Open wide and say aah.

Beauty is all over the place, if you keep your eyes, and your mind, open to it.

Why I walk the roof.

I could barely manage to describe what I saw yesterday, with
the kites. How can I begin to describe the sky? It doesn't matter
 if it's not over a beautiful lake or an ocean, mountain or forest.
It is just as beautiful when it blankets a city infested with
humanity's ugliness. Clumsy buildings, piles of garbage,
cell network towers and black cables zigzagging all over
can't  touch it. Even photography won't do it justice (and mine
is off my phone camera)! But even a simple phone cam
can't hide how amazing it is.

Clouds spread out to dry after a rain?

Big heavy rain clouds that sometimes get blown away

A distant golden pyramid, or a snowtipped mountain? Cloud catching the sunset, and my imagination.

And as I walk, the sky keeps changing

The colours deepen or melt

The clouds shift and evolve in the wind's hands

 I'm supposed to be up there burning calories but it is more than
my exercise hour, it's a time of worship.

Beauty is everywhere.

You just have to keep an eye out for it. Alternately, you just
have to keep forgetting to lock your phone before putting it
in your pocket, and get a nice surprise later when you find
it has taken a picture while in there.

No idea.

Absolutely none. It just looked beautiful to me 

and I had to take a picture of it.

Choose joy.

The answers are always around us. It's how we look that helps us
to see. I can focus on the ugly pipe shaft from the building next door,
built a little too close to its compound wall, or I can focus on the way
the sunlight plays with the plant on my windowsill. There's always a choice.

Crocus going nowhere

Like art, it's a path that doesn't particularly lead anywhere, but
what a joy it is to walk it. I dream of planting crocus bulbs and
French marigolds on every city street.

P.S. These pictures were taken in May, in my parents' garden.

Before the monsoon

There are days like this. When I feel dry, bare, buffeted.
All around her, the others still wear green; this tree is out of sync
with the seasons. She follows some other rhythm, some African beat
that only she hears. Her pods have been emptied of their cellophane seeds,
ransacked by wild parakeets and squirrels. When they fall, these pods
look like canoes. But though the skies are grey and the wind promises rain,
it lies, and so the canoes rot slowly in the graveyard at her feet.

P.S. This is an African flame tree that grows at the edge of the graveyard behind our terrace.