Today, on the festive occasion of Diwali, I painted this little Diya…
Here’s hoping every home has a lamp, and a bright future.
Wishing everyone a very happy, cracker-free and safe Diwali!
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Happy Deepavali!
Tag: festival
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Mango Leaves
Everyone loves mangoes – have it fresh, in pickles, chutneys, salads, shakes, juices, puddings… Even designers love them. The mango motif lends itself to endless adaptations, and can be embellished on almost everything. But the leaves of this tree often do not get the same sort of limelight.
Mango leaves are considered sacred, and are hung at the doorstep of houses on auspicious occasions. Some of the reasons, that I have heard, are warding off negative energy, keeping insects away, and for prosperity.
This past week, India celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi. Our humble mango leaves made their appearance for the pooja. Here’s my attempt to photograph them. It was my first attempt at shooting in the full manual mode, and what better subject to start with 🙂
For Protection
For Prosperity
For Warding Off Negative Energy
The dust has finally settled – quite literally. Here are the sights (no sounds, since we’ve gone cracker-free) from this year’s Diwali.
Deepavali (Diwali) is a time when people celebrate. Reasons and ways of celebrating vary.
But the lights are the main features of the festival. In the place where I live, the festivities begin only in the evening, whereas in the place where our ancestors lived, the festivities are over even before the day begins. Its complicated, and I’ll save that for another post.
So while the whole society around us celebrates, we have nothing to do. A feeling of loneliness, and isolation, inevitably begins to creep in. Something I term festive blues (okay, there may be others who’ll claim to have termed it thus).
This year, to fight the festive blues, I decided watch our neighbours making a rangoli outside their house.
Again, in the place I live in, rangolis are made only on very special occasions, and are a form of recreation. In the culture we belong to, new rangolis are made daily. So when we see people making a big deal about rangolis, I really can’t understand it.
Since our rangoli had been made early morning, there wasn’t much to do. So yet again, I picked up the very intimidating camera and captured some sights of this diwali.
* * * * * *
If you intend visiting India during Diwali, it could either be the best, or the worst experience of your life. All the bazaars are flooded with the most beautiful lamps and idols and what not. All houses are decorated with lights – both electric as well as oil lamps/candles. And since The Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi, enters only clean houses, all houses are squeaky clean and colourful rangolis are drawn. Of course, all the shops are crowded and everything is expensive. So you have to have great bargaining skills. And if you don’t like crackers or loud noises, well, then nothing can protect you against them!
Cheers!
PS. The photos here are free for anyone wanting to use them for non-commercial purposes. A link would be appreciated 🙂
‘The Lamp Is Lit’ is a book authored by Ruskin Bond.
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Happy Deepavali!
Another Deepavali (Diwali), another card! Also, a poster I made exactly a year ago… but forgot about!
I got the background wooden texture from here.
The lamp in the card is actually a sketch I made recently (after a break of 10 months, I finally picked up the pencil). I hope to post the sketch soon.
This is a poster I made last year. The background image (which I really liked so much, I just threw in a bunch of words to make it a poster) is by Anshu. I’d forgotten about it when I was uploading to the gallery (and it wasn’t very original either). This time around, I decided to upload it.
Wishing everyone a very Happy and Cracker-free Diwali 🙂
Cheers!
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Belated happy Holi!
Last week my brother asked me to make an e-card, if it can be called one, for the festival of Holi. He told me he wanted a splash of colours and gave a small reference image to work with. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, so I took a short cut! I downloaded a few paint spatter brushes and applied them randomly, and viola! It was done!
Now since the bulk of the work was done using brushes, it’s only fair that I should give credit to the sources of the brushes. There’s one called Bombay_Wisps and one that’s called benblogged(splatter). So a big thank you to them for putting out stuff so that other’s can use them :).
On my brother’s suggestion, I decided to upload it here. I admit, its late. But anyway, here’s wishing everyone a great Holi 🙂
Musings of an eccentric mind 