And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. 30 January 2008
Posted by bornonacusp in Domesticity, Image Gallery, Poetry.add a comment
We woke up this morning to the sight of our orange dahlia’s first flower blooming.
French fictionist Anais Nin’s ode to the blossoming of a flower comes to mind.
(Photograph by bornonacusp)
Racing to save a heritage site 3 December 2007
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Worrisome news from Manila: The Banaue Rice Terraces — a 2,000-year-old engineering feat in Ifugao, northern Philippines, listed in UN’s World Heritage Sites — are in very serious peril.
The alarm bells are being sounded: The rice paddies are in ruins, drying up, and crumbling.
Not only do the young generations not know how to take care of the paddies, they hardly even have the interest to work the fields. The terraces are also drying up because of massive deforestation at the watersheds above the farms.
Officials are now desperately finding ways to marry the often-clashing aims of tourism and the conservation of cultural heritage.
(Photographs taken in Banaue by bornonacusp.)
Cambodia in my mind 22 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Elsewhere in the world, Image Gallery.add a comment
A UN genocide court set up to try the surviving members of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity has begun holding its first hearings.
More than a million people are thought to have died during the four-year rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
A prosecutor has been quoted by the news as saying the trials will, hopefully, bring a sense of relief to Cambodians that the process is ongoing.
I made a very good Cambodian friend during my graduate studies, and the start of the Khmer Rouge hearings reminds me of him, easily one of the kindest and gentlest people I have ever met in my life. Although very young to remember first-hand the Khmer Rouge rule, my friend shares the overall desire of Cambodians to make peace with that era. Three decades have passed but, he says, the Cambodian people still have yet to come to terms with the brutality of Pol Pot’s rule. (Pol Pot died almost a decade back without being brought to justice.) I wonder if my friend sees hope in these UN trials.
(Photographs taken by bornonacusp. In Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.)
Celebrating Light 10 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi, Image Gallery.add a comment
(All photographs taken by bornonacusp.)
One night of Durga Puja 24 October 2007
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Prayers, blessings, food, songs, poetry, fervour, revelry.
Family, friends, fun.
For four nights every autumn, Bengalis all over the world honour the Mother Goddess, Durga, as she comes home with her four children in tow: Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Kartikeya.
The most important festival in the Bengali calendar, Durga Puja (‘puja’ or worship) is eagerly awaited not only for its religious significance but as an opportunity to get together with loved ones.
Revelling in the Mother Goddess’ homecoming, believers gather together to offer her prayers, food, and others as she sits on the bedi, a structure erected for her veneration. At the end of the week, the image is immersed in a body of water in a ritual to send her back to her consort, Shiva. Everyone gathers together for a last time to give each other auspicious greetings for the coming year.
The pictures in this slideshow were taken during one of the nights of the festivities in a small city in India.
(All photographs taken by bornonacusp.)
