Category: India
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The three graces
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…
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Reflection in the Himalayas
Reflection in the Himalayas The snow-capped mountain in the sunlight is the image reflected in the window through which I took this photograph. In reality, the snow-capped mountain, which is the Nanda Devi, is behind me. If I were to turn round, I would see it through a window opposite the one through which I…
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Eclipse
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…
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Crab art
Crab art Whilst the termites in last week’s post impressed us with their magnificent architecture, here it is the pattern created by tiny crabs on the beach that appeals to our aesthetic sensibilities. A sensibility that is probably alien to the dog that walked right through it, although his or her footprints do complement the…
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Blue Goa
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…
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Green Goa
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…
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La gaia religione
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…
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Holy feet
Holy feet The fact is that the sacred relics of Saint Francis Xavier are kept in the Bom Jesus Church in Old Goa. They are displayed to the public once every ten years, and I happened to be there when this took place in 2014. Friends warned me that there might be a queue of…
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St. Francis Xavier
St. Francis Xavier Faith is big business. Not just for the Church; others are trying to cash in on it too. Churches and stalls selling religious trinkets undeniably hold a certain appeal for me. That’s surely down to my Catholic upbringing in the Catholic south of the Netherlands. For years I sang in the local…
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Faith and business
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…
καιρός remembered 