Navratri Colours of Nature

Happy Dasara / Dussehra and may good win over all the evil in this world.

(Received on Whatsapp)

Leading upto Dasara is Navratri, where people worship different forms of Goddess Durga over 9 nights (hence “Nav ratri”). At the start of Navratri, everyone looks out for the colour that signifies each day of the 9 days.

Eco-friendly Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations

The Ganapati at Mrudula & Venugopal’s house looks like marble. These days, marble Ganapatis seem to be popular, with environmentally conscious people wanting to celebrate the Ganesh Chaturthi festival without causing pollution.

Eid Mubarak

Eid-ul-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast is here. The month long holy month of Ramzan (the 9th month of the Islamic Calendar) is finally over, with the moon having been sighted in India last night.

Ganesha speaks

The Ganesha festival at our apartment complex in Mumbai, is never complete without the inter-wing Rangoli competition.

The ladies (we haven’t had gentlemen interested in taking part) take a lot of effort in designing the rangolis, deciding on the materials they would use, preparing the colours (yes, some colours are made at home), and then drawing and finishing their art works. The theme was “Go Green”, so all the rangolis had to be centred around this.

It was indeed hard work! With six wings, there were finally six beautiful pieces of rangoli for us to enjoy. And through each of them, Ganesha speaks.

Thanks to Meeta for sharing the pictures.

Ganesha is everywhere

Last month, during the Ganesha festival, Hindustan Times ran a photo contest #HTFindGanesha, asking people to send in pictures of anything that looked like Ganesha. To make things clear, examples were given.

‘Neralu’ on MG Road

Neralu – Bengaluru Tree Festival culminated in Bangalore today.

[Neralu = shade in Kannada]

My mom made a special effort to visit Bal Bhavan, Cubbon Park to catch the Photo Project that had moved from the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) where it was last weekend. Though really a tree lover (we’ve got loads in our compound at home), her incentive to go was my photo of the metro on MG Road, that was among the ones chosen for display. I’d taken this from the thirteenth floor of Barton Centre during our visit to Bangalore/Bengaluru in December 2014. Check out the Neralu Facebook page here.

Namma Metro and Namma Neralu on MG Road in Namma Bengaluru

As one moves in Bengaluru’s Namma Metro track on MG Road, the dense foliage on one side could make one easily forget that one is in the heart of the city.