Saturday, May 18, 2013

animals in the city: F/light, or: stepping into "The Birds" square



Animals in the City

qarrtsiluni magazine's current issue has the theme "Animals in the City". As always, the magazine goes online in daily posts, and now my contribution is online: "F/light". The photo, it's from my first journey to India - and i still remember walking into this city square, and finding myself in a scene that could come from Hitchcock's film "The Birds".

The city is: Jaipur, and maybe you've seen images of its iconic building before: The Palace of the Winds. Here's a photo, if you look closely, you can see the similar facade structures in the upper right corner of the birds photo.



And an extra note for the extra-animal in the photo: the cow. It's an animal you can see often in India, and it also is a symbol for how different animals are seen in different cultures: for us, cows are one of the main animals to farm and turn into meat. In India, cows are holy: the idea to eat cow creates the same reaction as the idea to eat cat or dog would create for a Westerner. They are the givers of milk, though, and Indian families who own a cow are lucky . In another culture difference, cows are walking freely in the streets of India, creating unusual-for-us sights in the city centers, like this scene:



More animals, in the city and elswewhere:
Make sure to check out the other entries in the qarrtsiluni "Animals in the City" issue, too. quite a number of birds populate it. Would be interesting to see a final animal statistic once it is completely online :)

The issue also brought me back to another online issue: YB poetry #5: Animal with Bumblebee, Dog, Squirrel, Monkey, Fish, Snail Woman, Reindeer and more wildness.


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