Aug 262012
 
Bandish Projekt

We attended the performance by Bandish Projekt in our apartment complex in PBEL City organized as part of Hydourite. The Bandish Projekt is a fusion of Electronica dance music with urban folk. It was an electric performance with sufi singer Runa Rizvi, accompanied by flute of Shreyas Dave and Mayur Narvekar on instruments and keyboards. Mayur, Runa and Shreyas It had rained heavily during the day and I was not sure if the performance will happen. Fortunately thanks to the weather gods by evening the sky was clear and we had a pleasant evening. The lawns of the compound [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Aug 112012
 
View From Our Balcony II

I have been travelling for some time both for business and for clicking pictures. All this while I have been so busy that did not have time to look out of balcony of our apartment. Is is not surprising that one travels to far off places to click pictures but totally ignores beauty around us?  Today morning was a especially beautiful day and I decided to stand in balcony for some time with my camera. Hyderabad has been blessed with really good monsoon this year and the surroundings to our apartment has changed totally. The Sufi Shrine The Blooms In Garden [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Jun 032012
 
A Musical Evening With Ghatam Karthick

Ghatam Dr. S. Karthick When every single day you hear about the competition between Sheila Kee Jawani and Munni Kee Badnamee, only to be toppled by Chammak Challo kind of songs, you just wish that songs simply do not have vocals but only the beats. It was pleasant surprise when I received an Invitation from PBEL City to attend an evening with Hydourite, where Ghatam maestro Dr. Karthickwas performing. Hydourite has been coined from “My Hyderabad My favourite” and will be used as a platform to orgnaize various events in Hyderabad to showcase and celebrate the spirit, heritage, tehzeeb and future of [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

May 052012
 
Save Peerancheru Lake - An initiative by PBEL City Residents

 How Residents of PBEL City Got Together to Clean The Peerancheru Lake While your lazy bones Desi Traveler was struggling to get out of bed on Saturday morning, some of the environmentally conscious  residents of PBEL City decided to get up early on a weekend and clean the Peerancheru lake to bring back its pristine glory. The lake that has a good population of water birds like Ducks, Egrets, Pond Heron, Painted Stork, Kingfishers etc. But unfortunately due to pollution and dumping of waste it has become dirty. Well not any more today morning more than 10 of our residents and some staff [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Apr 282012
 
Purple Sunbird is not Hummingbird

Hummingbird vs Sunbird in India As mentioned in the earlier post I was able to capture the hummingbird or more accurately the purple sunbird in the camera.  Why I say Sunbird is that Hummingbirds are only naturally found in the Americas, what we have in India are Sunbirds. They seem to have developed independently and as their habitat and feeding habits are similar they look and behave very similar to each other. But scientifically there are no Hummingbirds found in India or Asia for that matter.  I am totally amazed at the way nature works. Two continents separated by thousands [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Apr 252012
 

Today was my lucky day, while walking in the compound I noticed a bush outside the boundry that had fragnant, though non descript flowers. I decided to investigate and to my amazement a female humming bird was doing acrobatics on the flowers. I took out my phone to take some pics but she was too fast to be captured by a phone camera. I was in too mind to continue my walk or get the camera. The Nikonian defeated the walker by a wide margin and I went back to get the camera. But by the time I returned [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Apr 222012
 
Birds Around PBEL II

Observing Birds in City Bulbul The humming bird remains elusive and is beating the fastest shutter speed I have tried. It seems Shutter priority mode is is not the thing to do. But I was lucky again and caught the Indian Bulbul and a Pied Bushchat enjoying a worm.  The Early Bird Catches The Worm I will continue to try to shoot the Hummingbird, any suggestions on camera settings would be welcome. To read the earlier post in this series please click here Thanks for reading, do leave a comment.

Apr 212012
 
Karma Chameleon

I started my day with the hopes of capturing a few photos of the elusive dark blue Hummingbird that I have been spotting every day in the flower bed. But it has been proving too fast to be captured on my phone the only equipment I have when I come down every morning to drop my daughter for her school bus. So today I came down armed with my Nikon D7000 and 55-300 lens hoping to be faster than the hummingbird.  But the hummingbird had other plans and had decided to take off the moment it saw me equipped [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Mar 032012
 
Hiking in Peerancheru Boulders

Today in the morning I went for hiking in Peerancheru boulders near our apartment with a GHAC group. My wife was kind enough to make a cup of tea for me at 6 am in the morning.  We both had the tea together and then I left for the meeting point with the GHAC group that was coming.  We started the day with the introduction round by forming the circle and Shraddha the group leader gave instructions like: ·         No littering, ·         No talking loudly or disturbing any birds or animals in area ·         No breaking away from the group etc. Under [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]

Jan 282012
 
Saraswati Pooja

One of the challenges in living in a multi-storey apartment complex is that you miss the interaction with your neighbours.  Normally you don’t even know if they are home and some time you will discover the same by the increasing pile of newspapers on their front doors. Ours is a fairly new complex and most of the residents have moved less than 6 months ago. Some of the enthusiastic folks have been taking great pains to make sure that we do not become a nameless faceless community but interact with each other. Today there was a celebration on the [Continue Reading By Clicking Here…]