Farm in Mandwa

It takes just 45 minutes to get to Mandwa from Bombay by ferry, but the voyage takes you to another world. From the mad rush of Bombay to the tranquility of the Maharashtra mainland. Here, the nights are really cold and starlit, the air is pure and the neighbouring metropolis seems a world away.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7444188@N05/sets/72157628997302367/

Stars in the Mandwa Sky

These words belong to Ahmed Ali, author of Twilight in Delhi, but sum up what I saw last week, while I was in a farm in Mandwa.

"The stars shine in clusters, so many of them, ever so many, little bunches of light, twinkling away with a white radiance, holding court, as it were. There are big stars and small stars, stars shining with a lonely lustre and stars glowing in bunches like pearls strung together in a necklace or like the forehead ornament of a beautiful brow. There are bunches of them shaped like a semicircular purse, and stars shaped like a nosering on a delicate nostril. And there are stars and stars, and inside the stars are cool green worlds, and every star is a lovely maid."