Power of Our Geographies

Guided by self-interest, all countries seek power, leverage and resources. In this, a country's geography is like a prison, because its limits and constraints are difficult to overcome. This is the basic premise of Tim Marshall as he looks at the geographies, histories and challenges of ten areas of the world in his 2015 book, "Prisoners of Geography - Ten Maps that tell Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics". 

I have just finished reading this book and I found its conclusions very harsh, sometimes even heart-breaking. At the same time, I found it stimulating and thought-provoking.

We live in utopian times - even with the wars and climate change and loss of bio-diversity, I somehow feel that with our new knowledge, understandings and innovations, the humanity will find a way to a better tomorrow. I dream that our future world will be guided by ideals of peace, brotherhood and mutual collaboration between countries and peoples. Marshall says that this utopian dream may remain just a dream, because countries and peoples are guided by their self-interests and they can't escape their geographies.

Geographical Areas Covered in the Book

The book looks at geographies and histories of ten areas - Russia, China, USA, Western Europe, Africa, Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea & Japan, Latin America and the Arctic. For each of these areas, Marshall provides an overview of its geographical layout and history, especially the evolution of its relationships with its neighbours.

He says that the relationships between countries are dominated by the ancient ideas of suspicion, self-interest and gaining control over resources. Countries and their governments might talk of brotherhood and collaboration but they never forget those ancient ideas and when needed, go to war over them.

For example, in the part about the geography of Russia, he writes:

"Poland represents a relatively narrow corridor into which Russia could drive its armed forces if necessary and thus prevent an enemy from advancing towards Moscow. But from this point the wedge begins to broaden; by the time you get to Russia’s borders it is over 2,000 miles wide, and is flat all the way to Moscow and beyond ... You might think that no one is intent on invading Russia, but that is not how the Russians see it, and with good reason. In the past 500 years they have been invaded several times from the west."

There are different wars in the world-history, described in Marshall's book, that I was unaware of, and thus it was very instructive to read this book. For example, I was not aware of the history of the Kurds. Here is a part about it, in the section on the Middle East (p. 256):

"Kurdistan is not a sovereign recognised state but it has many of the trappings of one, and current events in the Middle East only add to the probability that there will be a Kurdistan in name and in international law. The questions are: what shape will it be? And how will Syria, Turkey and Iran react if their Kurdish regions attempt to be part of it and try to create a contiguous Kurdistan with access to the Mediterranean?

There will be another problem: unity among the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan has long been divided between two rival families. Syria’s Kurds are trying to create a statelet they call Rojava ... If Kurdistan does become an internationally recognised state then the shape of Iraq will change. That assumes there will be an Iraq. There may not be."

His descriptions of the fissures in the Middle East are the most hard-hitting and pessimist part of the book. For example, he writes about Islamism and Palestinian refugees (p. 259), "Such changes to a country’s demographics can cause serious problems, and nowhere more so than in Lebanon." Another example, is in the following extract about the future of the "Arab Spring":

"In the Middle East power does indeed flow from the barrel of a gun. Some good citizens of Misrata in Libya may want to develop a liberal democratic party, some might even want to campaign for gay rights; but their choice will be limited if the local de facto power shoots liberal democrats and gays. Iraq is a case in point: a democracy in name only, far from liberal, and a place where people are routinely murdered for being homosexual.

The second phase of the Arab uprising is well into its stride. This is the complex internal struggle within societies where religious beliefs, social mores, tribal links and guns are currently far more powerful forces than ‘Western’ ideals of equality, freedom of expression and universal suffrage. The Arab countries are beset by prejudices, indeed hatreds of which the average Westerner knows so little that they tend not to believe them even if they are laid out in print before their eyes. We are aware of our own prejudices, which are legion, but often seem to turn a blind eye to those in the Middle East.

The routine expression of hatred for others is so common in the Arab world that it barely draws comment other than from the region’s often Western-educated liberal minority who have limited access to the platform of mass media."

In Conclusion

The book ends on a pessimistic note and is brutal about our prospects for a more peaceful world, at least in the immediate future:

"As the twenty-first century progresses, the geographical factors that have helped determine our history will mostly continue to determine our future: a century from now, Russia will still be looking anxiously westward across what will remain flatland. India and China will still be separated by the Himalayas. They may eventually come into conflict with each other, but if that does happen, then geography will determine the nature of the fight ... Of course geography does not dictate the course of all events. Great ideas and great leaders are part of the push and pull of history. But they must all operate within the confines of geography. The leaders of Bangladesh might dream of preventing the waters from flooding up the Bay of Bengal, but they know that 80 per cent of the country is on a flood plain and cannot be moved. It is a point the Scandinavian and English leader King Canute made to his sycophantic courtiers in the eleventh century, when ordering the waves to retreat: nature, or God, was greater than any man. In Bangladesh all that can be done is to react to the realities of nature: build more flood defences, and hope that the computer modelling of rising waters due to global warming is overstated."

This book was written in 2015 and some of its worries about possible conflicts (such as Russia - Ukraine, Israel - Palestine, north and south Sudan, D.R. of Congo) have become realities.

If you are interested in geopolitics and want a deeper understanding about our past, on-going and potential future conflicts and challenges, do read this book.

*****

Religions For The 21st Century

Some weeks ago, I had a discussion with a friend about differences between Shamanism and Buddhism. I think that analysing religions to look for their differences is not such a useful approach in today's world. In the eastern traditions, usually the different religious philosophies are seen as different streams of the same river, and there is not a strong focus on analysing their differences. I think this way of looking at religions answers better the religious-spiritual needs of today.

While humanity needs a spiritual dimension, the practical ways in which this need is expressed through religions depends upon the social, cultural, economic and technological context of the societies. Thus, it is inevitable that in the new millennium, along with our changing societies, our religions will also change.

This post is a speculation about what humanity needs from religions in the 21st century.

Religious Harmony

Like the different human species, the religious beliefs are also in continuous evolution. In the recent history, our different religions, especially the more orthodox religious ideas, have been one of the root causes of conflicts. In the medieval period, there were some attempts to come up with universal religions, which proposed unification of the different religious ideas. Baha'i religion in Persia and Deen-e-Ilahi by the Mughal king Akbar in India were examples of these unifying religions, but they had a limited impact because they were adopted by few persons, though Baha'i religion continues to thrive even today in a few countries.

Today, while we have some large radical and orthodox religious groups, many more persons identify themselves as "Atheists" or non-believers. A large number of persons, who formally belonged to a religion, define themselves as "spiritual and not religious". Many others, while belonging to one religious tradition, pick and adopt specific ideas of other religions.

The pace of changes in the last one century and in the first decades of the present century, related to the technology and our understanding of the universe, has been unprecedented. When technology can give us the answers we need, we don't need to rely on the benevolence of Gods. So, some believe that in today's world we do not need any religions, because technology can provide all the answers. However, the mysteries of life, consciousness and death remain and every new child-birth and a death forces us to think about these mysteries, thus humanity's search for spirituality also persists.

Science and Spirituality

I grew up in a family in India which was sceptical about our religion (Hinduism) and about the claims of different Gurus. Many persons in our extended family and among our friends share this view of Hinduism. However, I have met many persons who do not share this sceptical view of religion, they have no doubts about their faith. I recognise that faith does not need any scientific proof but personally for me, finding some kind of scientific rationale for the spirituality is important.

There are 2 kinds of technological developments, knowledge and understandings, which influence my spiritual beliefs:

(1) The first is our knowledge about the place of humanity in the Cosmos: We live on a tiny planet surrounded by billions of stars of our galaxy, and there are millions of other galaxies, each with billions of stars. The Cosmos is so big that even if we could travel at the speed of the light, hundreds of our life-times will not be enough to see even a tiny proportion of those worlds. This vastness of the universe is almost impossible to comprehend for me.

Even if among the billions of stars in each galaxy there can be only one planet which has life, there must be millions of planets with some life in the Cosmos. To believe that there is a human-like deity or an elderly father-like God looking after this unimaginably enormous universe made of trillions of stars and planets in millions of galaxies, who is observing each of us human beings living on our tiny planet and is keeping an account of the good or the bad things we do in our tiny lives, seems implausible to me. I can't imagine a God who has to look after millions of galaxies, worrying about things like if the people are going to the churches or mosques or temples to pray to him regularly or if women on earth are modest and covering their heads and bodies - these seem like ideas of men to control the others.

This understanding of the vastness of the universe leads me to believe that there is no personal God and instead the spirituality is something different. I think that prophets and all our ideas about the different Gods and Goddesses are metaphorical representations of the divine. Their stories and their teachings cannot be taken literally or in absolute terms, they need to be seen in their historical contexts, as answers to the human need for understanding the mysteries of birth, consciousness and death.

(2) The second development is our increasing understanding of the micro-cosmos through quantum physics: we still do not have a proper understanding of the quantum world which focuses on the laws governing the microscopic Cosmos hidden inside each particle of the universe. In that Cosmos also there are billions of sub-atomic particles circling other particles in an infinite number of galaxies of atoms and molecules. In this quantum world, the laws of the ordinary physics do not work, so that the sub-atomic particles can be at more than one place at the same time and the act of observation changes the nature of the observed sub-atomic particles.

To be honest, I don't understand most of it. At the same time, whatever I do understand, reminds of some of the concepts and discussions in the Hindu Upanishads about the nature of reality, probably because I am more familiar with those concepts and ideas. This world of quantum physics leads me to an understanding of God as the universal energy or a universal consciousness that underlies our atoms and molecules of all organic and inorganic worlds.

I like this idea of the divine as the universal energy with different levels of consciousness that moves the sub-atomic particles, atoms and molecules of billions of stars spread out over millions of galaxies. It unites all our universe and at the same time, leaves us free to use our intelligence to live our lives filled with a significance and meanings that we want to give to it. In this sense, I believe that God is the universal energy inside each of us and in everything surrounding us.

Religions for the 21st Century

In this world of increasing scientific understanding and technological progress, our religious beliefs face the challenges of reconciling science and technology with the ideas of spirituality. Different people deal with this challenge differently. While many individuals born in families with strong religious beliefs might share those beliefs, but many of those will question those beliefs as they grow up and as they find those beliefs limiting their life-choices. Many of us would form our own beliefs about the sacred.

The social media innovations allow us to find groups of people who share our niche beliefs and we can become part of their communities. Thus I think that the fragmentation of religious beliefs will increase exponentially over the next decades and the trend of picking and adopting aspects of different religions which resonate with us would become stronger with time.

This does not mean that persons believing in traditional religions are going to disappear. There is a subgroup of population, which finds a sense of security in specific and even rigid religious norms, and I don't think that subgroup is going to disappear anytime soon - probably with greater religious choices, these orthodox subgroups will also become stronger.

Among the leaders of traditional religions, those persons who can break-off from religious orthodoxy and can speak to the whole humanity, such as Pope Francis and Dalai Lama, will probably find even greater prominence in future.

The technical progress is increasing our sense of individual rights. Therefore, I think that the ideas of human rights are going to play an important role in our acceptance of religions in the 21st century. I think that issues such as equality of genders, rights of persons to choose their sexual orientations, the right to join or leave a religion, the right to live together with the person of our choice with or without marriage, the right to have a family of our choice and the right to die with dignity are all going to be basic starting points for the acceptance of religions of future.

Conclusions

These are my speculations about the future of religions in the world. I am sure that my views are influenced by my biases - those of growing up in a family sceptical about religions, those of being a part of a multi-religious family, those of reading Upanishads and those of my work-experience in the field of human rights.

However, I am aware that history does not move in straight lines. It goes up and down, sometimes it takes two steps back before moving ahead. Looking at the conditions of specific religions might make us feel that instead of the changes I have speculated above, some religions are going in the inverse direction - towards rigidity, greater orthodoxy and a substantial denial of human rights. However, I believe that overall direction of history is different and sooner or later, all religions will join that direction, where the rights of individuals will be stronger than the rights of collective religious groups.

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Ai Wei Wei - Later Works in Brazil

The first part of this post was about the earlier works of celebrated Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei presented in an exhibition called Raiz (Roots) held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 2019. This second part of the post focuses on his works created between 2015 and 2018, and presented in this exhibition.

The works of the artist from this period show a transformation - from his criticisms of the regime in China in his earlier works, he moved on to other themes afflicting humanity, from wars and refugee crisis to climate change. His latest works from his period in Brazil are even more personal, looking at sexuality and cultures.

Expressing Dissidence

The first works of Wei Wei after his release from the house-arrest in Beijing were understandably about the period of that arrest, though they continued to be ironic and symbolic, like the installation called Forever Bicycles presented in the image above. This installation was made from one thousand stainless steel bicycles. These represented personal freedom and its title, "Forever", referred to a brand of bicycles common in China when Wei Wei was growing up with his father in the exile.

His next work from 2015 was Blossom, a carpet made from hundreds of porcelain flowers made by joining 16 panels. This installation also referred to the period of his house arrest, when as a way of protest, he had decided to put every morning some flowers in the basket of a bicycle parked in front of his home. Thus, Blossom represents the flowers of his protest.

War and Refugees

After his release from house arrest in China, in 2015 Wei Wei had relocated to Berlin in Germany. That brought him in contact with the refugees who were pouring into Europe from the war-torn middle-east and whom the European countries were refusing to accept. Wei Wei felt the cries for help of the refugees, probably because he was also a refugee, though a fortunate one, since he had been accepted in Europe because of his celebrity status and because of being a known Chinese dissident.

In 2015 itself, Wei Wei visited the island of Lesbos in Greece and saw the shoreline littered with life-jackets and buoys of Syrian refugees trying to enter Europe. His 2016 marble sculpture Tyre is a "monument to the lost" remembering those who risked everything to seek a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

During 2016-17, Wei Wei travelled to 23 countries and 40 refugee camps. Out of these visits came his film "The Human Flow". In the same period, he also produced different other art works on this theme.

His next work on the theme of refugees is titled Odyssey and is a wallpaper which traces the stories of human migrations from the time of the Old Testament, through the pictorial techniques of antique Greek and Egyptian carvings and panels. The image below presents a detail from it.

There was another work on the theme of refugees in this exhibition titled "Refugee motif pillar of vases". It has 6 Qinghua blue and white vases, crafted in Jiangxi province of China in the antique Ming style. Like the wallpaper, the vases touch on 6 themes - war, ruins, journey, crossing the sea, refugee camps and demonstrations.

Brazilian Works

In 2017, Wei Wei visited South America many times to plan some of his exhibitions. In Brazil, he became interested in forests and specifically in a tree species called Pequi. He decided to make a mould of a 1200 years old, 31 metres high Pequi tree in a forest reserve in Bahia state. From his stay in Brazil and the enormous work related to the Pequi tree, a series of other art works have been produced, starting with the works called Raiz (Roots) which had given the title of this Brazilian exhibition and were presented in part one of this post.

The next image shows the roots part of another art work on Pequi tree, with a human figure, which gives an idea of the height of this tree.

The next image shows traditional votive wood sculptures (2018) made by artisans of Juazeiro do Norte in Brazil inspired by Wei Wei's art work.

The next image has Taifeng, a mythical creature from the old Chinese tales of Shanhaijing (the Classic of Mountains and Seas). It is made from Bamboo and silk and is inspired by the traditional Chinese kite-making traditions.

The next installation has Two Figures (2018) in white plaster - the male figure is moulded on Wei Wei himself, while the female figure is moulded on a model. Close to the head of male figure, there is a heap of Armosia seeds, which reminded Wei Wei of seeds he had seen in Gobi desert as a child. Through this sculpture, Wei Wei touched on the ostensible sexuality in Brazilian culture and to his own intense dreams during his stay in Brazil.

Conclusions

The Raiz (Roots) exhibition in Rio de Janeiro was a great opportunity to see different art works of Ai Wei Wei and thus get a more holistic idea of his art-world and artistic journey. Reading about his provocative exploits (for example, about the breaking ancient urn or covering antique vases with paint), gives a certain idea about the person. His constant rebellion against the Chinese government, but at the same time, finding a gentle and ironic way of rebelling, shows a maturing of the person. His works on climate-change and refugees, shows a widening of views where his personal journey is placed in the context of similar journeys of millions of other human beings. Finally, over the past couple of years, his exploration of his sexuality adds a personal dimension to his artistic journey.

To conclude this post, I want to present another of his personal art - a poster called Mutuophagia or the reciprocal eating, which has strong elements of the sensory and sexual world through the blood red water melons, the strategically placed bananas and the female figure on the extreme left. He is also talking about the importance of inter-mixing of cultures and learning from different cultures, which is his criticism of the current politically correct mode of looking down at "cultural appropriations".

For me, coming across the Wei Wei exhibition in Rio de Janeiro was a case of serendipity. I had no idea that it was there and I saw it just by chance. I would count it among my most wonderful art-experiences.

If you haven't already seen the first part of this post, you can check it now.

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#artinstallations #aiweiwei #brazilianexhibition #artofaiweiwei

Dissident Art of Ai Wei Wei

Ai Wei Wei from China is one of the most famous contemporary artists. His name had become known because of a couple of controversial art installations. Through his art he has brought the spot-light on the absurdities of unequal power balances in the modern world, pointing fingers at both the totalitarian regimes as well as, the so-called civilized countries. I love the art of Ai Wei Wei.

The image above shows the entrance to the Wei Wei exhibition in the CCBB atrium in Rio de Janeiro, with a couple of "Roots" sculptures which gave the title Raiz (Roots) to this exhibition. During 2017-18, Wei Wei visited Brazil, where he came across these roots of the massive Pequi Vinegreiro trees, which were once common here and which now risk extinction - this art installation of Wei Wei referred to that experience.

In August, while in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), by chance I came across this exhibition. Visiting this exhibition of Ai Wei Wei's works was one of the highlights of my Brazil visit.

It was organized in 2 locations. However, due to my work commitments, I was only able to visit one of the locations, the Cultural Centre of the Banco do Brasil (CCBB), which had his works from the period 2009 to 2018. This is the first part of a post describing those works, covering the period 2009 to a part of 2015. The second part of this post covers his works from 2015 to 2018, including some art installations he has created in Brazil.

Ai Wei Wei's Background

Wei Wei was born in Beijing in 1957. His father Ai Qing (Jiang Haicheng) was a well known poet who was a communist party member and who had been in jail during 1930s for opposing Kuomintang. When Chairman Mao's cultural revolution started, there was a deep distrust of poets, intellectuals and thinkers and thus Ai Qing was forced to shift to a small rural comune, where his job was to clean the toilets. Wei Wei accompanied his father during 5 years of their stay in this comune.

There is a story about Ai Qing, afraid of being labelled "elite", one night burned his poetry and other books, with his son's help. This left a deep impression on Wei Wei's psyche, who was around 9 years old at that time.

Ai Qing was finally rehabilitated in the communist party in 1979. In 1981, Wei Wei went to live in New York, where he lived for 12 years and became an artist. Back in China in 1993, two years later he sparked wide outrage and became famous for his artwork called "Dropping a Hun Dynasty Urn". For making this art installation, Wei Wei dropped and broke into pieces a 2000 years old urn and the whole scene was documented in a series of 3 photographs. Through this installation, Wei Wei denounced the destruction of hundreds of old Chinese temples and buildings along with their ancient treasures during the years of Mao's communist revolution.

In 2006, another art installation of Wei Wei called "Coloured Vases" made news all over the world, when he took 39 Neolithic vases and covered them in industrial paint. With this installation, he wanted to denounce the destruction of world's habitat along with old cultures due to non-stop onslaught of humanity and commercial interests.

Even when not making international news, Wei Wei was continuously challenging the Chinese Government by criticising it through his art. In 2009 he was placed under house arrest and in 2010-11, his new art studio was bull-dozed. Some of his most subversive and dissident art came during these years. Finally in 2015, his first solo exhibition was held at Galleria Continua & Tang Art Centre in Beijing and in July 2015, his passport was given back to him. After his release, he relocated to Berlin (Germany).

Wei Wei's Works from 2009

The Raiz exhibition had two of his works from 2009, before he was placed under the house arrest.

The first one is called Porcelain Cube. It has a cube outline made from 1 metre long porcelain cylindrical tubes made according to the traditional Qinghua technique, known for their blue coloured designs. Thus, the cube itself is a negative space.

The second one is called "The Hanging Man", which has the profile of the American artist Duchamp made from a porcelain hanger. During his years in New York, Wei Wei had been greately influenced by Duchamp's works. It is a small work and you can see it below on the wall-paper art from 2015 called "The animal that looks like a Llama but is really an Alpaca" (Last image at the bottom).

Wei Wei's Art Works from 2010-2015

These are his works from the years when he was under house arrest and immediately after it.

The first one is called the "Sun Flower Seeds" & is from 2010. For this installation, Wei Wei had made millions of porcelain sunflower seeds. Each seed was crafted individually in northern Jiangxi province, an area known for its kilns where they made imperial porcelains. Initially authorities could not understand the meaning of this installation. It was recalling the hero-worship cult of Chairman Mao, who was called the Sun and people were supposed to follow their leader like sunflowers.

The sun-flower seeds also reminded about the days of political rallies called by the supreme leader (Mao), where people went with sunflower seeds in their pockets so that they could eat something when they became hungry. This kind of subtle irony and hidden criticism of the communist regime became Wie Wie's approach, which was difficult to control by the authorities.

The second one is called He Xie or the river crabs and is also from 2010. These represent the destruction of his art studio in Shanghai. When Wie Wie was told that bull-dozers will raze his studio to ground, he organized a He Xie party for his friends for an ironical celebration. The authorities were confused that he was celebrating the imminent destruction. Finally, they decided to place him under house arrest.

The installation is composed of 1000 river crabs in porcelain, each made individually. Ai explained, "In different dynasties, people used to make these crabs from jade, bamboo or onyx. In 1976, when the gang of 4 was arrested, to celebrate it many artists had made the sculptures of these river crabs." There was another subtle message in the crabs - its Chinese name, He Xie, sounds like the Chinese word for harmony. Thus, it alludes to the struggle between the authorities and the society in the name of maintaining "a harmonious society".

The third one is called "The hanger" (2011) and has cloth-hangers in different materials - steel, wood and crystal. During the house arrest he was allowed to keep only a few things, which included some hangers. These sculptures are a reference to his house arrest and thus represent an oppressive regime. These also recall similar works by some American artists like Marcel Duchamp on concept art.

The 4th is called the Mask and is from 2013. It has a mask in marble, placed on a tomb stone. Carved from a single piece of marble, this mask represented the smog covering Bejing, due to unregulated industrialization which did not respect the environment. It can also be seen as a symbol of un-breathable air across different cities of the world due to pollution, as is affecting Delhi during these

days.

The fifth art installation is called "Grapes" and is made of 32 antique Chinese wooden stools from the Qing dynasty and is from 2014. The stools have been joined together, using the traditional wood-working techniques. Like the more controversial destruction of the antique urn mentioned earlier, this was a criticism of the destruction of ancient art, culture, heritage and religion during the cultural revolution.

Conclusions

To the see the pictures of Wei Wei's controversial installations "Destroying a Hun dynasty urn" and "Coloured vases" is a deeply disturbing experience. Try searching for these 2 installations on internet. The destruction of antique vases which go back to thousands of years is like a wound in the soul, because that loss can never be repaired.

Through these installations, Wei Wei hits us with a killer punch forcing us to think not only of the years of destruction during the cultural revolution in China. It also forces us to think of millions of persons killed in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime or by ideologues running totalitarian regimes in China and Cambodia. It is a reminder of the destruction done by radical Islamists and by the so-called "forces of Liberty" - the Bamayan Buddha statue, and ancient ruins in cities like Mosul, Nimrud and Palmyra in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

I am concluding this post with an art work of Wei Wei from 2015 - it is a wallpaper called "The animal that looks like a Llama but is really an Alpaca". The title of this artwork refers to the optical illusion. On a first glance, the wallpaper looks composed of geometric designs. A closer look shows you that it is made of elements like surveillance cameras, handcuffs, twitter birds and alpacas, each a representation of his struggles with the Chinese authorities and symbols of the Chinese society. Hanging on the wall, you can also see this 2009 work called the Hanging Man.

The second part of this post will focus on his remaining works from 2015 and later, that were presented in the Raiz exhibition.

*****

#aiweiwei #artofaiweiwei #artinstallations 

Around the world with 80 cows

Cows are considered sacred by a large number of Indians. They are a popular theme in sculptures and a source of meat in other parts of the world. In this post I am bringing together some of my favourite images of cows and cow-sculptures from different corners of the world.

Let me start this post with a beautiful green cow with black dots from the 2015 World Expo in Milan. The popularity of cow-sculptures can be understood from the "Cows in Parade" initiative - it was one of the biggest public art events ever organised and between 1999 till 2015, has been held in about 15 countries so far.

In this post, I am devoting more space to cows in India because it is here that we have such a complex relationship with them and because they evoke so much passions among Indians unlike any other animal.

Cows in India

As in almost every aspect of life, India has multiple and contradictory approaches to the cows and their sacredness. On one hand, people offer food and prayers to them, build Gaushalas (cow homes) for them, and put up their statues in the temples. The beliefs about the sacredness of cows, though more predominant among Hindus,  are shared in different degrees between the different Indic religions. On other other hand, ill nourished cows can be seen looking for food in the garbage dumps, eating plastic bags and sitting abandoned in the middle of the roads while the traffic passes around them. My images of cows from India bring together some of these contradictions.

Let me start with some images from the north-east of India. The first image is from Ambubashi festival in Guwahati. One of the Sadhavis near the Kamakhaya temple asked me to click her picture with the Gaumata (mother cow).

The next two beautiful images of the cow sculptures are from the entrance of the Shukreshwar temple on the banks of Brahmaputra in Guwahati. These include a statue of the mythical Kamdhenu cow.

The fourth image is about the worship of a young cow during the Rongali Bihu celebration in Assam.

The fifth image is from Bellary district in Karnataka, showing a cattle market, especially for the sale of cows.

The next image is also from north Karnataka, showing a centre for protection of indigenous varieties of Indian cows.  It includes services for sterilizing and making medicines from the cow urine according to the Ayurveda traditions.

The next Indian image is actually from the V.A. museum in London, showing an antique sculpture of the mythical Kamdhenu from south India. Kamdhenu is the cow of the gods, which can fulfill all the wishes of those who pray to it.

The next image is from a Garbage dump in Boragaon (Assam) showing cows searching for food.

The final image from India is from Nagaland, showing the cow/bull horns decorating the entrance of a house. Different parts of India, especially in the north-east and in Kerala, also have wide-spread traditions of eating cow meat.

Cows from other parts of the world

While in India the cow sculptures are almost always linked with Hindu temples, in the rest of the world, cows do not have a sacred significance. Instead, as mentioned earlier about the "Cow in Parade" initiative, cow sculptures are mainly about art. Let me start this part with a cow sculpture from Brazil, which has a huge cow meat-eating culture. This beautiful sculpture is from Goiania in central part of the country.

The next cow sculpture is from Vienna in Austria. It is designed like a bar for drinking beer.

The next two images of multi-coloured cows were clicked in the World Expo 2015 in Milan (Italy), but they are a part of the "Cows in Parade" initiative.

The final two images of cows are from the Novegno mountain near our home in Schio in north-east of Italy, showing two varieties of local cows placidly grazing in the green mountain pastures. Under the pressure of globalisation, specific high milk-yielding species of cows are replacing the indigenous species of cows all around the world. In this scenario, some groups are fighting to conserve their indigenous varieties of cows.

Conclusions

I hope you have enjoyed this world tour of the cows and cow-sculptures. These were not exactly 80 cows (there are around 40-45 cows in these images) but I liked the title so much that I had to use it.

When I thought of writing this post, I did not realise that I had so many pictures of cows from different parts of the world. In the end, I had to leave out many of those images, but I had fun selecting the images and writing it!

Let me conclude this post with an image of blue cow sculpture with the European flag from the World Expo in Milan.

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Around the world in 30 fountains (Part 2)

This is the second part of my post about the most beautiful or interesting fountains from around the world.

The criteria for selecting the fountains presented in this post are different – beautiful fountains, quirky fountains with distinctive features and the quality of images. While I searched for the images of fountains in my image-collections, I realised that in some countries, especially in Asia and Africa, fountains are not very common, while Europe seems to be full of them.

This post is about my own pictures and though I have visited some countries and some cities, I have not visited lots of places. Thus, you may find many countries missing from this post.

Fountain 15: Gurgaon, India

The only fountains from India in this post are from a Disney-world kind of make-believe place called “Kingdom of Dreams” in Gurgaon, a city that has come up mainly in the last 10 years and is an ode to the arrival of globalization in India.

I did go through my huge archive of images from India but I did not find other significant images of fountains that I liked. The only fountains that came close to what I was looking for, were those in the central canal in front of Taj Mahal, but I think that those images were much about Taj Mahal as a monument and the fountains there were just accessories.

I remember that Rajiv Park in Connaught Place in Delhi had a nice fountain but it was removed to make way for the new Rajiv Chowk metro station. I also remember the beautiful Flora fountain in Mumbai, but I had seen it before I was bitten by the photography bug, so I had no images of it.

Fountain 16: Dublin, Ireland

The 4 angels fountain is right in front of the entrance to the Trinity College and is part of the Davis monument. The angels of this fountain look like slightly hunched-backed vultures wearing pillow-cover like long gowns, holding long trumpets in their hands. This description may not sound like praise but in reality, the result is very distinctive and pleasant.

Fountain 17: Dublin, Ireland

The second fountain from Dublin in this post is a rather unassuming fountain next to the old manor building that housed the mayor of the city. The background to this fountain is the bar of a restaurant done in modernist key. The final result is a fountain in classical style against a glass-and-clean lines kind of place, that is very nice (though I don’t think that my picture below, clicked after I had imbibed some glasses of nice wine, does justice to it).

Fountain 18: Bologna, Italy

The next six fountains are from Italy, that can be called the world capital of fountains. Actually, I think that I could have made a separate post with 30 fountains, all from Italy.

The first Italian fountain in this post is from the wonderful Neptune square in the centre of Bologna. When this fountain was built by Giambologna, the city was under the Vatican and the Pope’s delegate was scandalized by the burly Neptune flaunting his genitals. It is against the public morality, let us put this statue and the fountain in somewhere else and not in this important place, the church had suggested, but the people of Bologna had started protesting against this decision. All right, let us have a public referendum, the church had proposed. In the referendum, majority of people voted to have the Neptune statue in the city centre. And so there it is.

However, for me the most quirky part of this fountain is underneath the nude Neptune – the four nude female figures sitting around the central column, who are squeezing their breasts and water comes out from their nipples. The two images presented below show these mermaids. I especially like the second image below, where part of the water has frozen into ice.

Fountain 19: Bologna, Italy

The next Italian fountain is also from the city centre of Bologna. It is inside the courtyard of Volta palace that houses the archaeological museum of Bologna. It is a simple fountain with plants growing all around and in the middle, a small jet of water rises up while a child looks at it with wonder and joy with his right leg rising up as if to test the water with his toes.

Fountain 20: Rome, Italy

Rome has some of the most beautiful and also most famous fountains in the world that have been copied widely and have inspired many other fountains. The first fountain from Rome is from the Repubblica square, a busy traffic roundabout near the railway station. Two moon shaped buildings form part of its backdrop. The images below show it early in the morning while the second figure has it with the evening lights.

Fountain 21: Rome, Italy

The next Italian fountain is probably the most famous – the Trevi fountain. This fountain has been part of many iconic scenes from films. In Fellini’s Amar cord, perhaps you remember Anita Ekberg standing in it? Or in the romantic Roman Holidays, you remember Audrey Hepburn getting a hair-cut near it? People visiting Rome are supposed to stand near it and throw a coin over their shoulders in its water so that they will have another chance to visit Rome and to admire it once again.

Fountain 22: Rome, Italy

The third Roman fountain in this list is the beautiful boat like fountain in the Spanish square. I have so many memories of sitting on the stairs going up towards the Trinita dei Monti and Via Veneto, and looking at the crowds passing below near this fountain.

Unfortunately this beautiful fountain, also designed by Giambologna (the architect of the colonnade in the St Peter’s square), was damaged recently by guys from Netherlands who had come to Rome for some football match. Just the idea of carelessly destroying such a piece of art makes me feel sick. However as had happened to Banyan Buddhas by the talibans and is happening to Syrian and Iraqi archaeological art by the ISIS goons, there are persons who hate the ideas of art, beauty and history.

Fountain 23: Schio, Italy

Almost every city of Italy has some beautiful fountains. As an example of lesser known fountains, I have chosen a modern and recent fountain from a tiny city in the north-east part of Italy. I call it the fountain of the sparrows. It has some sparrows drinking water from a round fountain while a group of children watch them with a sense of wonder and joy, while a small baby girl, sits nearby with an open book, lost in her thoughts.

I love this fountain, opera of an artist called Alfonso Fortuna. In terms of the emotions that it evokes, it is similar to the fountain in Volta palace of Bologna.

I am sure that those of you who have been to Italy would have your favourite Italian fountains. I also need to confess that I was very tempted to add the fountain of the rivers from Navona square of Rome in this post, that has become famous after Dan Brown’s book “Angels and demons”.

Fountain 24: Manila, Philippines

It is quite a big jump, from Italy in Europe to the Philippines in the Far East. Though in general, the East does not seem to have many fountains (I don’t know about Japan and Australia since I have never been there), Manila has a set of beautiful fountains in the city centre. These fountains are accompanied by music and change their forms, intensity and shapes along with the rhythms of that music. In the evening, colourful lights accompany these musical fountains. It is quite a performance, provided free to all the people. Thus I could understand why residents of Manila seemed to love this park.

Fountain 25: Lisbon, Portugal

After a brief excursion in the east, we are back in Europe. The two Portuguese fountains presented here are both from the beautiful Rossio square in Lisboa (Lisbon). The 17th and 18th century architecture of the square adds to the experience of appreciating these fountains that have sculptures inspired from Greek mythology.

Fountain 26: Lisbon, Portugal

The second fountain in the Rossio square stands in front of the opera building. I love this square because of its pavement lined with white and black stones, arranged in a waves pattern, so that they give an optical illusion of rising up and going down.

Fountain 27: Ljubljana, Slovenia

The next is the fountain of horses from the old centre of Ljubljana. It is a modern fountain with horses in different forms and sizes and thick streams of water.

Fountain 28: Geneva, Switzerland

The last 3 fountains of this post are from Switzerland. The first Swiss fountain is in front of the United Nations’ building where the “Broken chair” sculpture, a symbol of the international campaign asking for the ban of mines in the wars, forms its background.

Fountain 29: Geneva, Switzerland

The next is one of the highest (or probably the highest) fountains in the world. It is the water jet going up to 300 metres near the right bank of Leman Lake. It is visible from far away. Going closer to the fountain, means getting completely wet. It may not have anything fancy, just a powerful jet of water, but it is very effective.

Fountain 30: Lausanne, Switzerland

The last fountain of this post is also one of the most beautiful. It is from the Olympic centre that has the offices of the world Olympic committee and many beautiful sculptures. This fountain has a man using an umbrella made of water to get himself completely wet. I love the idea behind this sculpture.

Conclusions

Preparing this post I had a lot of fun going through lot of images of fountains and deciding which ones to keep and which others to exclude. I hope that I have made you pause, see these fountains in the way I see them, and think of different ways of appreciating beauty and art.

If you had missed the first part of this post and want to see some other fountains, you check it now (Part 1).

I am sure that you know about other beautiful fountains – how about sharing some information about them in the comments of this post?

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