mundane monday - # 7

hope you had a nice weekend (and those in the US, a nice long weekend !)... thanks for visiting every week, and if you are new to the blog, do take time to stay and take a look around here :)

today's picture is something so common in every indian household that it isnt even given a second thought. a gas burner. you dont realise how accustomed you are to it, until you move out of india and groan at the prospect of rental apartments with an electric range :)

the irony in india is that though it is considered a basic necessity, you might end up crazy running from pillar to post, if you are setting up house and trying to get a new gas connection.

coming to the picture, there is a certain coolness about a blue flame from a gas burner. have you ever looked at it when your kitchen was otherwise dark ? there is something beautiful about the symmetry in blue, the flame from each perfectly aligned hole merging into one ...

From mundane monday

(btw, the shape of the burners in india are different from those in gas ranges in the US and elsewhere... so the shape of the flame would look different too.... )

mundane monday - # 6

it always feels nice to reminded about things that were once so much a part of your life, but are almost forgotten now, isn't it ?

am sure today's pic will give such a feeling and bring forth memories of our younger days - at least for those of us who can't claim to be so much in our 'youth' anymore :)

From mundane monday

cassette tapes (or audio cassettes ) were the most popular format for recorded music in the 80s and 90s, till they were replaced by CDs and later by MP3s ...

TDK was easily the most popular and sought after brand of audio tapes. TDK is a japanese company, and apparently stands for Tokyo Denki Kagaku Kogyo. (if you have a lot of free time during the day, maybe you could try practicing the pronunciation.) TDK tapes were held in high esteem, and it was very common for relatives and friends who lived abroad in the 80s to bring blank TDK tapes to those back in india. 

the tapes were commonly of either 60min or 90min duration, with the recording split into two sides of equal duration. during playback, once the recording on one side finished, the tape had to be reversed and inserted again to hear the recording on the other side :) later, more advanced cassette players also came with auto reverse options.

despite their many limitations and the frustration they caused users, they ruled the roost for a long time before being edged out by compact discs.... 

other popular cassette tape/audio tape brands included maxell and philips...

i guess audio tapes will soon become collector's items and increase in value... (if they aren't already !)

Happy Diwali...

Diwali wishes to all those who are celebrating... hope you have a great time having fun and feasting on the goodies !

diwali is the biggest indian festival and is celebrated all over the country. it has today become the biggest shopping season, and with every brand and every store competing for their share of the pie, it seems like its getting more chaotic than colourful, with each passing day. or maybe that's just me.

anyway, the vintage buff in me spotted this old diwali related ad sometime back. Radha Silks, or RASI, is a popular place to shop for sarees in chennai, especially for those in the mylapore area. this is an ad by them in october 1957, announcing that the store has been air-conditioned and calls for customers to do their diwali shopping in air-conditioned comfort ! that was 55 years ago. 

the ad is from an old issue of the popular tamil magazine 'ananda vikatan'. both RASI and vikatan are still popular today. 

mundane monday - # 5

india is a tropical country and mosquitoes are a big part of  life here. and so are the various anti-mosquito tools to tackle them. other countries maybe content with developing technology for, say, telecommunications or space research - but in india, significant developments are constantly made in the field of mosquito repellant technology. one of the earliest non-electric, non-chemical options was to sleep under a mosquito net. yep, each person slept inside a net that hung over and covered their beds, like a big white canopy. since then battling the mosquito menace has taken every form imaginable, from creams for direct application on skin, mosquito repellant household sprays, chemical coils(that are burnt like incense), to mats & liquid vaporisers which are electrically warmed to release the repellant chemicals.
if you are the kind who gets satisfaction from giving instant capital punishment to the mozzies, you could even use an electric 'mosquito bat', like my friend here :)

while all the above are 'localised' solutions, the one thing that will give a 'whole house' protection is the mosquito screen, which is fixed on the windows (and usually comes with velcro so that it can be removed if needed).

so yeah, after all this beating about the bush, i just intend to say that today's picture is of one such mosquito screen :) a part of the screen, to be precise.

From mundane monday

this is a very close up macro shot - keep in mind that every square in the net/screen is smaller than the average mosquito, to keep them out !

doesnt it look nice when zoomed in, like lattice work on a fence or window ?

edits to the original pic : a little cropping, slight adjustments to brightness and shadows, and finally 'cinemascope' effect in picasa - it makes the photo look kind of wide-screen like, and adds a black strip above and below. i dont normally like the letterbox (the black strips), but in this particular pic, it does look nice.

have a nice week, and keep visiting ! and for those who will be celebrating, wish you a very happy diwali - hope you enjoy all the food, fun and festivities !

mundane monday - # 4

hi,
how did the last week treat you ? i had a week that left me kind of emotionally and physically drained, with travel and relocation. i ended up sleeping off a good part of the week and fighting off a 13.5 hr jet-lag .

but let's cut to the chase. this week's picture is a soap. yup, a round bar of soap from some hotel visit long ago (las vegas, i think). if i have barely used bars of soap in hotels, i generally bring them back with me since i'd hate to see them tossed in the trash. (and the small tubes of lotion are so handy when you are travelling.)

apart from the waste factor, this particular soap also looked and smelt good, so i had carried it and eventually forgot about it too, till recently. when i stumbled upon it in the middle of a cleaning spree, i thought it'd make a good prop for the monday pics...

the soap is from a brand called 'gilchrist & soames' (who supply to many big hotels). it is a very soft pistachio green colour and it looked good against a white background in natural light.

i was playing around with the edits and i tried the 'holga' effect in picasa - i thought it looked very different and 'artsy'. but i do like softness of the original colour version too, and cant really decide which one looks nicer. so including both versions in the post this week. (only the b&w links to the picasa album.)

this is the site of gilchrist&soames soaps...

i wanted to find out more about this holga effect, so on googling found that the holga camera is a film camera from the 80's which produces effects of vignetting and blurring of photographs... more about the holga in the wiki here.

have a nice week ahead, and thanks for stopping by !

From mundane monday