India Gate

A ten-minute walk from Bangabhavan, where I had put up in New Delhi, passing by Max Mueller Bhavan, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Baroda House, I reached India Gate. The 42 metre tall India Gate is situated such that many important roads branch out from it. At the heart of New Delhi, on Rajpath and leading to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, it is a monument built by Edwin Lutyens in memory of the Indian soldiers who laid down their lives in World War I and Afgan Wars. However, many of these roads closer to the Gate have been closed to vehicular traffic due to terrorist threats in recent years.

The shrine itself is a black marble cenotaph with a rifle placed on its barrel, crested by a soldier's helmet. Each face of the cenotaph has inscribed in gold the words "Amar Jawan" (Immortal Warrior). This cenotaph is itself placed on an edifice which has on its four corners four flames that are perpetually kept alive.

Inscribed on top of India Gate in capital letters is the line:

To the dead of the Indian armies who fell and are honoured in France and Flanders Mesopotamia and Persia East Africa Gallipoli and elsewhere in the near and the far-east and in sacred memory also of those whose names are recorded and who fell in India or the north-west frontier and during the third Afgan war.

The names of the soldiers who died in these wars are inscribed on the walls.

Unfortunately, during the time I was there in Delhi, the India Gate was not as brightly lit up as it usually is. Interestingly though, when I walked up to it, a bigger area was cordoned off, as the Navy Day was being celebrated. Hence I had to be satisfied by looking from a distance at one the most important, significant and beautiful monuments of modern time in Delhi.

The second image has been captured using optical zoom only. Digital zoom was not required and is usually avoided as it stretches the image and leads to poor quality shots.

Delhi Agra Trip

Well, I never much liked New Delhi and this last trip in the first week of December did not help much either. In fact, what was surprising was that winter had not stepped in. It was rather pleasant, for a change, because I have always found Delhi to be either too hot or too cold for comfort.

This trip also took me to Fatehpur Sikri and Agra, which was thoroughly enjoyable. One thing I must mention that I liked a lot in Agra was that one could book a car right outside the station and this booth is manned by Railway police. Not only that, they would give the bill to the customer, who upon the satisfactory completion of the tour would pass it on to the car owner or driver, who would in turn submit it with the Railway police to get the amount. And all the while the amount will be with the Railway police. Cool idea.

Travel guide – Book Taj Express from Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi to Agra. Book the return tickets for the same day, unless, of course you would like to see the Taj Mahal in moonlight. This train leave Nizamuddin at 7.15 am and reaches Agra Cantt around 10.15 am. Either book a car for the trip or get bus tickets for a conducted tour of the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri. You would be back at the station by 6.30 pm and your train is scheduled to leave Agra at 6.50pm. The Taj Express would reach Nizamuddin around 10.10pm.

Travel tip – Do not carry any food articles, wires, cables, chargers, inflammable articles, intoxicants, and the like into any of these monuments. Carry enough water with yourself, but leave the bottles in your car/bus.

Travel request – Please keep these places clean.

I was shocked by the wretchedness and dirty pathway when I walked from the Shahjahan Garden Gate towards the Taj Mahal. The authorities must take note of such issues. Visiting such an ancient site, one of the wonders of the world, and walking through dirt and dung are not very inspiring and flattering.

Here's one picture of the Taj Mahal.

Casino Royale : A Review

Casino Royale: A Review

Brosnan is no more playing James Bond. He has been retired as 007. What was M thinking? Outrageous!

Who’s the new guy? Daniel Craig. Heard of him?????????

If you haven’t heard of him nor ever seen him, see him; see him, because he is the best Bond. The character has adapted to changes in the modern world, and has become more human. And Craig succeeds.

Popular in the world of British theatre, Craig first came into my radar in Lara Croft as Alex West. A supporting role, but well played. And now we see him in Her Majesty’s special service in the Bahamas playing poker, deciding upon his favorite drink and without Q and his gadgets. When R was introduced in the last James Bond movie, I was hoping for many more gadgets to come in. But then, this is the first Bond movie. He’s just become a double O operative. He makes mistakes, falls and fears – he’s for real. And he kills with deadly accuracy.

And beware. This Bond knows M’s name and her residence, he even knows her passwords. Yet he is human. He is poisoned, almost has a cardiac arrest, and a terrible car accident.

The script is definitely not going to win the Academy awards. But it is well-knit; it keeps the viewer on the edge of the seat throughout. It perfectly fulfils the aspirations of the genre. A suspense-filled roller coaster providing the viewers a thrill so characteristic of a James Bond movie. The dialogues are witty and very Bond – like.

And the company he keeps is bewitching. Eva Green and Catarina Murano are sizzling in this movie. Just can’t keep our eyes off them. Though Catarina (Solange) is there for a very short while, she makes her presence felt, and provides the information that leads up to one the best airport sequences I have ever seen.

Vesper Lynd is ravishing, witty and strong. We can all understand Bond falling for her. Her character develops with the movie and this is no more a mere Bond girl, but a woman of substance. A woman who has more to her than just her physical appeal.

Also a word of appreciation for Mikkelsen. Le Chifre was too good in the movie and will no more have to weep blood.

Background music, sounds, chases, emotions, kills, simplicity, wit, humour, probability, and the list goes on.

Fantastic Movie
9.5/10 Must Watch

Daniel Craig 10/10
Eva Green 9.5/10
Mads Mikkelson 8.5/10
Judi Dench 3.5/10 Love to hate u M

And someone please tell me the name of the guy (or the guy who did his stunts) whom 007 chases in the opening minutes to the Embassy and finally shoots. He, by the way, gets 12/10 for those 5 minutes.

Copyright Issues

COPYRIGHT ISSUES


Upon the advice of a good friend, I would most humbly like to request you not to use the images in this blog freely. I may not be a professional photographer, but the images are mine, my vision, my imagination, my labour, my satisfaction. God, I am selfish. Please forgive me. But please abstain from using them freely.

You can mail me at ranjan.saraswati@gmail.com to discuss issues related to use of these images.

Macro photography

Trying my hand at Macro photography. Also used photoshop to vanish the wall behind.

Uploading problem

Uploading problem


As I was planning to turn this web log into a shutterblog, I started short listing the images that could be used. Lazy as I am, it was a painstaking process and I have finalized on a few. My laziness was also preventing me from scripting much about the pictures. Upon the advice of a professional photographer, I decided to post the pictures only – without the jibber jabber, which I am usually good at. Whereas you can call it my laziness (my wife does), my photographer friend excuses because each picture usually says it all.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

However, when I started uploading the pictures, it was taking a long time. I stopped using BSNL’s broadband connection in July last year subsequent to unexplained bills, and am back on a dial-up connection at home. Waiting for a long while was frustrating enough in itself and added to that was the problem that at the end of the entire exercise the pictures wouldn’t upload at Blogger. I tried Hello and Picasa to upload too, but without avail.

The essay was going nowhere and then I decided to check up with some other friends and found that they were facing similar problems.

Actually the problem lies in the file sizes of the images that are captured in digital cameras. All digital cameras have different modes of shooting like Auto, Portrait, Landscape, etc. Whereas one can change or adjust the settings of shooting, by default the Auto mode takes up approximately 1.6MB of space. However, that is at the Better setting or Fine setting, the terminology varying between different brands of cameras. If, however, one chooses Best or Superfine setting, the captured images would take up around 2.8MB of space. This translates to the fact that ten images would eat up approximately 30 MB of space.

sighs

The problem is partially solved by shooting in Normal setting but that would compromise on the quality of the images and no serious photographer would consider such a compromise worthwhile. These images take up around 50 KB each in this setting and can be easily shared over the internet, uploaded to different sites and blogs and sent through emails as attachments.

Interestingly enough, a photo blog becomes pretty interesting if one uses a mobile phone with a camera. Though, it cannot be called serious photography by any means – composition, being the only technique required, and that too rendered meaningless in the world of cropping. But the image sizes are within controllable limits and facilitates easier sharing.

Faced with the question of shooting in Superfine, Fine or Normal settings, I have decided to continue with my passion for photography clicking Superfine and Fine images, and at times going for Normal settings. So I doubt whether this blog can be converted to a photo blog anytime soon. But I would definitely write a lot about photography. I would welcome suggestions from the readers as to how else can this problem be solved.

Playing with light

That's my nephew - Pinchoo, he calls himself! 

Poverty

Poverty struck Shankarpur
Another pic 

Adda

The concept of an ADDA is what we Kolkatabashis (residents of Kolkata) can call our very own. Friends and acquaintances meet up on a fairly regular basis at a local area specified for the age-old adda. Here the discussions (criticisms and appreciations) would be from Karina Kapoor to Kalpana Chawla, from the hottest local topstory to the latest software to hit the mobile phone market, from Frank Sinatra to David Beckham, and the engine chugs on, and on.

All of it over countless cups of tea, scores of bidis and cigarettes, and flagrant use of abuses, curses and the lot.

Here I have captured some old men outside a mosque in Shankarpur, some 190 kilometres from Kolkata, while settling down for their evening adda. The image has been captured in my previous mobile Nokia 3220.

Check out http://www.kolkatabeckons.com/adda.html for adda

I clicked myself

Just the other day, a good old friend asked me at Orkut about my current hobby. I remember that the two of us had the same range of interest in school – anything and everything. There was something about our intesrests ranging from minus infinity to plus infinity.

That was 10 years back.

My latest passion is photography.

Especially after I got the Canon Powershot A530 – a compact 5 megapixel fixed lens camera with 35-140 mm focal length, 15-1/2000s shutter speed and an aperture range of F2.6 – F5.5. Saving the pictures on an sd card and clicking away merrily ever since has kept me occupied these days.

In fact, my obsession with this camera is reaching such a proportion that I am planning on turning this blog into a shutter blog. But I am facing some problems with transferring pictures from Picassa via Hello to Blogger. The problem lies in moving in with the beta version at Blogger. I think that an update on picassa must or has been released and I intend on making full use of the same as soon as I get some time out.

Interestingly, even in school, I was interested in photography. My interest saw me become the General Secretary of the Photography Club.

Maybe I will give this thing a good shot with Powershot.

Wish me luck!

Missing a get together

There comes a time ever so often that one feels nostalgic about people, instances, incidents and environments. Today I am feeling the same way. Some of my friends and classmates from college are getting together on Saturday. Unfortunately I will not be able to make it to the gathering.

There are so many memories about these people, so many incidents - triggering a pain that I shall remain unable to be there.

We were students then. Now all of us have become professionals in a wide variety of fields. One is now a police sergeant, another one has become a banker, myself an Investigator, another a marketing superhero and the petite one – well, god knows what she has become. But I will ask her that another time. But we were friends then and we are friends now. The fact remains it was a great opportunity to reunite with old friends which I will miss.

Alas!

Experiment with pictures

Experimenting with pictures. I didn't click these.

It has always been so very easy to introduce one friend to another, to pass comments about the way they behave, about what they really are; but I’d have never thought that introducing me could be so very difficult, and then I had to prepare for my MBA entrances.

My education started.

I had to look into who I really was.

Believe me, I still am.

For now, the name’s Saraswati, Ranjan Saraswati.