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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

Birds From my Window - White Breasted Water Hen

Now that the monsoons are finally here, our regular monsoon visitor is back too.. the White Breasted Water Hen.



This lone bird seems to appear and disappear with the monsoons each year, and I have often wondered where it goes off during the dry months. It is quite a shy bird too, which scuttles into the bushes at the slightest disturbance. It is called पाण कोंबड़ी in Marathi, and appears to be a common bird, though I have only seen it in the monsoons! 

I live in Mumbai, in a colony lucky enough to still have plenty of trees and open spaces. The best part of living here are the birds I see from my window, every single day. "Birds from my Window" is a series, where I regularly feature photos of birds I see from my home. To see all the posts in this series, click here

Comments

  1. A very unusal and a beautiful bird. Thanks for sharing.

    Do read my blog http://samreenahmed13.blogspot.in/?m=1

    ReplyDelete
  2. beautiful picture of the bird .. so what other birds do you get to see

    Bikram's

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Bikram! and I am lucky that way! I get to see a whole lot of birds, right from my window. In fact, I have a series on the blog about them, called... Birds from my Window!!!

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  3. WOW! I thought white breasted water hens are seen only in forests and near large swamps and reservoirs. What kind of a house do you live in? :-)

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    Replies
    1. I thought so too, but apparently, they are quite common near all water bodies... and my house stands on what used to be, at one time, salt pans. and there are still quite a few marshy areas behind our colony.. and yes, i am very much in the centre of Mumbai :D the next time u are in Mumbai, come over to my place. Maybe i can show you some of our avian visitors!

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