Focus: weight

A typical bird fetaher (down) can weight as little as 0.008gms. While a strand of a fully grown human hair can weigh 0.0006gms. A full head of human hair can be anywhere from 100gms to much more depending on teh density and the length of the hair.

 Focus: Birds

National Geographic says that there are 50 to 450 billion birds on Earth which means roughly about 6 birds per human being. Often i wonder where do birds go when they die. Because we do not see dead birds fallen everywhere - except for some masacred pigeons or crows.

Orinithologists tell me that bird bodies, as bones are hollow decay quickly hence we do not see them all around.

While this is true, we still do not see bird bodies in open spaces. I wonder at times, do they go somewhere far away and then die? Do birds die at night and others eat them up before the day breaks? Do other animals gobble them up in which case where are the feathers? 

Every bird is made up of 1000 (very small birds) to 2500 feathers (larger). So when each bird dies we should have atleast 1000 feathers flying around. Where are they?

Focus: Human mouth

A normal human being's mouth on an average has atleast 70 different types of bacteria, this can be both good and bad.

In the Woods by Tana French 

“It was a mess. I had expected this but I hadn't foreseen the scale of it"  "….mess of the century" - my feelings exactly as I realised that it was 0:43 and I still had to complete chapter 25 before I could keep my kindle down. The last chapter. 

And then read 'Sophie hits six' by Dick King-Smith so that I could flush my brain and actually sleep. 

Yes the book messed up my thoughts, mind, routine and sleep.

I want to sleep (and later work, of course after re-reading selected parts of the book), without mulling on the earthy smells of the Knocknaree woods, seeing lights filtering through the forever standing tall tall trees - the ringlets of fragile Roslinda, seeing myself in Cassie's quickness and thought analysis (yes I like her very much!), Sam's non-curious acceptances of situations even when the air is crackling signaling the presence of unexplained undercurrents(wishing I was like this), wanting to tell Ryan hey you and many many other haunting, lingering, persisting, nudging, cruel, crafty, scheming, obsessive, disconnect, brave, self-centered ahh and so many other traits captured and woven so well into the tapestry. 

I can see people and their body language, persona, the Knocknaree layout, inside homes, the lingering presence of ancient vs youth in the archeological digs, the heavy presence of absence of rapport and of course the main threads - the unsolved case of Peter and Jamie absence and murder of Kathy.

Kindness is missing in the book. Food is restricted to pizza, eggs and bad coffee. Always bad coffee.

PS: The book incidentally has 27 occurrences of the word 'mess', wrecked 10 times and both in one "..I'm wrecked, the case is a mess, these last few weeks have done my head in. Its not personal."

PPS: I actually stopped breathing in bursts as read through the pages, realising only when I seemed to experience a heaviness in the chest - inhale deeply, exhale deeply repeat till heaviness reduces - was the only way to clear the mess.

#588 #456

#tana #french #tanafrench

#murder #detective #crime #dublin

#psychological #woman #sleuth

Theory of Relativity

My daughter is in the 12th standard and you know how this phase goes in a student's life especially if you have taken science combination - my daughter has physics, chemistry, maths and economics in her basket !

Suddenly, this friday was declared a holiday (Varahamalakshmi vrata - in Karnataka) and then the school generously declared saturday a day off too with the grand sunday looming - it turned out to be a long long weekend.

One of her friends sent her a message which says "This looks like the longest weekend of our lives - and it feels so as its like 1/3rd of our summer vacation !"

Incidentally they had a summer vacation which lasted for 10 days !!


Now how is this ??

Still views

Photographs of nature especially trees and canopies fascinate me - I love the handiwork of nature and the riot of colours that blend so seamlessly into the grand scene. The current favourite canopy photos that I love are by

• Sangeeta Kadur under her blog entry Doodling with Canopy
• Kalyan Varma's photograph titled Canopy 

My favourite photographs of trees photographed against the skies are by Kalyan Varma under his blog entry.

I did try my hand at photographing trees against the emerging dusk resulting in the following photographs!

Lattice work by nature

I love the Rain tree and in Bangalore we find them royally gracing parks, old compounds, avenues and shadowing roads. The lattice the rain tree forms be it dusk or dawn, a sunny afternoon or in pouring rain, is just fascinating. I tried to capture the rain tree in the emerging dusk at my favourite haunt, the Krishna Rao Park and here are a few shots I captured through my digital wonder.

Standing like sentinels

Where the boundaries of canopies merge

spreading out wide and strong

Neighbouring Rain tree seen from my balcony

Rain and tree seen from my balcony

The lattice reminds me of the delicate chinkan work or the Lucknowi work that we see on sarees and dress material. I love trees - dawn or dusk, rain or sun-shine :-)