Day 21 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : I Care About This...
Unfortunately, I don't have any social cause I care much about currently. Neither do I have any pets or kids. :( But, there's one thing I've always cared so much about that it wouldn't be wrong to refer to it as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And that's my fanaticism for orderliness.
Be it books in my books almirah, or clothes in my wardrobe, or the crockery in my kitchen cabinet... everything must be in its proper place. I cannot stand disorder and chaos... where I have to hunt for things.
This OCD has subsided a bit in the last few years, but when I was in school, I was such an order-freak that everything even had a fixed linear order! For example, my clothes. Dress G had to be after dress F and before dress H, so that I would tell my sister from the other room that "please give me the 5th suit from the left in my cupboard", and she would bring me the correct suit. Same with books or audio cassettes or anything else, for that matter. You could blindfold me, and I would still be able to pick the right item from the stack, just by counting.
My old Farmville neighbors will probably remember... even my farm was subjected to this particular OCD of mine! For those of you who never got into virtual farming, or couldn't make it into my neighborhood, here's an old screenshot of my farm loooong ago... (even before I saved enough money for my mansion!)
Beautiful, wasn't it? And naah... don't worry... I have no plans of getting back to online farming! I care about my eyes too! LOL! :P
This is my 21st post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - Light"
Day 20 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : Light
What could be more fitting for today's prompt than our very own festival of lights... Diwali!
I took this picture in Patna, in the year 2010... another one of my candid "balcony shots". The two buildings, lit up with Diwali lights, were at the far end of my lane (to the right of my balcony). No fancy equipment was used. Just my 5MP Cannon Powershot on 'night mode' without flash. I have cropped and water-marked the photograph in Adobe Photoshop.
Also, here's some more recent night-time photography. I'd already blogged these pictures last month, so didn't use them again for today's prompt, but please DO take a look... I quite like how they've come out. :)
This is my 20th post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - My Favorite View"
Day 19 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : My Favorite View
This one was easy to figure out... not as easy to photograph though... for the simple reason that I don't wake up that early now! So posting an old picture to portray my take on today's prompt...
That's a view of the morning sun peeping out from behind the leaves of a tree in Guwahati, India. I took this photograph from my uncle's balcony in Guwahati, in April 2010. Here's another picture from the same collection - "Sunrise in Guwahati".
The day begins so early over there 'coz it's in the East. And the mornings were just so lovely and cool. Completely in contrast to the weather here in Jaipur... temperature being over 30 degrees Celsius at like 7:15 in the morning! LOL!
I suppose I'll have to start waking up at 4:45 am again, if I want to see the Sun playing peek-a-boo with the trees here! :P
This is my 19th post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - Want"
Day 18 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : Want
Oh there are loads of stuff I want...
- a German shepherd called "Steele"
- a fish bowl with two gold fish called "Gappu" and "Gappi"
- a walk-in closet with clothes and accessories like Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo's
- more books
- some sacks full of mad money stashed away somewhere (like in the movie Mad Money)
- a farm in real (like my old FarmVille farm on Facebook)
- my work on KraftyFingers selling like M.F.Hussain's paintings
... but for today's prompt, I'll keep it a little more down-to-earth...
Plants... if I could only have lots of plants... or, better yet, a small garden of my own. But that's totally not possible in an apartment unit. So I will just have to make do with potted plants... the first item on my "shopping list" when we move to our own place! :D
P.S. - This was a "blind shot" taken from my cell phone camera, 'coz the screen was completely blacked out in the sunlight.
This is my 18th post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - Season"
Day 17 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : Season
What can I say about the summers of Jaipur? They are extremely hot and extremely dry (just the kind I like!)... with regular sandstorms (the kind I don't like!) that cover everything in your house with a thin layer of dust and make your neighborhood look like this...
Despite the fact that you have to spend so much more time in cleaning the house, and that you get severely sun-burnt if you step out of the house, during afternoon, wearing short sleeves, there's still a lot of fun to be had in Jaipur summers.
You can satisfy your mango mania, without worrying about pimples and acnes. You can skip cooked meals and just fill your tummy with watermelons and cucumbers and litchis (WOW!).
You can replace hot tea and coffee with so many different varieties of summer coolers and shakes!
Enjoy a glass of chilled homemade lassi (recipe here) with breakfast, or make a mint raita for lunch.
Have freshly made aam panna / mango mint cooler (recipe here) for a mid-day snack, and keep a jug of iced lemonade or lemon tea in your fridge, for when you return from your evening walk.
When my sister and I were kids, we used to love having Rasna and Roohafza in summers. Another of my personal favorites was the khus sharbat, while my sister was more crazy about cold coffee. (She used to have cold coffee in a huge beer mug! LOL!)
So what's your favorite drink for summers?
And do you see such summer sandstorms/duststorms where you live?
This is my 17th post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - Mailbox"
Aam Panna, or mango mint cooler, is a very popular summer drink in those Northern parts of India that experience the strong, hot & dry loo winds. Exposure to these loo winds can cause fatal heat-strokes, and this refreshing combination of raw mango and mint helps in preventing those heat-strokes.
My mom used to make this aam panna regularly in Kanpur, because Dad used to come home for lunch from his factory. I didn't bother much about it in Patna, as Patna is not a loo-prone area, but, now in Jaipur, aam panna is once again a part of our regular summer diet. Here's how I make it (this is one of the few recipes that my mom was able to teach me before she passed away)...
INGREDIENTS:
2 large raw green mangoes, peeled
2 tbsp mint leaves' paste
4 glasses of water
4 tsp sugar
2 tsp black salt / rock salt (kaala namak)
2 tsp roasted & powdered cumin seeds (jeera)
crushed ice
METHOD:
- Pressure cook the mangoes in 2 glasses of water, for about 7 minutes.
- Allow to cool, and then squeeze the pulp through a strainer, adding the remaining water.
- Mix in the mint paste, sugar, salt and roasted cumin powder.
- Serve chilled with crushed ice.
My blender doesn't work with very little quantities, so I usually buy an entire bunch of fresh mint leaves, and run the whole lot through the blender, storing the paste in the freezer in an air-tight container. The mangoes, I prefer to boil fresh every time. The sharp tang of the raw mangoes, combined with the coolness of mint, makes this a very satisfying summer cooler drink in this extreme North-Indian heat.
Here's more in Recipes from miss_teerious!
Day 16 of "May Photo A Day Challenge" : Mailbox
Today's topic did not make an interesting prompt for us Indians at least. Very few (if any) of us have those fancy mailboxes that we see in Hollywood movies and Google images.
I remember when I used to live in a house in Kanpur, the local postman delivered all our mail personally. The envelopes were usually slid under the door, but on every festival, he would ring the bell, deliver the mail in our hand, and then demand his 'baksheesh' (unofficial festival bonus)!
Then we started living in apartment units. And since then, all our regular mail is delivered to the building's security (usually the guard room at the main gate), while registered posts and couriers are delivered in person, directly to the recipient.
So, while we have these arrays of mailboxes set up in our building here, they are hardly used by anyone. I suppose that's already obvious from the condition of the mailboxes. Most of them have their locks broken. Some don't even remain closed anymore!
This is my 16th post for 2013 May Photo A Day Challenge.
Link to the previous post: "Photo A Day - 7 O'Clock"
