Somewhere in Edinburgh.

   When I visited Edinburgh with my sister on September 2015, we had gone on one of the free walking tours of the place. We walked through one attractive downhill street with pretty buildings around it, Victoria street. It's said that the Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter is based on this particular street. I had clicked it then, and recently made a pencil sketch of it. Here's the sketch.

Some street-side in Madras.

A new pencil sketch of a cycle parked against a bunch of  standing logs at the side of some street in Chennai. Had taken a picture of this long back and then decided to make a sketch of it. Here it is.

A street scene.

Macro-mania

Off late, I have been doing some macro photography with simple subjects like chalks, a flower bud, pages of a book etc. Taking these extreme close ups of these tiny objects has been a lot of fun.

I used the reverse lens method to take these extreme close ups of small objects. In the reverse lens method, as most photography lovers know, we attach the lens to the camera body in the reverse direction using an attaching tool called the reversing ring. I used 18-55mm lens in reverse to click some of the shots that I took. Some macro photos that I have taken are shown below:

Macro shots of chalk-pieces.

Shown below are extreme close ups of cross-sections of some chalk pieces.

Macro of Pages of a book.

Extreme close ups of the stack of pages of a novel that was lying on my table.

Macro of buds of the lantana flower.

These tiny little things grow to become very pretty florets of the lantana infloresence.

Macro of the tip of  the refill of a blue ball-point pen.

Capturing this was the most difficult of all the macro shots that I had taken.

Bewakoof Zameen Par (like idiots on earth.)

 Alright, now that you've seen the title of this post, get offended and judge me.

 Thought of writing a rant, and this time, I decided to write one on one of the most popular Hindi movies of the last decade, Taare Zameen Par.

  Seven years ago, I watched Aamir Khan's tear-fest, Taare Zameen Par, on the big screen. When I saw it then, I kind of liked it. But after seeing the movie again and seeing his character in the film, and then seeing some of the goody-goody characters, he's played in some of his other films, I realised that this shorty just wants to show himself as holier than thou. So, in Taare Zameen Par, there is this dyslexic kid (baby Suarez :P), who sucks at almost every subject in school except drawing and when he loses his confidence in drawing too (after being thrown in a boarding school by his Ronit Roy-esque dad), in comes tadaaaaa his holiness the keeper of the nation's conscience, Aamir Khan. Aamir Khan does what the kid's parents failed to do in 8 years---detect the kid's dyslexia and come out with the ultimate solution to his problems. Oh so cuuuttte!

   So, here's my problem with the film. The kid's parents are well-educated middle class parents who are capable enough of detecting their kids' problems (like dyslexia) from their early childhood, and find a short term if not a long term solution to the problems. But in this film, the father is shown to be a Ronit Roy-from-Udaan like dad, and the mom is shown to be an over-emotional dumbo who is incapable of understanding her kids. Hey shorty Aamir Khan, the way you have portrayed the parents in the film is far far far far away from reality. Parents in this country AREN'T that fucking dumb, as you have shown Indian parents to be, you short narcissist douchebag! And I don't think any man says this: "Tum yakeen karo, mai hi iska baap hoon!"

   Speaking of the portrayal in the movie of the teachers who teach the kid, all of them are shown to be Adolf Hitler's descendants---tyrannical, mean, nasty, in short chutiyas. Like as if ALL the teachers in ALL of India's schools are like that. But then, who is the good man, the god, the one who solves kid's problems? No prizes for guessing, it's the kid's art teacher and the nation's conscience keeper Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan). So, what do we learn from this movie? Aamir Khan's the only NICE guy on the planet and all others are obnoxiously evil. Aamir Khan's obession with being holier than thou and giving such crappy speeches is the problem of this film. I would rather listen to Himesh Reshammiiyya's singing or read Chetan Bhagat's books , than watch this two-hour over-bearing moral science lecture called Taare Zameen Par!

Somewhere in Mamallapuram

Sketching is another hobby of mine apart from photography. A few days ago I made a sketch of a dry tree which can be seen on top of the huge rock above the Pandava panels in Mamallapuram (aka Mahabalipuram). Here it is. :)

The Dry Tree.