Monsoon Diaries (09-August-2024) - Festival mood and brewing thunderstorm

09 August 2024

It's been massive gap of nearly 50 days since Bengaluru received significant rains. It's been drizzle or passing quick rains till now but nothing significant like above 10mm. This week is hope with dropping wind speeds, raising humidity. The only drawback heat wasn't increasing. The morning is cooler with significant wind. As day progressed, sun would pop up out providing some heat but not significant enough. The nights are slept without fans which means the heat factor is not helping rains. It's predicted to improve in couple of days which would help in significant rains over city.

Today is nagarapancgami. The sacred cobra is symbol of nature worship prominent in coastal karnataka. Wife prepared eeredde (steamed turmeric leaf pudding or arashina yele kadubu). That is the yummiest part of day and we ate 2-3 in numbers.

A short clip!

Part of daily routine, we went to terrace to dry clothes. The weather was hot and humid. But winds were still significant. Hope the situation would improve as day advances and provides much needed evening rains.

The evening was full of artistic clouds but no hint of thunderstorm yet. Good news was, heat was more and winds were still. There was hope for night rains. 

Minimalism!

Enroute to Mavanuru Bettada Malleshwara temple, this lone tree with minimal leaves attracted my photographic instinct. That was simple perspective with thin tree spreading its minimal branches and surrounded by minimal grass. The sky was too simple as well without much colors. I retouched the actual picture with different edits. Here are those!

And here is the original one

So how do we interpret the minimalistic images? The minimal is life, the beautiful it looks from inner, even though not from outside world. Like above image which needs photographer's skill to portray the beauty of isolated tree, the life too needs skills show the beauty of minimalistic living. Even though outside world see you as menial with frugal life, it doesn't watch your inner peace. Its all in mind. Less materialism, less possessiveness, less stress. Material possession also comes with higher price living with high stressful jobs in stressed cities. The rural simplicity with clean air, less stress, ample greenery is highly underrated I feel because we only match the materialistic life like cars, computers, jewelry, apartments etc.. Finally its finding balance which is never a minimalistic formula! Hope you enjoyed the pictures amidst my rants!

Monsoon Diaries (17/06/2024) - Low windspeed, heavy clouds, surprise thunderstorms?

Today was special today especially towards evening. Surprisingly, the morning was cooler. The alto cumulus clouds brightened the day as always.

As day progressed, humidity picked up and winds reduced. It was sweltering weather. The afternoon was marked with heavy clouds with towering nimbus clouds hinted at thunderstorm development. There was no prediction on this by any weather models. The clouds looked truly gigantic. It was pleasure watching the distant clouds which moved like ocean waves.

The humidity increased as Sun advanced to evening. There was light rain but not significant enough to match the cloud mass. We felt as if the heavy clouds would anytime fall on us!

A faint rainbow popped up as we neared sundown. It was disconnected. The rural areas scored well as per news reports. Consequently only rainbow could be witnessed from our location, no rains

The city missed the thunderstorm. The monolithic large cloud mass overhead was massive to watch and capture. Perhaps this one my largest picture collection since monsoon outset this year. Lot of drama unfortunately faint rains. Perhaps the clouds did not co-ordinate their location to precipitate. Hence nobody poured in our location :-)

The blue hour was exciting but couldn't impress me much due to lack of rains despite dense cloud masses :-(

A couple of timelapses. As I mentioned, rural areas scored well. The rainshaft in first timelapse is testament to that claim. There were multiple actions all around but only camera to capture :-)