ಕ್ಷಣಪ್ರಭಾ - Kshanaprabhaa

Back after a long hiatus is my Hoysala expedition, restarting fittingly from our ancestral native place, Arasikere , a taluk head quarters in Hassan district, Karnataka.  Shivalaya on the outskirts of the town resembles the shape of a shiva linga from far away, and is one of the unsung architectural marvels of the Hoysala period.  Constructed during the period of Veera Ballala II , this Chandramoulishwara temple dates back to 1220 AD , and its beauty is concentrated at the specially constructed navaranga , and the bhuvaneshwari design on top of it. Here is a video of a compilation of photographs I took there when I visited last week: Chandramoulishwara Temple, Arasikere from hmvprasanna on Vimeo .

Last weekend was a special one for a few of us, who went and watched a Davis Cup Tennis tie live at the KSLTA (Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Associations) Tennis Courts at Cubbon Park, Bangalore. This tie was between India and Indonesia in the Asia-Oceania play-offs, and India thumped Indonesia convincingly (5-0) to progress. We were there on Saturday, the doubles match day, and Leander Paes teamed up with young Sanam Singh to clinch an unassailable 3-0 lead in the rubber and won it for India with ease, with a straight sets victory of 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.  We got to witness many of the greats of Indian Tennis that day, thanks to KSLTA which had organized a felicitation for them. Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan, Anand Amritraj, S. P. Mishra, Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes were all felicitated, and Rohan Bopanna and Jaideep Mukherjee were in town too. Singles players Somdev Devverman and Yuki Bhambri had the day off, having won their respective ties in singles the previous day, ...

"Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple. [...] Impart the same principle or show the same machine to an American or to one of our Colonists, and you will observe that the whole effort of his mind is to find some new application of the principle, some new use for the instrument".  ~ Charles Babbage quoted in Richard H. Babbage (1948), "The Work of Charles Babbage", Annals of the Computation Laboratory of Harvard University, vol. 16. TEDx Talk: "John Graham-Cumming: The greatest machine that never was"

A couple of White Cheeked Barbets (also known as Small Green Barbets - Megalaima Viridis) frequent the trees just outside my workplace, and they are a treat to watch from the window, and helps me take the little breaks that are necessary sometimes. I could finally capture them through the camera lens, and here are a few shots: See, I can turn my neck 270 degrees :) I have more feathers than you... Are you kidding? This looks like a nice cozy home Let me explore further... You can't take my pictures anymore :)