A short note...taking off from a photograph: The Other (from the series Feed)
Images set off associations....a late saturday night party..staying up post party...reading some Tehelka back issues. This work of Arun's flashed across my mind as read through a report on the Sang Parivar's enterprise of making cow urin cola. So enamoured we are with our tradition, that we think lacing soda and poison with cow urin (gau jal) and calling it is our best retort to American cultural imperialism. This image came flashing back as I read on...and the head of the Haridawar based gau shala and manufacturing unit ( run by the Cow Protection Board of the RSS) was passionately explain how they built up a caste system, the caste hierarchy of the ox...he went on to talk about how it was scientifically proven that cow urine has beneficial for heath in an all encompassing way. I began to wonder what stops us from engaging a bit more closely with our common sense.
One does not need to a skeptic to realize that the properties of urine are dependent on consumption habits. Since Agnivesh Tantra was written ( a 4th century AD text containing the seeds of Ayurveda) the consumption habits and availability of fodder for cows in the sub continent have drastically been altered.
Am my mind woke up and started racing lazily I remembered an Indian Express article mentioning that the Cow Protection Board has been injecting steroids to increase urine production (administered with steroids to increase milk production), one did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
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a note added by a friend:
Everything is distorted. The more i think about it, the more it seems that we function mostly due to our ability to distort what we see. Ugliness is masked under necessity, kitsch and charm, under a string of terms designed to subdue a need to cry foul at a visceral degradation of most things around us. steel and glass seems acceptable, until you step out of the city and notice it surrounded by hills and it finally dawns on you that there's something wrong with what you have accepted.
Image details: medium: digital photograph on archival paper, astroturf Size: 47" x 28" x 3"; unique work ( 119 x 71 x 7.7 cms) Exhibition History: Shown at the Nature Morte , and the Sakshi gallery. sold. Buyer unknown
Images set off associations....a late saturday night party..staying up post party...reading some Tehelka back issues. This work of Arun's flashed across my mind as read through a report on the Sang Parivar's enterprise of making cow urin cola. So enamoured we are with our tradition, that we think lacing soda and poison with cow urin (gau jal) and calling it is our best retort to American cultural imperialism. This image came flashing back as I read on...and the head of the Haridawar based gau shala and manufacturing unit ( run by the Cow Protection Board of the RSS) was passionately explain how they built up a caste system, the caste hierarchy of the ox...he went on to talk about how it was scientifically proven that cow urine has beneficial for heath in an all encompassing way. I began to wonder what stops us from engaging a bit more closely with our common sense.
One does not need to a skeptic to realize that the properties of urine are dependent on consumption habits. Since Agnivesh Tantra was written ( a 4th century AD text containing the seeds of Ayurveda) the consumption habits and availability of fodder for cows in the sub continent have drastically been altered.
Am my mind woke up and started racing lazily I remembered an Indian Express article mentioning that the Cow Protection Board has been injecting steroids to increase urine production (administered with steroids to increase milk production), one did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
-------------
a note added by a friend:
Everything is distorted. The more i think about it, the more it seems that we function mostly due to our ability to distort what we see. Ugliness is masked under necessity, kitsch and charm, under a string of terms designed to subdue a need to cry foul at a visceral degradation of most things around us. steel and glass seems acceptable, until you step out of the city and notice it surrounded by hills and it finally dawns on you that there's something wrong with what you have accepted.
Image details: medium: digital photograph on archival paper, astroturf Size: 47" x 28" x 3"; unique work ( 119 x 71 x 7.7 cms) Exhibition History: Shown at the Nature Morte , and the Sakshi gallery. sold. Buyer unknown
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