Herodotus's The Histories

I was in India for about 11 days in early July, and tried my best to capture the power of monsoons in India. Initially, I just wanted to take pictures of rain, but then I switched my gears, and took all kind of pictures. What you will see is the effect of monsoon everywhere - the lush wild greenery, wet streets, and a sense of relief from Indian summer, and maybe, smile on everyone's face.

School kids on rickshaw early morning in July.

I will take months to build my series, mostly on flickr, and selected ones on my blog.

I am back in India, and this time, my photoseries (daily diary) will concentrate on monsoons. Monsoons are an amazing force of nature with no parallel that carries the power to break the scorching heat spell during the summer in the Indian subcontinent, and rejuvenates all life forms.

From Tribeca Film Festival '08:

The most haunting frame of Ramchand Pakistani may be its first. Over a black screen, the words appear: adapted from actual events. The world is full of mad facts, but among the maddest is that in 2002, as Indian and Pakistani troops massed against each other on the countries' border, an eight-year-old boy named Ramchand wandered over the invisible line separating his own side of the desert from that of India's and was taken prisoner. Going in search of Ramchand, his father followed him across and was captured as well. They were held in an overcrowded Indian jail for five years. In her first feature film, Mehreen Jabbar lays out the political contexts of Ramchand's situation with exceptional fluidity. Titles at the top establish the geopolitics, and the more localized issues are threaded through early scenes. Most salient of all is the fact that Ramchand's family is part of a Hindu tribe of untouchables, making them both suspect and powerless in Pakistan. Bollywood star Nandita Das thus proves doubly brave .......

Trailer here. 

Some pictures from roadside near the railway station in Roorkee, India. These are pictures of people around vegetable vendors.