Tag: kumaun

Nature

Elephants and their smiling disposition…

Elephants at Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand, India

Elephants are such content beings, relishing every morsel, making a difference to every inch of the jungle they trudge through… flummox the blind they might, get agitated by the unceasing fragmentation of their wide expanses they do, but for a creature sharing human lifespan, the tolerance and wisdom in their sombre gait goes way beyond… …

Nature

On elephant, unexpressed…

Elephant in Corbett National Park, India

Pachyderms, especially the elephant, much closer to humans that any other of their brethren, are a placid kind, a tad too much for their own good it seems at times, trudging countless miles without the frills and tantrums of well-provisioned wayfarers, if one were to think of a living analogy for taking it in one’s …

Art & Culture, History

Temple trudges…

Gurrjar Dev Temple, Dwarahat, Uttarakhand, India

If one were to look at the innate motivations that pique one’s curiosity about temple ruins – somewhere in the middle of the animal instinct of seeking shelter from the elements and the intellectual cycle of constructing theories from the deconstructed – it’d be the simple appeal of geometry, large cuboid appearances staring from plinths …

Art & Culture, History, Mountains

On royal animists… Sun Temple, Katarmal

Katarmal Sun Temple, Almora, Uttarakhand, India

A temple is a kernel around which settlements, permanent or temporary, are spun… across history and religions, they have laid the ground rules for civilizations, defined the contours of culture and cradled the arts… one might say it comes at a price though… an opacity of belief and conviction beyond which societies offer little incentive …

Art & Culture, Mountains

on water of the woods…

Naula, traditional water system, Uttarakhand, India

the way we mistreat water more or less defines the way we mistreat the gods, cleaving away the elements to deprive divinity of its roots and imprisoning it in a seclusion that can leave even the most devout stymied at times… yet one feels that this thought is more of an urban construct, as a …

Mountains, Nature

On precipitation…

It might be a coincidence — though one gets a rather assertive feeling in the gut that ‘tis not — that the less we splash about in the rain, the more we swoon over petrichor in the annals of internet… Google Ngram Viewer testifies to the fact, with the usage of the word spiking around …