There are enough videos on YouTube which tell us that one can take many photographs in the place we stay and around. Yet nothing beats the opportunity to travel. Photographers just love it.

In April I went to Kochi. I was familiar with it and I visited Kochi after several years.

And I clicked the mandatory airport photograph. The Mumbai airport is so beautiful that I always find something of interest.

The Cochin airport was inaugurated in 1999. Kochi or Cochin? Be that as it may, I had not visited it since 2008. It is beautiful, although I miss the old one at Wellington Island.

Everything in the city has changed. It is now a crowded place unlike what it used to be, sans the red flags. It is not as if the red flags are missing but they are scarce. In the nineties the city was full of red flags everywhere.

The Sealord jetty, which was a serene place, is now changed beyond recognition. Two pics, however, pacified me.

And this picture shows that a small plant is growing on the stumps fixed in the waters. It tells us something about the way life must be led even in adversities.

There is an apology of a garden on the waterfront. The setting sun and backwaters make the scene picturesque. And particularly when a boat enters the scene.

And the silhouettes of couples ….

We then went to the Cherai beach which is about 25 kms from Kochi. Dark clouds were on the horizon. A vendor selling bhel had a bright light in his cart.

And before it was too dark, I shot this photograph.

In the 1990s when I was a regular visitor to Kochi, I often visited Ernakulathappan Temple. ‘The temple in its current form was built under active patronage of Diwan Sri Edakkunni Sankara Warrier in year 1846.’ That makes it 180 years old!

He was lighting a series of lamps. Lighting lamps impacts the mood. It makes the atmosphere serene and makes is ready for prayers.

An experience is so unique to us; it can’t be described. How can you feel what I felt?

Albert Camus said, ‘You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.’

You can to some extent relive experience when you watch the photographs.

Vivek S Patwardhan

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” All matter copyrighted.