The Gateway of India

The Gateway of India
Originally uploaded by recaptured

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against

against
Originally uploaded by recaptured

the light.

When I came home, this little friend was sitting peacefully on the gate, monitoring what was going on in the neighbourhood.

It made for a good picture.

My upload for 9/9/9

New ’ome, or is it?

I did not write about it here, but I have not been able to log in to a Rediff.com account of mine for around a year now.

Funny thing is that Rediff’s support also has not been helpful. When I asked them to help me out, they sent me a questionnaire with questions like which was the last date I accessed the account, which are 5 people I have last written emails to, and sundry other information like that. Now for a personal account, if I did not remember the password, which I am supposed to have remembered, how can I remember such small details which anyways I am not supposed to have memorised? I wrote back to them with whatever I could remember. They did not even show the courtesy to tell me that they won’t do it.

Enough of rants. The matter is that the domain linked to this blog was also controlled through that Rediff account. And since I could not log in, the domain expired. So you will not be able to find this blog at the URL you were reading it earlier on. The blogspot URL has kicked back in action - this blog is now accessible at http://almostimperfect.blogspot.com/. Suits now, doesn’t it?

If you are one of my RSS subscribers, you still can read this. Thank goodness for 3rd party feed burners - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Almost lives on :)

Will I try to buy that domain again? I don’t think so. It was primarily to host my design portfolio and land me a job in a design company or get me design projects. Since I set up the site I have been successful in joining arguably India’s number one design office - Elephant Design, and I am too busy working on exciting projects here to take up any independent design assignments.

Moreover, in a hurry to go online and because of a lack of hep and cool-sounding names, I had registered a kind of a clumsy URL. I used to have a hard time telling people the URL, and then telling them the spelling later (without the ‘e’!). Plus it was also hard telling people why the URL was such when I was writing more about photography, social issues, advertising and the likes, and when the title was in no way reflected in the URL. Now at least the address on the plate matches that on the envelope.

This sudden lapse of the domain also came at a strange time - when I was contemplating going online with another site of mine - one focussing on my photography. And I was thinking of writing there, and of importing this blog there lock, stock and barrel.

Now until the site’s concept, structure and design get ready and until I decide to shift it completely there, the blogspot address will be this blog’s home.

The feed URL stays same :) and that’s another reason you should start using RSS readers.

crystal chandelier

crystal chandelier
Originally uploaded by recaptured

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Tough luck!

Despite all your good wishes and support, Ankita and I are out of the Great Driving Challenge.

We made it to top 100 in 5 days of work, connected with so many friends, got to know what our friends think about us when asking them to vote, and when reading the testimonials they wrote for us. Not a bad outcome after all.

Would have loved to be selected and go on the great route we had planned, as a sponsored trip :) Next time maybe.

But the great news is that these guys are through! Cheers Joe & Namrata! Rock it!!

I travel… but am humble

Ankita writes, and she writes well! Reading what she wrote recently, I cannot bring myself to remember that she was a part of a TV show like MTV Roadies!

Here, I let her take over:

Travel huh? I think people who talk intensely about how much they have travelled and what they have seen, are not the kinds that I can relate to. I am more of the person who would keep her travels to herself, for it is not the world to rejoice on but my own humble self. I am also humble enough to admit that I havent seen the world ten times over. Last week I visited my aunt who lovingly showed me pictures of Australia & USA. She has travelled extensively.With all due respect to her but somehow seeing the pictures I wonder how many people really appreciate or understand what they see. It’s more of a race to have as many pictures & whether you took one at Trafalgar Square or the Opera House. Did you stay in the famous 5-star by the lake or did you eat at the famous place at 5th Avenue? Did you gamble at famous Vegas casinos or did you shop at the Changi airport? I for once wanna thank god that am not in the same league (yes you see the slight hint of humbleness again).

I like to see the trees pass me by. I like to put the passenger seat reclining and lie down looking up & outside the window. You see the trees pass you, the streetlights and the stars(if it’s night). The whole feeling is like you are rotating slowly with the earth.Inch by Inch, day by day, night by night. It’s as if the whole world has stopped but you.I also love to sit at the back of an SUV and watch the colourful neon lights on the road that divide two lanes.Sitting at the back it makes me feel as if my car is leaving behind a blazing trail which others might follow. It’s not like I am Buddha on his path of enlightenment but maybe I am doing my little bit for religion.

Ride ’n’ Rain

relaxed hawk
Originally uploaded by recaptured

The lazy Sunday afternoon I was spending with the Boat Club Quiz Club in the COEP old canteen was brought back to excitement by Joseph’s proposal, that we go to some place called Tiger Hill. All he knew about it was that it was a hill (duh!) near Kamshet. Monsoons, cameras and a new car was all the bait I needed to come along. But then he bowled me a bouncer - Naren’s ’96 E-class would also join us!

I would have been an idiot if I said no. So I did not :)

A smooth and quick ride on NH4 took us to Kamshet, where we stopped for a quick snack-break, and then asked the restaurant owner for Tiger Hill. He told us it is near Lonavla. So we drove off towards Lonavla.

What we saw on the road then was horrifying! A Corolla Altis had apparently been hit on the back by what seemed to be a humongous vehicle with great force. That force pushed it into the road divider. Both its boot and bonnet were smashed! Thankfully the two people in the car including the person driving it seemed to be safe and unhurt.

This is where Joe got a call from Naren. He had seen a black Cedia cross him in the other direction, and he thought it could be us. Then they exchanged a few words about the Corolla as a reference point, and we met a few hundred metres from the spot of the accident.

We drove back to Kamshet. Turned out that a lane next to the place we snacked at led to the Hill. So much for asking directions from locals!

The road up to the Hill seemed to be okay. We kept wondering why Naren would describe it the way he did. Then we came to know. There was a detour from the road we were driving on, which was barely six feet wide. And this detour would have been done last a year ago maybe. And due to the rains it was kinda loose. Now we knew why he said that once you are on, you can’t reverse.

Since we were already some 50metres into this “road”, the only way to go was forward. So we did.

A narrow road with steep inclines, punctuated by expanses of flattish land with lots of grass, as you can see in the photograph, continued. On the way Naren gave up, his wiper was not working, and it would not be possible on such a road to get down and wipe the glass at any point.

We spent some time discussing whether we go ahead - both the cars, whether we turn back - both the cars, or we go ahead - with all of us in the Cedia and the Merc standing where it was. Finally Naren decided to park his car with two of its wheels on the road, and we loaded all six of us in the Black Hawk.

The Black Hawk rose to the challenge and carried all six of us forward, until at a point the incline became too steep, and we smelled its clutch burning! Four of the people in the car - the entire back crew - decided to trek to the top, while Joe and I stayed in the car and drove it to the top.

A Thunderbird, a Pulsar 220 and a Scorpio were already parked at the top. The view was amazing! There was a trek that went further up, but we decided to stay where we reached, while Girish decided to go up.

There was also a trek that went down - beyond the railing, on to a neighbouring hillock. Our four companions went that way, while we stayed back to admire the car and shoot it from every angle and perspective we could think of - wide angles, closeups, macros, high-hat, top view, sides, front, back. Apparently the spot down there on the hillock was amazingly windy. So the buggers stayed there until the sun went down.

Joseph was getting impatient, because he had burnt his clutch and also because in the dark the road would be tougher to drive on. So we pushed off without our passengers, albeit at a slower pace, and asked them to come trekking down to meet us.

We reached the parked Merc, divided the ‘load’ between the two cars equally, and started off back home. On getting to the proper road, Naren stopped again. His awesome wipers had now jammed in one place. One could not move them even by hand! After some time fiddling with the fusebox and connections, he gave up and concentrated instead on getting a test-drive of the Black Hawk.

So Naren and Joe went off on a drive in the Cedia, while I went mad clicking the Mercedes - especially the three-pointed star.

They came back, and we split ways — one car to Pune, one to Mumbai.

On the way back, we found a place called Urban Spice. It looked good, so we went in, and ordered. The food was good too.

And from there, I took over the Black Hawk. I drove back till Wakad. It’s such a smooth car! Feels just the way it looks - powerful yet refined.

My flickr stream has not seen so many uploads in so few days since I guess I had discovered the cheap kit-lens macro method.