Daffodils in York...lovely, no? [photo taken by Shruti Sircar] 
River Nidd...beautiful photo...isnt it? [photo taken by Shruti Sircar]
Hello All…
Shruti returned from Harrogate on April 1. I think I mentioned this in an earlier post…she went to Harrogate to present a paper at the Conference of the British Dyslexia Association. She said on her return that, academically, intellectually and sightseeing-wise, this trip was stimulating. Her paper went on well and she is awaiting comments from experts who attended her presentation. The BDA Conference was held at the Harrogate International Centre, which is a huge convention complex. In fact, Harrogate is known mainly as a convention/conference centre because of the Harrogate International Centre.
Shruti came back with loads of photographs (and thanks a lot Madhav for lending me your precious camera...not many people are so generous...) and she surely must have delighted in being there. The photos look happy. The rain swept streets almost empty of people and vehicles; the city centre; Harrogate bus stand; York railway station; York Minster Cathedral; York castle; River Nidd; the lawns outside the hotel; the bare trees awaiting spring and sunshine; those tall brown/gray buildings; those cobbled streets…she came back with lasting memories of the visit…and most of all photos of daffodils…not ‘ten thousand’…as good old William Wordsworth ‘saw’… ‘at a glance’…but enough spread across a garden to get a sense of how unending rows of daffodils might have looked…
Daffodils have always intrigued us English literature students in India…we read the poem…fairly representative of Wordsworth’s romantic poetic inclinations…this one is light too…all ‘sprightly dance,’ ‘sparkling waves,’ ‘jocund,’ ‘bliss of solitude,’ etc….and we wondered what this flower looked like…my English teacher in Shimoga told me that one of his English teachers, who had visited England on some scholarship, did not forget to bring back photographs of daffodils and incredibly enough, even a sample daffodil, to show his students…such is the power of ‘Daffodils’ on Indian students of English literature…surprisingly enough, till I saw these photographs of daffodils taken by Shruti, I didn’t know how these legendary flowers looked like… this was the first time that I was looking at photographs of daffodils…when, all the time, images of daffodils were only a click away on the www… maybe because I was waiting for Shruti to visit England and come back with photos of daffodils…thanks Shruti… for all the lovely photographs...
Jayasrinivasa Rao
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