Life of Pi

My wife got bored of cleaning the home and wanted to watch a movie. Itunes- pay –buy- Life of Pi- But slow internet, life of pie trickled slowly into ipad all night. Next day life of pie was there on Pad. I can’t say she liked that movie. She did not give any review nor compelled me to watch and hence I assume that it was not great. Meanwhile, Gauri too watched partially “tiger wala” movie. But most important point is she did not watch the beginning of the movie. Now fast-forward 2 weeks. Her all pink-panther, curious George, snow white, Krishna and of course Doremon were over.  Sharp 10 pm my wife takes remote to watch Grey’s anatomy. After a short fight, Gauri is pushed to next room to watch her stuff on computer.

 I am relegated to do the job of computer operator or phone answering machine. Yesterday Gauri was suffering from running nose and mild fever. Her Random access Memory (all parents know how random child can be) accessed “tiger wala movie” aka Life of Pi. Opening shots fine, zoo part enjoyed- dialogue part got bored. Fast-forward the movie- or I have to explain the dialogues and the consequences. Questions pop up much faster than subtitles in the movie!!. Now ship scene has started. Rain, storm, ship sunk; boy and tiger survived. Meanwhile she forgot to clean her nosy and got engrossed in rapidly happening sequences. Cast away is drifting in the sea, then fish, then, meerkat, floating island......... she watched with few questions.

 Now, suddenly she popped up most important question; where are parents of the boy ( appa amma elli?). I said they are drowned (trying to give reality). She went to her mother and asked where his parents are?  She didn’t get satisfying answer. Now it is already 12 pm and Gauri is sleepy. But she is determined to find out fate of his parents. I said I don’t know. She said you know. She sat on my lap. I said may be in the end those parents come and pick up the boy from hospital. It gave great hope to Gauri. She sat patiently on my lap and watched last boring 15 mins with lot of dialogues. She did not ask anything. She was sitting quietly to see happy union of son and parents. Well, they never came. Ending titles started to roll. I turned off the PC and looked at Gaui’s face. She looked at me and said “I feel like crying” “( alakke bartha iddu) ”. Then she held me very tightly and asked “rain and storm over?” 

Epilogue: Since she did not ask about his parents, I think she realized what happened and hence the question about rain and that hug.( Photos are just represent Gauri's mood)

Holi

Gauri wanted to play the Holi. All preparations were done. Herbal colors, water sprayer were bought and kept ready. On holi morning, she was very excited.  I applied some oil on her face, hair and hands. Now she is ready. I too applied oil and got ready. One set of cloths, water bottle and snacks were kept in a cover. I was in dilemma, whether to carry camera or not. Holi, is color (dust) and water, both are not good for a DSLR. Finally I decided to take it. I placed the camera in a plastic cover and made a two openings for lens and viewfinder. I mounted Canon 85 mm 1.8 on my Canon 50D, a fast prime lens, should be good for portraits and blur the background.  I set my camera, in AV mode (aperture priority), F 2.2, iso 400 and +1/2 EV ,spot metering, auto focus in AI servo mode and continues shouting. Due to plastic cover, I may not able to change the settings in a holi setup! My anticipation was perfect. As soon as we entered the battle field, colors were flying and water was sprayed from everywhere. Gauri was with one of my friend and I could concentrate on photography!! Still Gauri was not very comfortable with so many unknown people and hence she wanted to put colour only to me!! . Very soon water sprayed on my lens barrel, and also I could see some colours on my lens. One hand was engaged in managing the Gauri and so I had to shoot with one hand only. Using plastic cover was very clumsy, the finger used to slip from shutter. Very often opening made for view finder was out of alignment, and hence many were blind shots. I shot for 20 min, and later I kept camera back in my scooter box (hand was paining and was worried about lens). After that, whole morning I enjoyed playing holi and loved the way Gauri played the holi and she enjoyed thoroughly. Few pictures are here from this small adventure. ( Double click on the photo, you can have a slide show!!)

My friend Shreya!!

Gauri getting into ground......

Friends

Story

Gauri is almost 3 years old now. Her vocabulary and logic has grown beyond my imagination. Every day she amazes me with her new words, sentences and precise logic. At the same time her imagination is not limited by adult logic and hence imagination runs very wild. Here is a set of photos, when she narrated a story of purple monkey, pigeon and elephant mixed with amba bushi (cow). I am not supposed to correct her nor help her- oh yes, she knows everything, so here goes her story enjoy....