Kerala Calling

Had taken the weekend off to Kerala since it coincided with the start of Onam festival. Had a meeting to attend for a couple of hours in Bangalore and hence took the opportunity to visit Kerala. Sadly nothing seems to ever change in the beautiful state - roads are screwed up, traffic is screwed up,there still exists strikes / tools down and bandhs frequently and often without any warning. Even though government is led by a well meaning and popular chief minister, his commie friends from rebel camp doesn't see eye to eye with him. The day I landed there were protests against Reliance Fresh opening stores - it was not muted, the wordings roughly translated were, "This is just a signal; if you don't learn through signals, we will have to act".
Kochi real estate pries are skyrocketing. I saw flats worth 85+ lakhs and even touching 1.5 crore where there were huts of fisherfolks 3 years back - areas we used to never go without a very valid reason. For covering 5 Kms one takes 1 hour in peak time. The inconvenience costs are fast offsetting real estate price hikes and localites are feeling the pinch of cost of lost time in traffic and rising "localized" inflation. People who used to wake up at 6, go to office at 9.30 to reach office by 10 has to start at 7 to have a realistic chance of getting into their seats by 10. Breakfasts from roadside places have jumped 100%.
In between meeting relatives and friends, did some shooting too. Especially used the lax time to experiments with motion blur for close up subjects. Find them here

Attaching a few samples :