We were driving towards the village of Þingeyri in the Westfjords of Iceland when my friend and guide Börkur Hrólfsson descried a faint movement on the route ahead. Fortunately, he decided to stop and take a look, for whatever it was was directly in the line of our superjeep’s massive wheels. It turned out that a couple of freshly hatched Golden Plover chicks had wandered away from the mother and onto the path. Börkur soothed and sang to them (in Icelandic, of course!), then entrusted them to the stressed mother.

Fragile
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 Makro Planar

Börkur Hrólfsson tweets to the birds
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50 f/2 Makro Planar

The obverse: “As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture.”

That piece of insight came to us from John McCarthy, the legendary computer science professor at Stanford University, who passed away this week.

Other John McCarthy sayings I am fond of:

“Comparing oneself with Galileo or Einstein is certainly good for the ego – provided one refrains from going into too much detail.”

“To keep the wilderness truly wild, all maps and publications should be suppressed – no more Sierra Club books and calendars.”

“No-one has yet built a monument so high that a bird can’t fly over and shit on it.”

More pellets of wisdom at The Sayings of John McCarthy.

PS: His obituary.

With its sweeping views of the Arabian Sea, the bluff at Vagator on Goa‘s northern coast is an atmospheric location. On a recent outing, I had the pleasure of recording the bliss experienced here during sundown by young and old alike. The first four images below are of my little niece Saraswati.

Taking it all in: Saraswati in Vagator
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar

Saraswati
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar

Frolic in Vagator
5D Mark II, 135L

Saraswati sulking next to her grandfather
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar

Lovebirds
5D Mark II, 135L

Contemplation
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar

Point-and-shoot
5D Mark II, 135L

Golden light: my father Motilal Parrikar
5D Mark II, 135L

Breakfast this morning at one of Panjim‘s legendary cafés, Café Tato (established 1913). More on the city’s storied cafés in a future post.

The bhaji-puri is Café Tato‘s signature dish. The main ingredient in the bhaji is boiled potatoes, blended and cooked in a mix of secret spices and herbs formulated in the distant past. What distinguishes the bhaji at Tato is the patented ‘cut’ of the potato. Served with puris made of maida (refined flour) or Goan pão (if you are watching your arterial health), and washed down by chao (tea), this is considered the touchstone of a Goan breakfast.

As a lad in shorts, the bhaji-puri at Café Tato served as my basic unit of currency. Every rupee that came my way would be converted into an equivalent number of plates of bhaji-puri (around 6 to a rupee then).

Bhaji-Puri at Café Tato, Panjim
5D Mark II, Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. - Shri Isaac Newton

Some pebbles picked up by my camera on my morning constitutionals at the Agonda beach in Canacona, the southernmost taluka of Goa.

Yoga
5D, 300L f/4 IS

Pranayama
5D, 35L

Romance
5D, 300L f/4

Nirvana
5D, 35L

Siridona is a small fishing village in Goa, by the bay where the Zuari river drains into the Arabian Sea. It is spelled variously as Siridão and Shirdona. This photo essay recalls a quiet evening that my father and I spent there in early 2008. The village folk were out and about, some digging for clams, others returning from an afternoon out at sea.

Late evening in Siridona, Goa
5D, 24-105L

Mining clams
5D, 24-105L

Sorting through the haul
5D, 24-105L

Catch of the day
5D, 24-105L

My father, Motilal Parrikar, enjoying the calm
5D, 24-105L

Sundown: time to douse the glim
5D, 24-105L