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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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The Resident Reptile

This one is a permanent resident of our colony, and can be relied on to appear every now and then, reminding us of his presence, especially as a warning to kids not to venture into the bushes! Capturing him on camera has never been easy, even though he comes out to bask in the sun,  because he seems to be more wary of the kids than they are of him, and he is the first to disappear when they mark their arrival with whoops and shouts.

I saw the chap this week as I left to collect Samhith from school, and he didn't seem to be bothered much by me, and continued to absorb the warm sun rays after a sudden spate of rainfall.


As I clicked on and on, happy that I had my camera with me for once, he turned to regard me, as if wondering what I was doing!


Incidentally, for those of you who are interested, this one is an Indian (or Oriental) Garden Lizard, also called a Changeable Lizard. It is NOT a chameleon, though it does change its colours, but much more slowly.

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Comments

  1. IndraniOctober 28, 2010 at 8:51 AM

    Great captures Anu, he seems to be knowing he is getting famous. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bindhu UnnyOctober 28, 2010 at 4:00 PM

    Nice shots, Anu. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. chitraOctober 28, 2010 at 8:21 PM

    Recently we were observing a chameleon and were surprised to see it was not changing colours. May be it is a slow process.
    This one looks like a mini iguana.

    ReplyDelete
  4. indicaspeciesOctober 28, 2010 at 8:50 PM

    Good to learn about this Garden Lizard. Thank you for this post.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ArtiOctober 28, 2010 at 9:11 PM

    Nice clicks Anu... He too seems very curious!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anuradha ShankarOctober 28, 2010 at 10:24 PM

    @Indrani: Thanks... yes, he does seem to love the publicity!

    @Bindhu: Thanks.

    @Chitra: samhith was asking me the same thing sometime back, which is why I searched a bit on the net before simply labeling it as a chameleon! and yes, it does look like a mini iguana... i was trying to get samhith to understand about evolution that way...

    @Celine: thanks.. i learnt a lot too thanks to writing the post :)

    @Atri: thanks... he really seemed curious!

    ReplyDelete
  7. NatashaOctober 29, 2010 at 4:03 PM

    Awesome photographs, Anu. And I always thought that fellow was a chameleon- nice to know that he is not.

    ReplyDelete

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