dominant in the aquarium. Netta helped through all the stages. I removed one of the wooden blocks, set up a new tree bark in an inclined position with ferns slowly arranged on the top. Meanwhile, I planted the grass and Japanese Hydrocotyle on the front side of the tank. I hope it will take up a more dense profile as time passes. But now we have a minimal, simple, and much cleaner and roomier tank space, and here’s the final result.
One thing what I learned from this whole process is that when we do a deep cleaning for the tank and if there are ferns to be included, they need to be attached to the wooden barks by some means. Either it can be a glue or they can be manually inserted into any holes or spaces available in the bark or by another means. Even though I watered them slowly, I found out that the ferns were floating around after the pump and filter started working. So, I should be taking care of it in the next episode of this whole thing.If you love aquascaping, skim through Story de’aquatics.
I have also written a detailed article on Planted aquariums – How to make them last based on my personal experience of setting everything on my own.
And yes, we love short videos, and here are the ones on those themes
Fluvial Zeal | The Woodland | Neon Gems
An old photograph of AR.
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
― Susan Sontag
I took this photograph from a place called Kuttikanam, a hill station in Idukki district of Kerala, Southern India. That’s my brother having a phone call gazing at that splendid view in front. Right in front of the place we stayed, there was a bridge damaged by heavy torrential rains and landslide, and the only road in the front was damaged. We stayed on the top of a cottage run by a family and there was a homely feel to this place. This place is special because the experience of meeting the family owning this place kindled in me the love for indoor plants and curating them. What I saw in their home was that they put plants in literally anything you could imagine. Damaged cans, throwaway bottles, coconut shells, wall mounts, iron cases, you name it and they’d have a plant inside. After returning from this place and reaching back home, I thought of setting up indoor plants and that’s how we started our moneyplant adventures. I’d be trying to write in detail on this Kuttikanam story. Stay tuned friends : ) Thanks for all the love on the previous writings and feedback. Looking forward to your thoughts. Write to me.
It’s one of my favorite divertissements to scroll through old Google Photos archives, spice up old photos and just wonder about the times back in those days. When I first started working in the Middle East nearly 10 years back from today, during some of my initial years, my work extensively involved being associated with designing and developing new engineering products in a factory (For example, Bridge Bearings, products used in offshore structures, etc ) and I used to spend a lot of time in a factory environment with some colleagues at that time for some prototyping and other work. I have vivid memories of returning back from work in the afternoon at that time gazing at the sun playing its magic of colors at the factory horizon. These are some of those photographs from circa 2010-2011. Believe me, old photographs are time machines for me. I can spend an entire day reminiscing in these old memories. Do you have such photographic memories from the past decade that you recollect? Share your thoughts. I would love to read them.
“There is a certain quality of light to be found only in midsummer in the South, as day, slipping into dusk, acquiesces to the filament, the bulb, the porch light; this seductive light is beautiful when it washes across dry cement, the sidewalk and stoop. The light spilling from the phone booth softens and cleanses all that it touches. It’s a forgiving and almost protective light. The Minotaur is drawn to it from across the parking lot.”
― The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
Would you love to read more memories?
I’ve been thinking of resurrecting our series on Culinary Experiences, in case you remember the existence of such a series : ) Since there are a lot of new readers reading me, let me put here once more. ‘Culinary Experiences’ is a series of visual stories that we started on our website for journaling some of our best ambrosial culinary experiences, be it the finest cordon bleu delights of a master chef or a cheesy experimental simmer at our little kitchen. We are trying to scribe it humbly here. This is not intended to be a recipe archive or a cookery show in case if you wondered. We’re only sharing the experience. Recently, we prepared a dum biriyani at home for the first time.
For my non-Indian readers, Dum is a loose translation of a Persian word for breathing. Dum Biriyani is basically blending aromatic spices, flavors, and herbs into a one-dish pot and slowly cooking the ingredients in a sealed heavy bottomed vessel usually for hours. In some culinary cultures, they are sometimes mildly heated overnight as well.
For a slice of history, from what I’ve read, the ancient dum cooking tradition is generally identified with Mughlai cuisine and is also assumed to have derived from Persian or Central Asian cuisine. There are many stories about its origin but the most popular one connects it with Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah, who was Oudh / Awadh’s wazir or ruler in the late 1700s. In 1784, during a huge famine, the Nawab presented a beneficent activity for his kin with a nourishment for-work program. He needed to develop a Moghul design wonder – the Bara Imambara, which was one among the numerous structures that the Nawab wanted to work in the city. Many individuals chipped in for the activity, and to take care of the majority through day and night, the cooks utilized the technique for dum pukht, wherein meat, vegetables, rice, and flavors were assembled in enormous vessels or handis, fixed with batter and left to slow cook for a considerable length of time.
This arrangement of cooking ended up being the most advantageous strategy to give dinners to the huge number of laborers just as to make for them a flavorsome feast without utilizing excessive flavors, which were hard to come by at that point due to the famine situation.
It was on one such day when a pot was left to slow cook that the delighting aroma and flavor from the dish found the Nawab’s attention and he immediately requested his shahi cooks to make a similar dish in the royal kitchen. The ace gourmet specialists utilized a similar procedure of dum pukht alongside royal artfulness and accordingly began an entirely different sort of readiness, which before long turned out to be monstrously famous in the courts and among the high society as more refinements were presented. It was later embraced by imperial kitchens in Hyderabad, Kashmir, Bhopal, and different districts also back in India at that time.
Other Episodes from the series:
Ep 4 – 32 – Netta’s First Cake
Ep 3 – Armenian Herbal Tea
Ep 2 – Nthree – Kuwaiti delicacies
Ep 1 – A Piece of Happiness
Beautiful composition!
“They filled my path full of doubt
And wouldn’t hear me out
But still I chased my dreams
They told me to quit
But my heart could not resist
And from the darkness came a light
I will shine on tomorrow
Light the way for all to follow
From the darkness I will shine
Learning from the past I tried
To stare the world in the eyes
Find strength to pull me through
I saw through my tests and trials
A road that ran a thousand miles
At the end was only truth
I will shine on tomorrow
Light the way for all to follow
In the darkness I will shine
I will shine on forever
Take my chance now or never
In the darkness I will shine
I know I can if I believe…”
