Wild Flowers

Recently I'd been to my grandmother's place, which also happens to be my birthplace. A small village by the name Melpal, situated about 70 kilometres from Chickmaglur. In all a 310 kilometre drive from Bangalore.

As always, the drive to and from that place is absolutely exhilerating.And if I have to write more about the drive itself, I shall have to post it as a separate thread. In short, all I can say is that it really gives me the sense of riding an unstoppable juggernaut and see all other vehicles on the highway fade away into oblivion in my rear view mirror.

Now let me talk about some of the subtle things in life. About things created by nature.

Each and everytime I go there, the first morning of my stay, I compulsively seem to hang the camera around my neck and start walking around my grandma's house. And everytime I get to photograph different things.Different flowers, different birds (winged variety only) and you wont believe it, everytime I get to see even different varieties of coffee beans!

But the ones that I personally like the most are that of the flowers. Flowers that you might never see in any flower show, flowers that never are grown in any garden or park. Flowers that just grow for themselves in the jungle. Flowers that most of us never get to see in a lifetime.Seeing all this reminds me the famous words of a Kannada poet that translates something like this.

"Live a life that is like the fragrant wildflower that blooms silently behind the leaf and gives fragrance to the mankind without geing ostentatious."

Here are some of the chosen pics.

A few of my friends came back to me saying that they unable to access my Flickr album, thanks to the website blocking mechanisms in place in the office network. That's why I decided to hit back with brute force and post some of these pics on my blog as inline images. I guess this ploy will work as long as the IT security guys decide not to block even blogger.com.

And since I'm always so much of a show off, here are some more selected pics that a few of my friends werent able to access.

This last one's that of Soma. I remember him getting us exotic fruits from deep inside the orchards when we were kids.Itseems he's been working with the family for the past 30 years or so now. I wonder if my folks gave him a long service award of some sorts for that.

I guess that's about it for now. Hope to be back soon with a lot more things to share.