Category: Asia
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Mirror images
Apart from confronting us with ourselves, a mirror can reflect objects from a part of the room or space around us that would otherwise not be visible from our point of view. Or it can reflect a side of an object that we would not be able to see without mirror. In the picture of…
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Reflections
I like reflections, and photos that contain reflections. Reflections invite to look more intently and provoke thought – see my earlier posts Floating Baobab and A stick in shallow water. It is probably no coincidence that the word reflection has these two meanings: mirroring or mirror image, and thought or thinking. The reflection of the…
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Showing of the flag
I was born after the Second World War in a liberated Netherlands. It had just suffered five years of occupation by Nazi Germany. I remember very well the yearly festivities during my childhood of the 5th of May, the day in 1945 that the country was liberated from its occupiers. When I visited Tibet in 1996,…
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The amiable army
The amiable army What an impressive army of look-alike little figures! That was my first reaction when I bumped into them on the grounds of the Buddhist Hase-dera temple in Kamakura. On closer examination some of their faces show slightly different features. There must be a few different moulds from which the statues are made,…
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Wishful thinking
I wonder if I should reconsider my stand on religion somewhat. In earlier posts of this blog I have spoken – illustrating my point with pictures – of the ‘folklore of faith’, implying that apart from its popular forms, there is also a more serious and fundamental side to religion. The latter would be of…
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Jai Golu Devta …
So what are the requests like, that the worshippers of Goludev ask from him? They write their petitions on paper, which allows us to take a closer look at some of them. “Jai Golu Devta! My name, Priyanshu Gagola! Make me successful in finishing the 12th standard! May I get a government job! May I…
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Goludev the bell lover
I have never been able to really understand the meaning of the word ‘praying’, or maybe I should say ‘the act of praying’. One prays to god – at least according to my catholic upbringing – but since I can’t imagine anything when hearing or reading the word ‘god’, praying to god doesn’t make sense…
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Pure landscapes
Pure landscapes Standing in the middle of a beautiful landscape can be a profound experience. The wide vistas allow us to feel the immensity of space, and the sense of the earth upon which we live. This sensation is intensified also by the quality of the sounds we hear; sounds of animals or human beings…
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The hotel room
The “welcome” poster in last week’s photo wouldn’t have looked unbecoming here either. I once spent a night in this room and I do remember it. I had reached Haldwani station in the middle of the night and found the town immersed in complete darkness due to a power cut. With difficulty I found somebody…
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The waiting room
The waiting room In spite of the wide open iron grid doors, the “welcome” poster on the wall doesn’t look like an altogether superfluous encouragement for possible visitors stepping over the threshold of this waiting room. The contrast between place and poster must have struck me as strangely funny when I passed here on the…
καιρός remembered 