THE BRONZE GALLERY OF THE GOVERNEMENT MUSEUM - CHENNAI- EGMORE

The bronze gallery features has the finest collection of almost 700 bronzes from South India, mainly from the PALLAVA & CHOLA period (9th - 13th century). They have been saved and retrieved from temples and sites in the region There are many very expressive and impressive of Nataraja (SHIVA) performing the cosmic dance of creation. Other bronzes show Shiva and Parvati. But also Vishnu, Rama,Ramanraya, Sita and Ganesh are shown in differnt positions with their holistic attributes

STREETDOG'S COMPLAINT- FROM BRINDLE

Brindle
Woof! I’m Brindle, the street dog who adopted Bunnylady and Jugfellow some years ago. The reason i’m writing this is because Jugfellow is too upset to write his column himself. Why? Because, once again, some misguided residents of the National Media Centre, the cooperative housing society near Gurgaon where we live, have started off on the so-called ‘stray dog menace’. This happens with unfailing regularity, not just in the NMC but also in that macrocosm of the NMC that we call India. From Kochi to Kolkata, Bagdogra to Bangalore, someone or the other will bring up the stray dog menace, causing a whole lot of innocent, perfectly harmless street dogs to be rounded up and, more often than not, put to death in the most inhumane and cruel manner.
People never seem to understand that the Indian street dog (please don’t call us strays) are hardy, intelligent, affectionate creatures, often much more so that their pedigreed, imported counterparts, who have been viciously inbred by exploitative breeders. Street dogs have to be all these things in order to survive. Far from harming people, they are – when properly vaccinated against rabies and other diseases – man’s best pals, to coin a phrase. They act as excellent guards for the neighbourhood, alerting everyone to the intrusion of strangers by barking. Yet people keep on wanting to get rid of them. Not realising that nature abhors a vacuum and if you get rid of one lot of street dogs, another lot will inevitably take their place.
There is no such thing as a ‘stray dog menace’. There is only a ‘stray human menace’. Who is it that has strayed from the straight and narrow of God’s plan (and please don’t tell me that God is dog spelt backwards, because if i’ve heard that once i’ve heard it for the umpteenth time)?
Is it dogs, who live together amicably in the casteless, creedless democracy of doggydom, who have strayed? Or is it humans, with their caste conflicts and their religious wars, their whites and their blacks, their Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians, their Maoists and their monarchists, their Indias and their Pakistans, their terrorists and their victims, who are the real strays? And the real menace. Not only to each other, but to all of the rest of creation as well.
It wasn’t dogs who created 9/11, and 26/11, and al-Qaeda, and the Sri Lankan civil war, and the Taliban, and not one but two world wars. All these are human creations. And what wondrous creations. Can you imagine a dog creative enough to devise 65,000 nuclear warheads capable of killing every living creature on this planet a hundred times over? No. Only humans are creative enough to have done that. Though they have yet to prove themselves creative and clever enough to find a cure for the common cold. Or AIDS, or cancer, or a score of other killer diseases.
Humans have been too busy doing other things. Like polluting the planet and destroying its environment. The world’s forest cover has been thinned from 7.6 billion hectares in the pre-industrial age to 2.8 billion hectares. And that’s fast disappearing. Between 1700 and 1900, thanks to human activity, more than 20,000 species of plants, 593 species of birds, over 400 species of animals and 209 species of amphibians became extinct. Today, humans wipe out one species every day on an average. Tell me about the ‘stray dog menace’.
Unlike humans, who think the universe and everything in it was created only for their benefit to do with as they will, we dogs believe in the co-fraternity of all living things. And that includes cats. Cats? Oh, lor, what have Bunnylady and Jugfellow done? They’ve let Himal into the place. And Himal is a cat! Who insists on literally rubbing shoulders with me. Yuck. So, while there’s no such thing as a stray dog menace, if you were to talk about a stray cat menace, you might get me to agree. Or maybe not. For the basic dharma that doggydom teaches is to live and let live. Which means cats too. Where’s that damn Himal gone to…?

Web Linkshttp://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/
Contactsjug.suraiya@timesgroup.com

Printed without the permission of Jug Surai... I admire a lot and would like to recommend his books like JUGGLING ACT as compensation

CATOLIC CHENNAI

According to the legend Sant Thomas ( the doubting Thomas), came to South India via Cranganore in AD 52 and spent the next 12 years along the Malabar coast converting the local population. He gradually moved eastwards and finaly settled in Mylapore (is nowadays the old city-centre of Chennai. He spent the last years of his live in a cave on a small hill (on top is nowadays a chappel)from which he would walk each day to the beach. It is said that one day preaching on the Mount of Saint Thomas , he was killed by means of a lance. His body was brought to San Thome, where he was burried in nthe small crypt he had build. This is today the Basilica of San Thome (see pictures). The Portuguese colonized Mylapore in the early 16 the century , lured by the 13 the century Venetian traveller Marco Polo who had visited the earlier Nestorian chapel.The saint holds a special place in the hearts of the Indians and was decreed the Apostle of India in 1972

INDIAN SLEEPING ATTIDUTES & SOME GENERAL CONCERNS

Most homes in India have cots or beds but a sizable proportion do not have a mattress, as the khatiya (rope cot = just the frame of a bed and some belts in between.
According to the recently released INDICUS CONSUMER HANDBOOK a majority of Indians sleep on the floor as the average home area is small ND THERE IS NOT MUCH SPACE FOR ADDITIONAL FURNITURE. Consequently the beds are put for alternative uses, sometimes just used as sofas sometimes as communication centre at family assemblies.

Data collected from various governmental surveys shows that
 86 % of Indian homes have cots or beds
 75 % of the urban homes have a mattress to sleep on.

Contractor to the projected boom, most homes at the country side have no telephone connection and only 36 % of urban homes posses a mobile phone.

And despite the entry of the NANO, the humble bicycle still continiu to be the preferred mode of transportation. ONLY 3 % of Indians have a car!!!

But all this is not a problem at all since Indians are sexualy very active and fertile it is their goal to populate the overall world with small Indians ... London is already taken, the others will come soon. And don't forget once Indian in the next 10 generations you will find merits in the Indian newspapers even if in the mean time you are indian- irish- scottish- polish spanian.... India will welcome you as a king as soon as you might have been able to hit a ball in public, thrown by some proffesional ball thrower ( they call it cricket)

INDIA AT HIS BEST- SODEMIAN LAWS AND GAY MARRIAGES

Based on Mansi Choksi | TNN Article in TIMES OF INDIA of today ( without permission, I deeply regret)


Last week, Durban-based sales advisor Joe Singh and his partner Wesley Nolan solemnized their relationship at a ceremony by an Hindu priest. In the Singh living room, Wesley tied a necklace with a Ganesha pendant around Joe’s neck. The couple, now honeymooning in Mauritius, chose the Ganesha instead of garlands because both of them are “staunch Hindus’’ and wanted the Elephant God to “ward off evil and remove obstacles from their path’’.
The grooms had sent out shimmering wedding invitations weeks in advance, had hand-embroidered shervanis shipped all the way from India, and took their vows before a havan or sacred fire. They spent 18 months preparing for their big day and Joe’s mother Rita Govender said the family had been extraordinarily supportive.

A year ago, a Mumbai based IT professional married his white boyfriend of five years in a boisterous ceremony in Seattle. They too had the shervanis and havan. Roughly 450 people attended, many of them uncles and aunts from Mumbai. The boy’s parents initially had reservations about making their son’s sexuality public. “But by the end of it, his mother was in mother-in-law mode,’’ says one of the guests.

These happy stories may sound unbelievable given the many accounts of social hostility to gay people. But the fact is that same-sex marriage ceremonies have been performed in Indian households, rich and poor, and in cities and small towns alike. The nuptials may not have legal validity but the ritual is remarkable in a country where homosexuality is still considered a criminal act and punishable by up to 10 years in the clink. Ironically, the police cannot bust a same sex marriage because a ceremony cannot prove homosexuality as defined by Section 377 of the IPC.
An activist from Gay Bombay confirms that there are reports of unions every week, be they a lesbian couple in Punjab or Kerala or gay men in Gujarat or Delhi. Ashok Row Kavi, who opened the closet in India, says he knows several gay couples who tied the knot. “There’s one big plus-point about Hindu priests,’’ says Kavi with a straight face. “They’ll forget about everything if you show them a few bucks.’’

While the ‘havan’ nuptials may not have legal standing, the ritual is remarkable in a country where homosexuality is still considered a criminal act punishable by up to 10 years’ in the clink. Ironically, the police cannot bust a same-sex marriage because a ceremony cannot prove homosexuality as defined by Section 377.

Legal status
Homosexual relations are legally still a crime in India under an old British era statute dating from 1860 called Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature.' The vague nature of the legislation has resulted in it being used against a wide range sexual behaviour like oral sex (heterosexual and homosexual), sodomy, bestiality, etc. The punishment ranges from ten years to lifelong imprisonment.
The relevant section reads:
Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.[32]

None of the major Indian political parties have endorsed gay rights concerns into their official party manifesto or platform.



A Mumbai activist from Gay Bombay confirms that there are reports of marriages every week, whether it is a lesbian couple in Punjab or Kerala or gay men in Gujarat or Delhi. Ashok Row Kavi, who pioneered the opening of the closet in India, says he knows several couples who have tied the knot. “There’s one big plus-point about Hindu priests,” says Kavi with a straight face. “They’ll forget about everything if you show them a few bucks.”

The marriage can be solemnized but the sodomanian act as to be proved, the bestialities maybe obvious but no police man is able to observe.

Same-sex marriage ceremonies are not an entirely new phenomenon, although they’ve largely stayed under the radar.
Arvind and Ashok were married in an Indian ceremony complete with ‘dhotis’ and ‘agni’. “Ashok and I are very sentimental people; we thought it was a great idea,” he says. It was Arvind’s mother, who had once rejected his sexuality, who came up with the idea. “When my family realised that what I had with Ashok was not ‘timepass’, they accepted us. He is very special to my family.”
Activists say that the same-sex marriage movement has emerged independent of the other issues in the gay rights movement. Most gay activists in India weren’t really pushing for marriage because they believed that homophobia and HIV were more pressing battles. Ashok Row Kavi is one of the more vociferous opponents of marriage, which he calls an “oppressive heterosexual institution”. Yet, say activists, it’s a need that can’t be wished away. “It’s the number one question we get from guys in the gay community: How can I find a man to marry?” says a Gay Bombay activist.