Subject City Beckons!

I want to buy this place

I'm back in my subject city, a.k.a. Patiala. I'm back three whole weeks before semester starts. Why? Well, lets see. I was pretty much jobless at home. I decided to breathe some life back into my dear old blog. I don't think I had lost my interest in photography, it was more like I got involved in the race to decorate my C.V. Aah, the joy of just walking around the city with my phone and waiting to find that next picture... Its hard to put in words. Today, I did just that. Yes sirs and madames, I went photo hunting today!! After being unable to find a decent subject, I decided to walk back to my hostel and on the way was this building. The first time I saw this building was in August, 2008 and the first thought in my head was that I wanted to own it. I don't really know what is it about this building, I just want to own it. One day, I'll return to Patiala and buy this place. I surely will.
Why did I come back three weeks before semester begins? This was just the place where I had to be. There was just someone I had to be with. I was jobless at home, I have work here. Pursuits, both academic and personal, fill my days. Among other things, I tried to click a bird taking a bath but the critter just flew away. And yes, I still lust after that Nikon D90.

Technorati Tags: patiala,photography,building,evening

Freedom ?! One illusion or many ?

Freedom?! Is it what I have on my side of the bars ?

Yesterday was a rather eventful day. I got myself vaccinated against a rather mumps outbreak on campus, saw a rather good movie (Luck By Chance) with friends and took this awesome picture. This photo was Ms B’s idea. Now before babbling about freedom, how about some guesses as to what is beyond those bars ? I will reveal it later, either in updates or comments, but if you are really into spoilers then do click on the link.

Now it’s time to elaborate on freedom. Year 2009, we live in a so-called free world. But then again, I ask the oft repeated question: “Are we truly free ?” In just one day I realized that I am not. A tiny little virus can compromise my freedom, I had to have a needle puncture my skin and deliver some alien fluid in my body so that I could be safe. I could not watch the movie in peace because a couple of lovebirds were *doing* things to each other right in front of me (“Helping each other” – as one of my friends said). There are so many things I want to do, but I can’t because I don’t have the freedom or social sanction to do it. But I realised one thing at the theater. The couple in front were being “free”, but it made the people around them uncomfortable. I guess freedom is totally relative, eh?

We are all bound and gagged by the people around us, the places we live in and the families we are born into. Just as the person next to you inhibits your freedom, you do the same for that person as well. Just because of your presence he has to behave in a certain manner, talk in a certain manner etc. Ironical, isn’t it ? A world of people who are desirous of freedom are in truth the ones who are each other’s captors. Sometimes, humanity is just twisted!!

Technorati Tags: humans,photography,india,life,door,windows,freedom

The Pup on the Pavement

The Pup on the Pavement - found this cute little pup sleeping peacefully on the pavement!

Another addition to my steadily growing collection of animal photos. This cute little critter was sleeping peacefully on the pavement. Mr A, Mr R, Mr N, Ms GB and myself were walking along to have some food and we came across this cute little puppy sleeping peacefully on the pavement. Today, I got conclusive proof that animals are totally photogenic. This was the best picture of the pup that I took, but the pup looked equally good in every snap. I know I haven’t been blogging for the last couple of days, it was only because I was working on my case for the intra moot-court competition that’s to be held on the 28th at my university. Among other things, I’ve been planning on making some changes to my blog and I’ve finally put the ads on my blog. I’ve been thinking of making only one post appear on the home page. If you want to see the other posts, then just click on older posts. I just think it’s going to be more photobloggy!!

Technorati Tags: photography,photos,india,animals,cute,pups,dogs

Random Smoking Bunny

Smoking Bunny - Smoking is injurious to health!

STATUTORY WARNING - SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH , ESPECIALLY FOR CUTE BUNNIES.

This, my friends, is a smoking bunny. Well, its not actually a cigarette in it's mouth but a piece of rolled up paper. Why?! Well I don't smoke so I wouldn't be likely to have a cigarette on me, especially during class. Yeah, I took this in class today. The bunny here features on Ms SM's pencil bag. I just had this crazy brainwave and I rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it between the bunny and the desk and I even got the ears into position. And wallah! Lo and behold. I had my smoking bunny.

It was an excellent model. Of course there was a lot of luminance noise in the image because it was taken from a cell-phone, so I had to use a lot of Photoshop on it. I'm pretty pleased with the end result though.

Now the main question – Why did I take this picture ? Just felt like it. As my room-mate keeps on saying, “In the heat of the moment.”

Technorati Tags: india,animals,photography,bunnies,funny,message,nokia,camera

Of Sleeping Machines and Slapstick Movies

The Sleeping Machine - they are human machines after all!

This here is the picture of a rickshaw-wala or rickshaw puller (as called in correct English), who’s sleeping on his rickshaw. Snuggling comfortably (NOT!) in the arms of Morpheus under the clear blue sky. The man here is one of the hundred odd rickshaw-walas found in Patiala. Oh wait, I’m forgetting something. Some people reading this might not even know what a rickshaw is. It’s basically a gigantic tricycle with a huge carriage kind of thingy in the back. People sit in it and this fellow pedals them to wherever they want to go. Did I hear someone say cruel ?! If you did, then all I can say back to you is: “Welcome to India”.

Rickshaws are the quintessential transport system in every city/town/wannabe town in India. These rickshaw-walas have to literally slog to earn whatever it is that they earn. They carry people around from place to place and when I say people, I mean PEOPLE. I’ve seen 5 people stuffed in that little carriage thingy and the poor fellow having to carry them around. I didn’t have my phone with me then so I couldn’t take a snap. Oh and just because they do all this manual labour doesn’t mean that they don’t cheat. They are some of the worst cheats you will ever meet.

I took this picture when I was myself on a rickshaw to watch a movie today. I saw “Chandni Chowk To China” and all I can say is that if you want to watch this movie, then please remember to leave your brain behind at home. It’s the most senseless movie you will ever see in your life. But hey, you will definitely laugh on the movie and as Mr N so rightly pronounced, “Laugh at the idea that somebody was stupid enough to think that people would laugh when seeing this movie!”  Among other things, my friends want me to write a post about them. I guess I will and I’ll give each of them a picture that describes them best. I’m also working on a Photoshop tutorial for giving borders and stuff to your photos. Will finish it and have it online soon enough.

Technorati Tags: india,photography,street,life,society,photos,movies,review

A Pot Full of Relief

Vase ?! – Taken at the Saras Fair in December.
The 14th of January was an incredible day. It was exhilarating day. The results of my 1st semester’s end-term exams were finally disclosed and I had done rather well. My first semester is officially over people and I got 75% aggregate. What’s my GPA ? No idea, my university follows a percentage system instead of GPA. God knows why!

Among other things, Mr. A and I left our bags in the library and well the library closed at 5 pm and our stuff got locked inside. What followed was a series of queries and questioning as to why there was no extra key to the library with anyone on campus. Besides, why should a National Law School's library close at 5pm. The kids here have to study, you know. So anyways, the matter ultimately reached the VC, he called up the librarian and made him come back to the univ and open the library so that we could take our bags.

I guess I've started on a plan to make some money to buy a decent camera. Maybe a Nikon D60 if not a D90. And for that very purpose, I'm planning to put ads on my blog. I guess monetizing this blog will work rather, should work. And on the same day as the results were declared; I was busy helping out a senior, Mr M, with some urgent stuff that he needed for his internship at a reputed Law Firm. It involved a ton of whois searches on the internet and lots of secret calls made in class, even though cell-phones are banned in class.

I can already feel the work-load growing, I guess its time to seriously start working. Lots of stuff to do this semester. Oh! How could I forget to mention that Ms SS is currently in Delhi for a moot court competition. Best of luck to her and I really hope that her team does well.  Currently I’m not that inspired to click pictures, I guess its due to a low period of my creativity or lack of decent subjects. Damn! How could I forget the objective behind creating this blog. It was to make even the listless, lifeless and even mundane subjects interesting. Like the picture that I’ve put here today.

It was taken at the Saras fair in December. It is a culture fair where there are kiosks from every state of India, displaying some of their traditional art and craft. Yes, there was the typical cuisine of every state as well. There was this pot there, exquisitely designed and I took a snap. I edited it in Photoshop so that I can give the background a b/w feel and make the in color with a little dream-ish feel to it. Its not one of my better Photoshop works. I know that. But still, I must write about this.

PS – I was thinking about writing about my internship the next time. Have some good pictures of buildings and a little escapade story as well.

Technorati Tags: india,photography,photos,fair,pot,art,culture,college

A Broken Mirror and Other Tales

I stretched comfortably in my bed, scratched my head and looked at the wall clock that had been given to me during my fresher's. It said that the time was 10:30 am. I sat up, albeit very slowly. It was Sunday, people, and I had full rights to sleep till 10 in the morning. So anyways, there were many things to do in this Sunday. I had made plans with some of my friends to go to this temple and then have lunch with them. Now this temple is a Laxmi-Narayan temple that can be found quite close to our hostels.

Laxmi Narayan Temple - with some post-processing done in Photoshop

So this is the probably the best of the three pictures that I took of the temple. Other pictures include my friends so they are not going to be displayed on the WoRlD WiDe WeB. So, continuing the tale, we ran into a classmate of ours who was with her mother and they explained the mysterious appearance of the multitude of people from Kerela at a temple in Punjab. It so transpires that every year, on the second Sunday of January, all the people from Kerela, who reside at Patiala, gather at this particular temple and offer their prayers, conduct a puja and have a little buffet. So, we were introduced to the people who organized this annual community fest and were then later shown to the buffet area. Needless to say, the food was good and then we went to the temple, offered our prayers and then clicked some pictures and started walking back to the hostel.

So, Ms B, Ms G and Ms S were walking along with me to their hostel. Ms S was to my right and was chatting animatedly while walking. All of a sudden, a car passed by dangerously close to her and her elbow banged against the side mirror of the car. The mirror broke at the hinge and fell on the road with a loud clatter. Everyone was rather surprised when the asshole driving the car did not stop and went on driving like he was high or something. Okay, now two other things happened. Ms S said, 'Ha ha! I broke his mirror' and a couple of seconds later she grabbed her elbow and said, 'Ow, MY ELBOW!'
The second thing that happened was that a kid on a bicycle nicked the broken mirror just as I had the idea of keeping it as a souvenir. Well its not everyday that a car brushes against your elbow and ends up having its side mirror broken off the hinge! Don't worry though, Ms S is fine and does not have any injuries. I do doubt that its addled her brains though, she's been acting funny since that little incident.

Among other things: I helped get the hostel's wi-fi running by finding the source of the problem, I made a new profile picture in Photoshop, its a tribute to Dexter and well I've been nick-named dxtr so___ you get the point.

Dee Dee to Dexter: “Ooh ooh, what does this button do ?”

Oh and as of Monday, my most mysterious classmate has finally joined the univ. Yes, Ms S.M has finally started attending classes as of the 12th of Jan, 2009. And if, by any freakish chance of fate, Ms. S.M happens to be reading this then I'd like to welcome her to the univ and hope that she understands the system faster than we ever could. Damn its late, right now its 12:30 am and its taken me over two hours to prep the images and write this. Why? Well, we were having a little Lohri party. So it's good-night to all for now.

PS - Note to self - stop listening to ghajini songs.

Technorati Tags: punjab,india,photography,images,nokia,camera,college,friends,law school

A Happy Man and a Lazy Bum

Happy Little Man - taken at the Saras fair, 2008.

The time right now is exactly 11 pm or 2300 hrs, whichever you prefer. I’m sitting alone in my room, trying to find a case which has been dodging me for the last four days.  I’ve spent the last 1 hour looking for that one citation that can help me get started on my work.

It's 11:15 pm now! I spent 15 minutes just typing two lines ?! I stare at the heater for a couple of minutes, pushing my feet towards it and feeling the comforting warmth on them. On a whim, I decide to check out the temperature right now. Its 12 degrees right now, the minimum, as low as 7. I spot my quilt at the end of my bed. I spread the quilt and get comfortable.

Its 11:25 pm and I can hear the constable whistling outside. Its a rather odd system here in India. Around midnight a constable starts patrolling the streets and keeps on whistling as he patrols. I recall something akin to being fascinated with the whole patrolling-at-midnight thing as a kid. Its 11:28 pm now and I seriously should do something about that case. Now, where is that book on contracts ?!

Its 11:30 pm and I find the book. I look through the index and find a new citation for that case. Now what does PC stand for ? Oh yeah, its the Privy Council! Manupatra gives me nothing. I sigh, click on that link to Westlaw and type out the citation. Still nothing ! It begins to get on my nerves. Deep searching into Westlaw gives me nothing either! I sit and ponder for a minute. Let’s see. I got a traceable AIR citation from a lost IA citation. I think the day wasn’t all that bad. I guess the library will help me, if they have AIRs going back to 1924! I take one more look at the time. Its 11:55 pm. I guess its time to edit my mistakes and post this.

Technorati Tags: india,photography,photos,life,real,rant,law school,law

Projects and petitions!

We were all sitting in class today, enjoying a free sociology period because our professor's on leave. It's just been 15 minutes and in walks this new professor. She introduced herself as Ms. D and said that she was the new IPR teacher and the teacher-in-charge of the Internship and Placement Committee. She appeared pretty smart and confident and appeared to be a no nonsense person. But after interacting with her for the rest of the period I came to realize that she wasn't all that she showed to be. Maybe she had her guard up just because it was the first time that she was in our class and all.

By the way, we don't have IPR in our first year. Its in out third year and onwards, but she was there to brief us about the about our internship reports and assignments. We had a compulsory "Law Library" internship after our 1st semester. Quite honestly a rational person would think that such an internship was pointless and had no real value on a C.V. Yeah, we had to do some really lame things like making a bibliography on a subject of our choice and write a book review of one of the books that we read in that library. Stuff our univ. makes us do...

Talking about the univ., these are couple of pictures that I clicked a day ago. It's the lawn in front of our library and there were flowers strewn all over it, flowers which had fallen from the trees. It was a beautiful sight with the sunlight and shadows. Just had to click.

Flower Drops - In color!


A little photoshop and some sepia magic!

Among other things, I read this post by Monika, today. It was about a petition which she had started. A petition to fight terorrism by both Pakistanis and Indians. I hope you guys go and sign it.

Technorati Tags: india,university,college,photos,photography,fun

My Camera & Phone

My cameraphone is a rather mid-range Nokia 6233. In fact its one of the last Nokia 6233s to be purchased in the world.

It looks quite good and has a surprisingly good quality 2 megapixel camera. It has stereo speakers and is 3G enabled. Its a total value for money package. The sound on this baby is supremely awesome and the camera is pretty good too. Although it fails in giving clarity in large images like 1600X1200 it still does supremely well in mid size images.

The full specs are as follows -

2 MP camera

5 MB Built in Memory

Expandable memory with Micro SD card

Stereo Speakers (the loudest in any Nokia mid level phone)

Awesome sound quality

Sleek looks

A tried and tested phone, but sadly it has reached the end of its line. Its not manufactured anymore and I was lucky to get one of the few available models in the world. Some of the more detailed features -

• A small, sleek mobile device with indulgent stainless steel - the perfect balance of features for both business and pleasure
• Real time access to information at all times through mobile broadband
• High quality sound through stereo speakers
• 3G capable
• 2 megapixel camera with 8x smooth, digital zoom and landscape mode
• FM stereo radio and music player
• Enhanced Java email client for easy sending and receiving of information
• Spam filter to avoid junk mail
• Supports video sharing, streaming, and recording capabilities
• Video, MP3, eACC+, and 64-chord/voice polyphonic MIDI ringing tones

• Volume: 81 cc
• Weight: 110 g
• Length: 108 mm
• Width: 46 mm
• Thickness (max): 18 mm

Nokia 6233 Flickr Pool

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