Flowers make us think little and feel more

Religion opens all its doors for you to decorate the almighty,

Love, tender or mature, seeks your presence for its proposal,

Art learnt its first colour lessons from your vibrant petals,
You the flowers make us think little and feel more.

Nature, always chooses you as its ambassador to show us its divine charm.
Its our ignorance to adore you in a vase or grow you in a mud pot.
But still you bloom blissfully as though deeply rooted in earth's beautiful garden.
You the flowers make us think little and feel more.

You may giggle at our selfishness for preserving -
your gracious posture in portraits and in artificial flowers,
your mesmerizing fragrance in perfumes and medicines.

But we always invite you,
to grace all our occasions,
from celebrating the union of hearts,
to mourning the departure of soul from its physical form.

You the flowers make us think little and feel more.

(Photography: Manikanda Prabhu)

My Story of Still - Flight - Click

Place: Khammam, Andhra Pradesh
Date: May 10, 2014

Bird watching requires a lot of patience but when it comes to photography, we'd require more of it to click the right moment. In addition to hard work, luck may also play an important role. For this particular 'bird-photography' I was standing still (actually a balancing act) on a stool for 15 minutes with the camera's viewfinder glued to my eyes in the early hours, around 6 am. My 'standing-still- posture' holding the camera close to my face; focusing in upward direction, that too on a stool close to the tree on the backyard of the house, probably would have scared my friend Ravindhar's family members. But I am sure, the initial stance of shock would have later transformed into a giggle, or even they would have waved it off as a comic-joke.

All of this happened when we friends Ravindhar, Ramesh and myself were put-up for the night at the former's beautiful home at Khammam. The plan for the next day was to start early (intended to escape the scorching heat) and reach Sankar Nayak Thanda, Mahabubabad district. We guys were to attend our best buddy Praveen's sister marriage.

On the day of this yet-to-begin journey, after a good night's sleep I woke up at 5:30 am, slowly opened the door and walked up to the backyard to enjoy the fresh air. All of a sudden I caught a glimpse of this bird flying to-and-fro busily building its nest on the branches of the tree in the back yard. Whenever the bird flew to get some nesting materials, I instantly acted and used these time-gaps effectively to: get my camera-freeze- find a stool-freeze-stand on it-freeze-adjust the lenses-freeze-trial few shots-freeze-experiment aperture and zoom settings-freeze. FREEZE means - in the presence of the bird, I was absolutely still. The bird would have overlooked me as a stupid-statue erected close to the tree and its nest. Thank God, the bird did not think of landing on my head to pluck couple of hair for its nest (the statue would have yelled-out with pain) and while leaving as an adieu hit my scalp hard with its beak.

Without disturbing the bird, I clicked few snaps. I am providing here the best two Clicks for your viewing pleasure.

One when the bird was STILL and the other when the bird winged for a FLIGHT. That's my story of Still-Flight-Click. :-)

Delightfully Charming Flowers

"Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them, but walk on, flowers will keep themselves blooming all your way"
- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

Alstroemeria - 1	Alstroemeria - 2 (Closeup)	Aster Amalus
Calendula (Closeup)	Calendula	Cupia
Dianthus-1	Dianthus-2	Gazania
Ornamental Cabbage	Ornithogalum	Pansy (Lion Face Flower)
Phlox	Pink Aster	Sweet Willium
Verbina	Zinnia	Bird of Paradise
Dahlia-1	Dahlia-2	Delphinium

Place: Bryant Park, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu
Date: April 20, 2014

How Birds Cope with Cold?

Chimney to the Rescue :-)

Place:Kodaikanal, Tamilnadu
Date: April 19, 2014

It was around 5:45am in Kodaikanal (hill station) and it was super cold. I came to the terrace of the lodge I was staying in, and happened to see this scene. These small birds were keeping themselves warm with the help of hot smoke ventilating from the Chimney.

My First Video Assignment - A News Bulletin

During my MBA education at Dhruva College of Management, we, students were encouraged by our wonderful teachers to indulge in extracurricular activities. It includes forming clubs spanning from book enthusiasts, publishing a college newsletter, to presenting latest business happenings to our classmates and seniors. My class 2006-08 batch was called as Frontiers. We like-minded friends got together and decided to start a newsletter, Beacon - The Light. I strongly believe these group activities make learning more interesting.

We worked hard to get the first blueprint approved by our faculties. We worked very hard and Beacon -The Light first monthly newsletter got electronically published and few hard copies was circulated among students and professors. During the process, my newsletter team members thought of presenting the important stories of the newsletter (with additions) to our classmates. Kind of knowledge sharing exercise. So we planned once-a-weekly (Wednesday afternoons), a Power Point presentation, with news, and any special topic by our classmates will be presented to interested audience. We decided to call the club as Business This Week (BTW).

As a part of launching this BTW news presentation on Wednesdays, we wanted to come up with an impressive first presentation. I had an idea and discussed it with my friends. After getting an go-ahead nod from them, we put our plan in front of our professors. The idea was to shoot a news bulletin and present it to the class. After little persuasion, we were asked to try it out by our faculties.

I tried taking couple of video clips with help of my Sony Handy Cam (cassette tape version) at home and converted it into a soft copy using my HP laptop. I got familiarised with the technical aspects and was ready for the shooting. For the record, at this point, I did not have a clue about digital SLR cameras.

Seminar hall was allocated to us. In the mean time, BTW club members decided to work on researching news and compiled a final draft to be read in the news bulletin video. With very close friends and members of BTW, we shot the news bulletin.

The next day, we showed it to our professors. They really liked it and then the news bulletin video was shown to a class (with projector and nice white screen) with decent number of students.

I enjoyed working on this assignment with my BTW team. Here I am presenting the (i) 5 minute news bulletin and (ii) the Making video. Watch them and let me know your thoughts.

I would like to conclude this write-up with the names of my Beacon -The Light and BTW team: Ratnakar, Rajeshwar Rao, Santosh Arramalla, Sanjay Jha, Arafath, Anusha, Roohi Naaz and Naresh. The news bulletin is presented by Roohi Naaz and Naresh. Faculties who were our backbone in these assignments: Prof. Lokanandha Reddy Irala, Prof. Venugopal, Prof. Sharath Bhusan and our Chairman Dr. Pratap Reddy.

The BTW News - 

The Making -