And so the sprained ankle managed to make me skip my annual visit to the Republic Day flower show at Lal Bagh. I did go there this Sunday, but sadly most flowers at the glass house were all but gone. Only a few general specimens remained; probably left there to give the Sunday crowd a flowery backdrop that it could get clicked against. That said the various flowerbeds around the glasshouse didn’t disappoint. While the usual marigolds were there, what made me jump in joy (used only as a figure of speech – the ankle disapproves of the expression in too literal a sense) was the profusion of zinnias in all possible shades between yellow and deep orange.

But this post is not about them.

Being away from the real flower show made me burrow into the archives of the several flower shows I’ve visited at Lal Bagh over the past eighteen months or so. Most of them conclude with a visit to the small enclosure where they cultivate lotuses and water lilies. Naturally, I have a disproportionate number of these flowers in my oeuvre.

But this post is not about them, though this time we are quite close to what this post is about.

This picture marks the beginning of a series of (heavily) processed pictures of water lilies (or lotuses). What I’ll post over a week or so, starts from the same basic idea, which is then given a slightly varying treatment each time, to create different versions (I’ll drag a musical analogy here – think of it as a Beethovenian theme and variations). Ok jargon aside, I don’t think I intended to create high art here. These were weekend exercises in Photoshop usage that ended with (what I think) some visually pleasing results. Not all that I post here might be your cup of tea, though I hope you’ll enjoy one or two pictures.