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Sunday 18 May 2008

A Rainy Day!

Yesterday, it rained in Delhi, and after weeks of temperatures in 40(s) degree Celsius', there was finally some relief... until late afternoon yesterday, any place devoid of air conditioning felt like an oven. It was stiff.

But then, this happened (by the way, the shining circles are the rain water droplets reflecting and refracting water. Nice, no?):



As afternoon progressed into early evening, the skies turned a delicious purple:


A picture of the Amaltas trees heavy with flowers and rain outside my back- balcony:


And then the Sun was setting through the hazy rain filled evening.



After that the rain settled a bit, and even stopped for a while before there was a proper storm again a little while later, with the wind- lashed trees swinging in wild angles, straining to uproot themselves.



These pictures are my experiments with different camera settings, once the storm had subsided a shade:





It started raining again at around 9 O' Clock.

The typical Delhi night sky:



They say Delhi doesn't have anything of it's own...
The red sky is due to the winds which blow in from the Indian Thar Desert carrying the reddish sand from the ever dancing dunes of Rajasthan...





At about 10. 50 PM or so, the winds picked up again, howling at about a 100 kilometers an hour. From my place on my parents' balcony, it sounded like two evil, cyclopean air- suction machines were positioned at either end of the street competing with each other to sway the will of the trees towards themselves. It was awesome. And humbling.




I kept trying to catch a lightening on my camera, but was always a few seconds late... until I got the tail end of this one, which went on for about 35 seconds, or so I think...




It's good that Delhi has so many trees (it's one of the greenest capital cities in the world), otherwise such wind- and- rain storms which happen here at this time of the year would have lead to a far greater death toll than they have, over the years. The trees slow the wind down somewhat, resulting in fewer people getting blown away.




Due to the storm, the electricity supply was sporadic last night, one of the reasons I couldn't get this post up yesterday. Before going to sleep at around 1 AM, I went around checking every door and window in the house. I don't do this on normal wind- and- rain free nights, but I had to last night... you see, what if some entry was unbolted, and someone fought through the savage blast of suction- machine induced air currents to break into the house? It wouldn't have done at all... don't you agree?

12 comments:

  1. Nice pictures!

    And I never really knew what those yellow flowered trees were! The Gulmohars I mean. :)

    What type of camera are you using?

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  2. Thanx Jerry :)
    'Gulmohar' is what we call those flowers in Hindi... or so I think... my Google check just now revealed a completely different flower... :|
    and the camera is a Kodak EasyShare V530, 5 mpx.

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  3. Hey Jerry, I'm sorry man...
    the flowers are called 'Amaltas' in Hindi, and Indian Labumum/ Riding Pipe Tree in English.
    Botanical Name : Syn. C. Rhombifolia Cassia rhombifolia

    I'm really sorry, mate...
    Imagine, I grew up calling it 'Gulmohar', and now my mum tells me it called something completely different... :\
    And I put up the wrong name on the blog... aaaaarrrrrgggghhh.

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  4. You're experimenting with photography? That's great, I was always rather curious myself.

    I like the sundown picture a lot.

    Good stuff...I'll be looking in on your page every now and then.

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  5. Nice stuff....I was always curious about photography, great to see you're taking it up.

    I'm gonna be visiting this page every now and then...keep posting!

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  6. damn i double posted!! i ith thtupidd.

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  7. the pictures are just beautiful....i so totally miss delhi rite now....

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  8. Woah.

    That's too much to know about flowers. I'll just keep calling them Gulhomars. ;)

    I heard MY mom calling it some other thing when I was last around one of those yellow things...

    :D

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  9. amazin pics. wat part of delhi do U get such chances to capture..

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  10. This is South Delhi, but if you've been to Delhi at all, you would know that almost every available space is covered with greenery, so I guess you could get the exact same pictures just about anywhere in Delhi.

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