Journey,rains ...life

Time for travellling during summer vacations has always been kept apart.This time time wasn't different either.A long tour which started to kochi and ended in the palani hills..Beautiful ghat roads through the tea estates,rains and finally the forests ,winding paths and then on to kumily, thekkady and finally in to the plains of tamilnadu and that went up to the hills.The rains where a constant phenomenon during the travel and so we enjoyed it much more than usual. 

All images :Lakshmi Arvind
Please do not copy nor steal images.

My Village in Monsoons...

Palms swaying in the monsoon winds and the unhurried pace of life at this village is what attracts me to this village,my dads ancestral home and his village..

Its coconut and mango orchards lend loads of beauty. You can either enjoy a game of football on the white sand in front of the extensive courtyard of the house or soak up the rains lazing on the verandah.The beautiful wildflowers and wildly grown home flowers for puja are a sight here.Bees and butterflies happily walk down the lane hand in hand.The green and pink dotted colocasias line the small village roads.The grazing cows are a normal sight here.The mango trees sway in the wild wind and the juicy ones fall down,where we rush to pick them and eat them with salt and chilli powder.Abundant monsoon grass is cut from the fields,growing wildly.Here you can still see the paddy fields and ponds everywhere with lovely lotus blooming...the lonely paths,the mangalore tiled houses and the flowers endemic to these places are the commonest finds here.

Located near the famous Vembanad backwaters,its beauty on its own with the monsoons soaking it up.

This time when we visited ,it was incessantly raining and we just enjoyed the rains.It is always a joy whenever we go there,coz we just soak up the beauty and breathe fresh air.The amazing lip smacking food cooked by grandma and aunties are a joy here.They have the traditional style of cooking food,with logs of wood and a separate kitchen for that apart from the normal one are all that we are in love with .....The banana leaf spread and the perfect lunches are all a part of the secret love that we all share in common.We always wait for the next time,the next time and the next time and the ............

A view from the living room,its all greenery outside,just after the rains...
The well in rains fills up to the brim and we all can dip a mug and take water and have a bath standing here....so much fun when we were smallThe winding paths ,village roads ,the beauty of the lush greenery on both sidesHuge colocasia leaves,love the pink and the green spotsLove the wet feel and the dry leavesFeet fetish and colocasiaButtercups and buttercups everywhere
Wow,the drops,felt like licking them
My love for ixora starts here,we have a huge variety of ixora at home

The white star ixora and a drop of water
White ixoras are specially used for puja in devi temples
Red ixora buds

Wet red Ixora

Fallen and wet
The long village roads
Coffee plant flowers,we make our own coffee powder at home,the purest one,i can smell it here
Small berries and drops of water
Thumpa flowers ,wild ones,used for onam flower carpet
White wild flower
The night flowering flower
Hibiscus in its beauty in rains
All pictures are courtesy:Lakshmi Arvind

Pl dont save nor steal images.

A Rainy Day at home......and a Banana leaf ..

rainy days were there again.....they arrived along with me to our home town.moist red earth with a' cacophony of green' green moss on the walls,ferns fill the crevices of the walls:

giving me company is "Where the rain is born",compilation of excerpts from great authors.

All of my favourite things on a banana leaf platter,tea, books and raindrenched flowers and leaves..are the rains coming with a singing note,I thought they did....as the writer "MT"says rain is like a mother,it bursts out when you least expect it to ,when you go close,thinking it is in a good mood in remembrance of things past,I listened to very old music,played with harmonium,sang old songs during when it rained,I lazed on the bed and remembered all thats old that i could the wild thrashing of coconut palms on the windows this rains,woke me up from my small afternoons naps did the raindrops make craters on the ground?still remembering the the sundive through the holes and rafters of the old traditional house we have down south the sky visited my house as raindrops and sunlight, filtering through the holes in the mouldering palm leaf thatch always used to look at the patterns it makes and sometimes felt they danced in our rooms...

seated on the old bed on the verandah,i used to look at the rains and the moonthe sharp distant sound of a pebble hitting the water in the well, "clung",we used to play throwing pebbles of different sizes,the bigger the pebble the stronger the sound...memories stab my heart...how beautiful the solitude was when it rains startled by the call of ,Amma crying out our names to have Kanji(porridge with rice)...its time to leave you all in solitude.hope i got you all into my world for a small time..