Tag: Culture
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Happy faces
Happy faces Today our parents are invited to school. We are going to show them our work and a nice programme of song and dance. Photos of the week: New United School, Kathmandu, Nepal 2018
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Learn young …
Learn young … Growing up in the 1950s in the catholic south of the Netherlands, my primary school was run by friars. For girls there was a convent school. Seeing these white-hooded, charmingly looking girls I get visions of hundreds of schools full of them, condemned by the Mullahs to become budding little nuns in…
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Lipstick lips
Lipstick lips Iranian mannequins are made and used in bits and pieces. After the torsos for showing dresses and legs for leggings – see two earlier posts – it’s now the turn of heads for scarfs. Or is it lips for lipsticks? Photo of the week: Mannequin heads, Tehran, Iran 2017
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Legging legs
Legging legs Underneath the body-covering veils and the hair-covering head scarfs of Iranian women a secret, colourful, swinging world can go hidden, unnoticed by the peeping eys of the morality police. Photo of the week: Legging legs, Tehran, Iran 2017
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Window dressing
Window dressing “How beautiful … will I ever be allowed to wear a dress like this?” White dreams for ladies in black. Photo of the week: Window dressing, Tehran, Iran 2017
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Globed breasts adorned with pearls
Globed breasts adorned with pearls sandal-misted, wide curving hips with girdles strung with bells, precious anklets making music on their lotus feet, lit with happiness deep within women now enhance their beauty. In strophes like this Kālidāsa sings of the feminine ideal in his long poem Ṛtusaṃhāram (The Gathering of the Seasons, translation from the…
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Miss World & Mister Universe
Miss World is what she was, Aishwarya Rai, way back in 1994, after which she became one of Bollywood’s superstars. And yes, the person next to her is Mister Universe, Shiva the cosmic dancer, already for quite a while by now. Nice seeing them so innocently side by side, these two emblems of popular Indian…
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R.C. Ex-votos
Here then votive offerings that accompany the requests made to the catholic Saint Francis Xavier whose preserved body is kept in the Bom Jesus church in Old Goa, India. He attracts believers from all over India and the world, and many make use of the opportunity to ask him for relieving their distress. Stalls in…
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Tamata
τάματα is the Greek word for vows and votive offerings, referring to a popular practice among the faithful of most if not all religions. I have shown and written about this fascinating phenomenon earlier on this blog in a series of posts dedicated to the local Hindu god Golu Devta in Kumaon, India, and the vows…
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Ossuarium
In one of the orthodox churches of Paleochora I saw to my surprise a big open stone reservoir filled with human bones: an ossuary inside the church in full view! I have understood that ossuaries came into use in places where graveyard space is scarce. After a few years in the ground the remains of…
καιρός remembered 