In Delhi we went to Mira's sister's house. While we were driving from the metro station to her house, Manu fell asleep in the car who hadn't taken his afternoon nap. He insisted on sleeping like this with his head resting between the two front seats. When ever we would try to make him more comfortable, he would jump back up and get his head between the seats again.

Something is different. Over the past few years I have been used to reading news related to navratri and dandia. Business news like how the sale of condoms suddenly picks up during this time, how the rates of hotel rooms in Maharashtra and Gujrat shoot up as a lot of youngsters are queuing up to rent them on an hourly rate. Employment news like how a lot of young boys, specially the college students, are working as escorts for “aunties” whose husbands not available/free to take them to the garbha and news about the private detectives who suddenly get a surge of assignments from parents to spy on their kids, mainly daughters.

The Rickshaw Driver: Refuses to take me to Andheri Railway station or home from the station.
The tailor: Refused to stitch Mira's dress as he was more than he can handle.
The dhobi: Stopped coming to pick up my clothes after he had an argument with my neighbor and I asked him why he won't iron his clothes.

and

The Creative Director: Wishes he had the freedom enjoyed by the people mentioned above.

I was thinking that it will be the last image of Carlsberg I am posting but yesterday I got some new ideas. Over the weekend I will be taking some more pictures and if they turn out well, there will be more pictures of Carlsbbers. Lets wait and see.

Since Monday I have been posting pictures of Carlsberg. Since it is already Thursday, I guess I will post another shot of Carlsberg tomorrow and have a Carlsberg week. I will still be left with some pictures but I guess they will have to go to my Flickr photostream. Will post the link once they are uploaded.

Tuborg, Guinness..now I know the beer of preference of some of the visitors of this site. I thought about it and realised that I don't have any favourite beer. I used to like Foster's but the difference in tast of the stubby and the long neck was disappointing. I tried Budwieser and liked it too and then tried Carlsber and I find it good too.

Finding a right name is important but I guess it is secondary to a good product and maybe a huge advertising budget. Rather than fooling around to find that perfect name, Carlsberg got its name in a rather factual and simple way. The name Carlsberg was taken from J.C.'s son's name, Carl and the Danish word for hill, "berg" as the brewery was situated on a hill at Valby, just outside Copenhagen.

I have not tasted enough beer to call it the best beer, this is the line for Carlsber wrote by Saatchi and Saatchi for the UK market in the 70s. What I do know is that Carlsberg brewed and sold in India is good, definitely better than most other brands. I have posted a couple of other shots of Carlsberg beer too and will post some more in the coming days. Keep watching. I will be adding the thumbnails of the new images below this text.

While Mira was busy reading the tabloid, Manu was busy looking at the safety instructions card. I have to admit that without an exception, all the airlines have really awfull illustrations in the safety instructions card. Whether you want to do it or not, it is something yo uhave to do so might as well do it well.

Few days ago I posted a picture of an idol of lord Krishna. That was not the only statue I found there. There were two more including this one. It was made more like a stuffed toy than like a conventional statue. The face was POP but the rest of the body was foam stuffed in a think cloth.

“May I have your attention please. As you can see we have just installed a new smoke machine in this aircraft and after the security announcements, there will be a song and dance sequence. Kindly use your headphones and tune into channel 3 for the soundtrack.”

When we were kids we used to call these insects helicopters. Actually I still call them helicopters because I don't know what these insects are called and everyone around me knows them as helicopters only. There used to be a lot of these in Delhi when I was a kid but hadn't seen them in bigger groups for a long time.

“I didn't thought there would be such a big television here” was the first thing Manu said when we took him to the movies for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The movie we chose was Wall-e because we felt an animation movie could hold his interest for the whole time. He did said he want to go out a couple of time but still sat there. I guess we will have to take him to a couple of more animation movies before we can try other movies.

Answer a question for me. There are countries like United States that have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, have fingered Iran and have directly attacked fundamental Islamic terrorists. United Kingdom has been an ally and has been party to all these activities. Yet all they have to show in terms of terrorists attacks are the 9/11 in New York and the train bombings in London. India on the other hand has not really done anything to piss off the terrorists then why do we have one city bomber every two months?

Do I hear you say our government's indifference, lack of will and interest in solving the problem?

On Sunday the Ganpati festival came to an end with an immersion of such idols as Lalbagh cha raja. The major idols that are immersed in the pond in Meghwadi near my home are the one from Matoshri and Durga Nagar. On Saturday five blasts rocked the national capital Delhi and it was expected that the turnout for these immersions will be smaller compared but people ignored the threat and the heavy rains and turned up in large numbers.

Maximum an year and I am out of here. This is what I thought when I joined Tata Interactive. I stayed there for 4 years and five years later I am still in Bombay with no hopes of going back. I didn't think about how long I will have to travel by train after joining R K Swamy BBDO and the way things are, this pile promises to get thicker. God! hate public transport. I hate Bombay locals.

Shot on our way to Delhi last month, a day after we missed our train.

Taken from the train on my way back to Bombay from Delhi just outside Bombay.

A day after Janmashtmi—the birthday of Lord Krishna, I took Manu to the park near our home in Delhi. All around me I could see the remains of the celebrations from the night before including the broken and abandoned statues including this one. I will post more pictures of the same. What do you do when you don't know what do with the old and broken statues that you once worshipped but don't need any longer. Isn't it a little hard to understand that one minute something represented god and the next minute it is nothing more than a useless object you want to get rid of?

Yesterday I talked about us not being able to calculate our. How do you decide the value things? Is it based on the utility of those things to you or their utility to others? Does an ordinary thing suddenly become important to you because someone is showing an interest in it? Let me tell you an example of this. There is a fig tree outside my home in Delhi. One morning I was with Mira picking a fig from the tree when a woman came and asked me what it was. I told her it was a fig. The next morning I saw the tree was stripped off.

By the time I was done taking the pictures of this bottle it was already feeling like a model hot enough to be he next sensation in the modelling circuit. Little did it knew it would be drained in a short while and sold to a recycler for two bucks. I guess we all, at some point of time in our life, are not able to calculate our true value.

I was thinking of posting shots of Ganpati till the day of final immersion but I guess that may not be possible. So far I have clicked the Ganpati we got at our home and the one in our building and I am not sure if I will have any good quality shots that are not repetitive.

These are the supposed to be the favorite flowers of Ganpati.

Is it really necessary to have loudspeakers at full blast while singing your bhajans for ganpati. He has a pair of elephant ears that are more sensitive than human ears. Give your neighbours a break, turn down the volume. Maybe they don't share your enthusiasm.

For the past five years I used to go around taking pictures of Lord Ganesha during the Ganpati festival. This year, I am taking pictures of Ganpati but at our home only. The only other Ganpati I have photographed this year is the one in our society that I will post maybe on the weekend. The good part of taking pictures of Ganpati at home is I can take all the time I need.

The Ganpati festival started yesterday and will go on for the next 10 days when the idols of Ganpati in the sarvjanik ganpati mandals will be finally immersed in water. Like most people who bring the idlos to home, we will be immersion our idol today itself.

Last year Manu kept asking to bring Ganpati home and didn't stop till we said yes. Once we committed, we had to bring Ganpati home this year and Manu has been very excited about it. The fact that he has watched the two movies on Lord Ganesh in the recent past has increased the excitement even further. In the movies he has picked a few things and he keeps repeating “Ganpati Bappa Morya, pudcha varshi lavkarya” but when he says it, it sounds like “Ganpati Bappa Morya. Shaun the Sheep Morya”

There is a very thin line between elements that are required and elements that are distracting. You must have noticed that in the last few a few changes I have made. A search box has been added and so is a link to related images. Since I have hand coded this site and I use an external search engine, I can only show text results while I would have liked to show thumbnails. Do let me know what you think. Are these useful or distracting?

What can be a worst start to a holiday that missing the train. We missed the train to Delhi even when we left with a margin of two hours. In the disappointment, frustration and anger I thought maybe we will have to cancel our trip. Then I thought of all the people, both in Delhi and Bombay, who knew I was traveling and imagined myself telling the story of how I missed the train a thousand times.