Category: India
-
The three graces
Three raven-haired mountain graces looking intently at life in the valley below. Even from behind and fully dressed they’re beautiful. Quite different from Canova’s three graces whose charming postures I can admire daily on a picture postcard in my room. Women together in a world of their own: wherever, ever a treat for the eye. Photo of…
-
Himalayan reflection
After last week’s eclipse, here’s another strange and wonderful image of and for reflection. How did this one come about? The snow mountain in the sun is the reflected image of the same in the windowpane through which I took this picture. In reality the snow mountain is behind me. If I would turn around…
-
Eclipse
The sun shines through a window into a room. The rays fall onto a stainless steel water filter and are reflected on the wall behind it where they produce this intriguing image. The image, with its bright halo around a dark centre, reminds me of the solar eclipse I once observed. But there are other elements…
-
Crab art
While the termites in last week’s post impressed us with their grand architecture, here it is the drawing made on the beach by tiny crabs that pleases our aesthetic sensitivity. A sensitivity that’s probably alien to the dog that has walked right through it, although his or her footprints are a nice addition to the…
-
Blue Goa
Sun, sea, beach and fun (with plenty of beer), that is Goa for most holidaymakers. Here then we have a beach not crowded like the ones in north Goa where all the tourists flock, but an empty one, breathing an atmosphere of pristine quietness. Not godforsaken though, as we can see. They are still there…
-
Green Goa
Judging from my posts of the last few weeks, you may think it is the presence of the catholic culture, brought to the region by the Portugese, that attracts me to this country in the first place. This may partially be true, but there is more. Like the whole stretch of land between the Arabian…
-
La gaia religione
If it hadn’t been the cause of so much misery and death through the ages, one would think when seeing these images, that religion is a joke. Not ‘die fröhliche Wissenschaft’ here, but ‘die fröhliche Religion’. The unlikely collection of elements brought together in the image above is a true source of gaiety. The same…
-
Holy feet
It so happens that the sacred remains of St. Francis Xavier are kept in the Bom Jesus church in Old Goa. They are exposed to the public once in ten years and the last exposition was around December 2014, in the big Se cathedral across the street. I was in Goa at that time and…
-
St. Francis Xavier
Faith is business. Not only for the Church, others try getting their share as well. Churches and stalls selling religious trash undeniably hold attraction for me. It must be because of my catholic youth in the catholic south of the Netherlands. For years I sang in the boys choir of the local church, was altar…
-
Faith and business
According to catholic doctrine Maria wasn’t deflowered before she conceived. In her case the Church speaks of the Virgin Birth of Christ and so Maria remained a virgin even while being a mother. Virgin and mother at the same time, that’s what makes her special. Maria is often depicted as a beautiful, virtuous young woman, with or…
καιρός remembered 