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Banganga
The neighbourhood of Walkeshwar on Malabar Hill harbours a rare 1000 year old water tank called Banganga. The tank and its peaceful surroundings let you almost forget that you are in the heart of the city of Mumbai in the 21st century. A man – or his wife – has washed his underpants in the…
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Bastion walls
This is not the image that comes into your mind when you think of cosmopolitan Mumbai, brimming over with life. It looks more like a closed bastion that has armed itself against the seething waves of dangerously high tides. I love old walls with their weather-beaten faces. They breathe history, tell stories, let dream of…
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Spitting image
That is to say, the spitting image of the pan chewer who embellishes with his creations the pavements, roads, platforms, corridors, staircases, and, if you are lucky enough in passing a chewer at the right moment, your clothes or shoes. Temples and shrines are generally spared. That’s why tiles with images of gods and goddesses…
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Holy tiles
Compared to the ISKCON temple of last week’s post, this nearby little roadside shrine looks rather cheap and shabby. Still, it probably represents Indian popular aesthetics better than its majestic neighbour. It has taken me awhile but I have come to appreciate this kind of simple religious display. The daring colour combination (like so often…
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AESCON
When I walked into the compound of the ISKCON temple at Chowpatty in Mumbai, I must confess I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I don’t think much of ISKCON’s aescon but this temple is worth looking at. Beautiful materials, good craftsmanship, no trouble or expense spared. It activated my own aesthetic consciousness which…
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Temple tree
A banyan tree doesn’t start its life from a seed in the ground. Its seed needs another tree or rock or structure to settle on and develop. So it is not a parasite but an epiphyte. In case it develops on a tree, this tree will after some time get completely covered and slowly strangled to…
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Multiple trunk tree
The aerial roots of the banyan tree hang down and when they grow long enough will touch the ground. On that spot itself they may take root in the soil and so continue growing as a semi-independent tree. That’s what we see here, around this banyan in Lucknow. This process can go on and on…
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Ficus benghalensis
Why is the Indian fig tree with its characteristic hanging aerial roots called banyan? That’s an interesting story, which has nothing to do with its sacredness about which I contemplated in last week’s post. Banya seems to be the Gujarati word for merchant. Via the Portuguese and later the English in India the word banyan…
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Sacredness
Banyan trees are often considered sacred. I think this is because they are really awe-inspiring, like the gods themselves. Standing face to face with an extraordinary tree, a towering Sequoia, a corpulent Baobab, a wrinkled olive tree, a ramified Banyan, we easily fall silent. These are creatures that are somehow beyond our comprehension. Maybe that’s…
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Blowholes in pancake rocks
The breakers dash against the rocky coast. The water breaks into a natural cave, forces its way into a narrowing tunnel, then finds, under enormous pressure, a way out to the surface through a vertical blowhole … That the sudden blasts of water up in the air appear amidst a landscape of eroded pancake rocks…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 