Wordless Wednesday

Happy Holi !  

Diwali extravaganza... HRI.

Vidhya apartment, HRI, 2008, photograph by Shubhaditya

I do not have very explicit memory of how I spent  Diwali before 2003. yes, 2003 is the year I got admitted in HRI and eversince Diwali has meant much more to me than it had ever meant before... This is how the two hostels in HRI look on Diwali....

Hostel 1, HRI, Diwali, 2006

My husband, Nishi spent his first graduate year in this hostel. His room was the the fourth door on the ground-floor....

Hostel 2, HRI, Diwali, 2006. This is the hostel where I used to live from 2003 to 2005, till I got married to Nishi...

till date, every year with equal enthusiasm, the first year graduate students of HRI collect funds for Diwali,  hand a part of it to Mewalalji, - who very diligently gets the diyas in advance, soaks them in water over night and then helps the students to line them up in the hostel corridors and on the road sides... so that they can all be lit up by 6 pm on  Diwali .


this morning my sis-in-law Sweta has come. i told her about my plans of making the paper lamps. she said she had done it before and volunteered to help me out with some of the finer-time-taking-details of the project. we'll go out shopping this evening and later at night we have plans to plunge into our lamp-project. hopefully things will go well and tomorrow i'll have some nice pictures to post... how are your preparations coming up... i hope you all are having a great time this festive season !

Lamp Inspiration....

in my previous post i had mentioned that i'll be posting photographs of Diwali-celebrations in HRI through the rest of the week. so is a photograph of two lamps that Archana, Shrobona and Ipsita had made last year at HRI.

aren't they simply gorgeous ! I love the peacock.. its so intricate... so beautiful... one can easily see how much effort had been put into making that lovely lamp... yet all the effort and all the hard work did not budge them from making eight such beauties....  only the superwomen of HRI could do anything so elaborate just for an evening !!

lamps lighting the entrance of hostel 2, HRI. 

I had finished my Ph.d by then and was at home for Diwali... so i couldn't be a part of this Diwali extravaganza.... but had i known in advance about their plans, i would have certainly made an effort to be there..... i am contemplating making such a lamp for my apartment this year. 3 days to go... will i be able to make it... wish me luck... i'll really need it to match it up to anything as beautiful as the ones displayed above !

Smitten....

The photograph is a rangoli that Archana, Nabamita and Suvankar had made in front of a hostel in HRI for Diwali, 2005 most likely..

another four days to go before Diwali. but noone seems to be excited enough..... 

had i been at my Alma mater i probably would have been busy with the preparations... planning for the decorations and the lighting arrangements.. right now i am desperately missing the pre-Diwali-late-night-sessions with Archana, Priyotosh and Subho wherein creativity and gossip would go hand-in-hand accompanied by intermittent rounds of
adrak-wali-chai (ginger-tea)....

during Diwali, HRI is certainly the place to be.... 

smitten by nostalgia, i have decided to post some old photographs of Diwali celebrations at HRI throughout this week... so expect bright sparkling photographs in the next few days.... and here are some photos of Diwali celebrations in HRI, taken by Girish Kulkarni and Nishita Desai in 2008.

at HRI- Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad

these past few years, 
while we were busy preparing for life.... 
nature indulged.... 
arranged several bouquets and played a symphony for us....

[HRI, hostel: image from ptwo's photostream, flicker ] 

there is nothing more refreshing than waking up to the chirping of the early birds every morning.

such a pleasure had been ours for the past six years. 

but being common occurrence it then had never meant much.

for in spite of  us the babblers came knocking and blabbering at our window sills every morning .

and the koels cooed from the high branches of the trees.

[Oriental White-eye Zosterops palpebrosus, HRI: image by Nishita Desai ]

and one did not have to be too lucky to see the peacocks play in ones backward in the early hours or in the evenings or see them dance when dark clouds covered the sky.

such was a campus i lived in for the past six years....

[15 July 2007, peacocks perched on the branches of the trees overlooking the students' study cabin, HRI: image by Archana Morye]

few days back a friend of mine mailed a recording of  "the music of HRI" as heard in the early hours of the day. and then it all came gushing back to me.... the memories of those past six years in the blessed green campus  of Harish-Chandra Research Institute along the banks of the Ganges....

[Kalidasa Point, HRI, the corner of the campus that overlooks the Ganges: image by Priyotosh Bandhyopadhay]

often on a Sunday morning like this, we would let life take a back-seat and let nature play... and when the sun would glare too harshly, we would rush back indoors, take refuge at our computer desk, work a little and wait for the sun to set...
for all at HRI knew too well that an evening by the Ganges is a phenomenon that cannot be  missed on a idle Sunday such as today....

[Along the Ganges at sunset on a Sunday in 2009]

[the music of HRI had been recorded by Girish Kulkarni of HRI in his voice recorder during the early hours of 4th May, 2010.]

[ p.s: Thanks Archana for mailing me "the music of HRI" and the photographs of the peacocks.]

Genius !!

Vidushi is one of the smartest four year olds I have ever met.... Recently, at an art-meet in the campus she painted the above picture.  She is small, so understandably she wasn't able to tackle the water-colour at her disposal. but she justified her art anyways explaining,

"It had rained heavily on that village !!" 

Isn't that genius !!

My Lilies.........

 Last April when I was home

                            around this time-  my lilies had bloomed.

         this year i miss the riot they had reveled in....

 
Dearest lilies...  , 

                                                          do come and see me soon !!

the introduction.....

it was more than a year ago.... I was still a student then..
they had recently moved into our campus.  she with her dad and mom...
i had noticed her a number of times before,  during my walks... but we had not spoken... never exchanged words...

she was a little more than two then... her father had just joined as a faculty at our institute... i had shared no common interest with him or her mom and so we had not been introduced...

But that evening as i was walking up the slope adjoining the pantry, she looked at me and smiled.

       i smiled back and asked   "what is your name ?"

                               her mother probed and she replied,  " Elly !"

                                   that is a rare name for a little Bengali girl.  and  I said, "cute,"   then asked ,   "what are you doing ?"

                she replied, "I am dancing,"      and then began to dance....