Tag: Culture
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Ithyphallic Shiva Nataraj
Ithyphallic Shiva Nataraj In last week’s post we saw the ancient sculpture of an ithyphallic dancing Shiva inside Kalinjar Fort in Uttar Pradesh. Here we have one on a 9th century temple in Bhubaneshvar, Orissa. It is better preserved, with the erect phallus clearly visible. This may be due to its high placement on the…
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Kalinjar Fort
Kalinjar Fort Kalinjar means ‘the destroyer of time’ and thus refers to Shiva, who next to Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver, takes care of this part in the eternal cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. However, apart from being the destroyer, Shiva is at the same time very much regarded as creator, which explains…
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Dead at the Dead Sea
Dead at the Dead Sea This luxury resort at the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea looks pretty dead itself. Tastefully laid out in a colour scheme that pleasantly matches the backdrop of the Dead Sea landscape, it does look rather sterile. There’s no living soul to be seen; even the palm trees look artificial and…
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Holiday mood
Holiday mood I happily see myself sitting on this terrace, with a good book, a glass of wine and a bowl of pistachios from the trees below. From time to time looking out over the Gulf of Aegina, daydreaming, seemingly unmoved by the misery in which a large part of the population of this ancient country is…
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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…
καιρός remembered 