Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Imagine the image above, devoid of context, and subjected to a “caption this photo” contest.
A suitably cornball “winner”:
a quiet drink with a few mates.
The featured image was taken with a long lens (560 mm) at 11.12 am on 20 February 2020.
The photo immediately below was taken just a few seconds later, from almost exactly the same vantage point, overlooking a pond/reservoir, a few minutes away from Khichan…
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Cranes: in this case, Demoiselle cranes, the world’s smallest crane species,
Jains: adherents of Jainism, an Indian religion which is older than Christianity and Islam.
The practical application of Jainism’s central principle/vow has produced an astounding result.
For Demoiselle cranes (and for human admirers of one of the world’s more elegant birds) Khichan – a modest village in the Thar Desert – is now the world’s most rewarding destination.
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Q: why did many expensive lenses cross oceans, and the lenses’ owners then get up so very early on a crisp Rajasthan winter morning?
A: they wanted to secure a “good” position on a rooftop in an unassuming Thar Desert village.
The more meaningful answer has to be seen to be believed…as you will see in Pelican Yoga’s next two, lavishly-illustrated posts.
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…are all integral to this post, which is a sequel to both the immediately-preceding one and to the 28 January 2022 post on “Hope”.
If you do not already know Emily Dickinson’s poem Hope is The Thing With Feathers you should click here before you read/see/listen to the rest of this post.
Comments closedIf the almost-titlepiece of Rhiannon Giddens’ new album were new to your ears, you would probably assume it was a venerable “traditional” song, probably from Appalachia.
Listeners who already knew many traditional Appalachian songs would likely be mightily surprised that they could have hitherto missed such a superb, particularly haunting one.
In fact, Calling Me Home was authored by Alice Gerard; it was titlepiece of her 2002 album, issued in the year of her 68th birthday. (An even better album is Follow the Music, which Alice Gerrard recorded – mostly “live” – in her 80th year)
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Direct quote from Indian Prime Minister Modi, crowing, in January 2021:
Friends, it would not be advisable to judge India’s success with that of another country. In a country which is home to 18% of the world population, that country has saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively.
Arundhati Roy, describing India’s ghastly pandemic reality in April 2021:
The system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps “failed” is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity.
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This post is the fruit of a lunchtime walk through the walled, “old city” section of Jaipur, Rajasthan’s largest city.
Approaching four million people, its metropolis has around twice as many residents as Perth’s.
Its “old” part’s hub makes any part of Perth – or of most “Western World” city CBDs – feel relatively monochrome, lifeless.
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Sequentially, the featured image is the fourth of this post’s photos, all taken within the contest’s brief timespan: a little less than four minutes.
Formally, the “snake bird” is an Oriental darter, Anhinga melenogaster – the same species who looked so very different when in repose, in #66 in Pelican Yoga’s “a shining moment” series.
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A perfectly peaceful, spacious scene?
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An attentive observer, watching a non-sleeping bird, will very rarely see a serene creature.
For most of their waking moments, most birds are obviously keenly aware of their vulnerability to predators, their opportunities as predators, and/or of how best to defend or advance their “place” within an ever-competitive hierarchy.
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