Land of Happy Sleepy » urban

Toronto is home these days

Magda — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:49:34 +0000

Up the porch and through the length of the house and out the kitchen door to this small garden retreat. I spend a lot of time here these days.

The benches are a favourite sleeping place of the cats, and great for breakfast because this

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Bit of greenery turns crumbling to picturesque, Calcutta, India

Magda — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:39:06 +0000

View from the hotel where I stayed in April 2008.

Goats in Calcutta, India

Magda — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:42:56 +0000

There are a lot of goats in Calcutta. You see them picking their way in around traffic, eating garbage and paper, and even being herded through the narrow back streets. Imagine coming up on a herd of 50 goats in the streets of YOUR city! In the surrounding restaurants, the goat meat is listed as mutton.

Chained to a post, resting on the sidewalk, a hairy goat that Marc says was "much creepier" in person.

You see these goatskins being carried around in the streets of Calcutta. Water does not reach many buildings so there is a lot of water being carried around. These goatskins hold quite a bit of water and carry more comfortably than a rigid jug of similar capacity.

Calico goat. Goats, goats, everywhere.

Iconic similarity between ornate Hindu temple facades and wedding posters in Pondycherry

Magda — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:01:32 +0000

Here is a typical poster placed in front of a wedding hall announcing the wedding that is going to happen later in the day. The bigger the poster, the more prestige, and some of the posters are much larger than this one!

Nevermind that none of the people may be smiling, the bride might look terrified, and the colours are sometimes so off as to be garish, and the printing in general so pixilated that the poster is barely readable from closer than 10 feet.

Iconically, these large wedding posters seem similar to me of the ornately decorated temple facades, where many carved figures of gods and demons are placed in careful relationship to each other.

These photos are from Pondycherry, Tamil Nadu province, India.

To continue the assault on the senses, both the weddings and temples seem to both broadcast their prominence and also compete with each other through sound – the bigger and more blown out the speakers the more cacophonic the sound the better!