Colours!

It is Holi! 

Trying to take a picture of people playing holi, splashing and spraying colours on each other was quite a challenge today. I saw a few people outside The Park, wearing once-white t-shirts in different shades of pink, green and yellow. There was no way I was going to go near them, not in my white shirt. 

I thought I'd have to give up the idea of posting today's colours, but the better half came to my rescue. She had a few pictures of the kids (and some adults too!) in our apartment complex playing holi in the evening. They seem to have had some great fun!

 

Posterful

Many firms use a lot of colour and decorate the community spaces of their offices with a variety of media. Was at an office with this colourful cafe recently. And the best part is that the posters are all designed and created by the firm itself!

Theme: Pink

Over at the City Daily Photo portal, the theme for September 1 is "Pink". There was nothing much I could find in pink (okay, I didn't try hard enough), because Chennai wears yellow, especially with the Champions League T20 coming up later this month. 

But this old picture came to my rescue, and along with it, a story. Everyone knows this is the Bougainvilla; a plant so common here that it is difficult to believe it is an exotic species, having arrived from South America, possibly through French travellers. I say French, because even in the latter half of the 18th century, the French were optimistic enough about their chances in India - and it was a Frenchman, Philibert Commerçon, who is credited as being the first European to describe these flowers. He was the botanist on board an expedition to circumnavigate the world; it is not unusual that he named the flower after the expedition's leader, Louis Antoine de Bougainville.

But it is also said that the credit for first observing these plants should go to Jeanne Barét. She had sneaked aboard de Bougainville's ship dressed as a man, pretending to be her lover Commerçon's valet. And it was she who had brought these woody vines back from a field trip; Commerçon's contribution was in the naming. Jeanne's disguise was unmasked before the end of the expedition, but she did complete it - and thereby became the first woman to circumnavigate the world!

Hooray for pink!

Interested in more pink stuff? This is where you need to go today!

Pink-yellow-green-blue

Happy Holi!

It is not a 'local' festival, but that doesn't stop people in Chennai from celebrating Holi; in fact, the celebrations began early! Because Holi this year fell on a Monday, the fun part began during the week-end itself. After the first round of colours - gulal smeared, coloured water sprayed with pichkaris - it was difficult to figure out who was who (and in the case of the kids, who was whose!)

In north India, Holi marks the killing of the demoness Holika; alternately, it is the celebration of spring's arrival at Vrindavan. For some reason, south India does not have an analogous festival - the spring festivals of the region are rather more prosaic. But that hasn't stopped folks from going around spraying colours or using the occasion to have more than a few swigs of bhang, a cold milk-shake laced with a herbal extract (?!).

And in true traditional style, the colours of the afternoon gave way to some excellent bhang - given its potency, I'm glad that I had just the right quantity of the stuff!

Colours!

Saw this bus pulling out of the parking lot at the Chennai Central yesterday; amazing mix of colours, but they play out very well in the photograph!

Golden yellow

Religion is obviously big in India, as it is the world over. Almost every Hindu ritual involves fire, the purifying agent, at least in the form of lamps if not a larger homa kundam. Mostly, such rituals are carried out with mantrams, the chanting of sacred verses. In some systems of worship, stylized representations of the divine powers are drawn using powders of turmeric (ah, that's the yellow connection!), vermillion and other colours.

But the 'yellow' touch does not end there. The lamps shine golden, the flames reflecting off their ridged stems; the oil used to fuel the lamps is golden too, a few shades darker than the bronze of the lamps. The light falling on the flowers highlights the yellows among them; as the ritual concludes, you get slices of bananas, still in their yellow skins. And finally, the deep yellow of the sandalwood paste stays smeared on the forehead long after the lamps die out!

How much more 'Yellow' can we get on this theme day? Click here to view thumbnails for all participants - there are literally hundreds of City Daily Photo blogs going yellow today!

Aliens!

Well, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' it ain't, for sure. It is nice to see the shed at this park painted with pictures of wildlife. For a change, the painting is pretty good: in fact much, much better than what one has been led to expect from artists working on a government commission. Over the past few years, Chennai's parks have become less known as hangouts for riff-raff and are being more used by average citizens on a regular basis. And I think it is really a good idea to have such pictures of wildlife near the parks, because the message is going out to an audience that is reasonably receptive. And with parks becoming more popular, that audience will only grow.

That's a good thing for wildlife in general, of humans becoming more sensitive to their needs. With so much of threat to their natural habitats, it is a conservation challenge; at least the animals shown here are not so endangered that conservationists have to resort to borderline methods to shore up the genetic pools. None of these animals is native to Chennai; but if you travel out the Vandalur zoo, you can see at least the lion, deer and kangaroo. I'm not sure about the rhino, but I'm certain that the giant panda hasn't been anywhere close to the city.

But then, that's what I used to think about ostriches, until I saw close to a hundred of them near Chennai!

Colourful zones - 4

This is the last of my 'colourful' posts; and look at that building! The pinks had dulled, the blue & cream was quiet, the blues were soothing, but this one just does the shimmy in front of you! I imagine this striking colour scheme is because the building houses a TUCS 'Fair Price Shop'.

The TUCS was originally the Triplicane Urban Cooperative Society and was set up in 1904 (it probably startled the authorities into passing the First Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904). Over its life, it had somehow become the default outlet for the state's public distribution system and is identified very closely with the government. The building seems to be Corporation property - TUCS only seems to be in charge of minding the store here!

Colourful zones - 3

Blue continues to be the colour of choice for an office of the Corporation itself; this is the office for Ward 142 (Bheemannapet) and has signboards for a women's self-help group meeting room and for the Ward health inspector.

Funnily though, I've never heard this being referred to as the Bheemannapet office - more often than not, folks call it the RA Puram office, because that's the postal code it is located in.

No sooner was the paint job over did someone stick a poster (that yellow smudge) to deface it. The poster thanks the Corporation of Chennai (and also the state's Chief Minister and Minister for Local Administration, as well as the Mayor of the Corporation). For what? I didn't read the fine print!

Colourful zones - 2

Though technically an autonomous board, the offices of Metrowater are maintained by the Corporation of Chennai. And so, the Area 6 (Chepauk & Triplicane) office on Dr. Ranga Road, has got a fresh coat of paint and completely different from the cream-gone-bad colour that it had sported earlier.

There is still some cream, of course, but added on with the standard blue-is-for-water, the combination works well and gets the building to look inviting. Managed to take this photo just a day after the painting was completed - the painters hadn't yet removed their ladder from the far wall!

Colourful zones - 1

The Corporation of Chennai seems to have decided to paint the city - with several colours. I noticed it first with transformers in the Mylapore-Alwarpet-RA Puram-Teynampet areas. The enclosures around these transformers were painted pink a few weeks ago.

How did I figure out it was the Corporation's initiative and not that of the Electricity Board? You will find out over the next couple of days; I've been trying to stay away from a series of pictures on the same theme, but some efforts of the Corporation are too eye-catching!