In Passing
The school run.
Picture of school children in a Fort Cochin auto-rickshaw taken at seven in the morning.
The Ultimate Wilderness Experience?
Picture taken in Pattalam, Fort Cochin
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High School
Tsomoriri has its own monastery and, like many of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, schoolboy monks attend daily classes.
Almost of the boys live in the monastery but the very youngest often return to their families at night.
What I found more remarkable was that the “classroom” consisted of a terrace with a sheer, unprotected ten-foot drop to the rocks below.
If this had been London, the boys would have hurling themselves like lemmings to compound fractures or certain head injury.
Instead, the class sat chanting their lessons while their monk-teacher listened.
Then playfully giggled, as soon as they suspected he might be out of ear-shot.
They were remarkably happy and well-behaved and, as their teacher reassured me, there was no need to worry:
when it snowed the class was held indoors.
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Northern Exposure: Part 13
Schoolboy monks in the classroom.
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Picture taken at the Ghoom Monastery, Darjeeling.
Class Of 35
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The rain had just stopped.
The ground was decidedly damp.
The boys were beautifully behaved.
They sat in quiet though confident expectation of becoming muddied.
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Fame
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Less than an hour’s journey from Thrissur is the Kalamandalam, Kerala’s school of performing arts.
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On our tour of the campus, we join up with a party of very English Girl Guides.
It seems a somewhat surreal juxtaposition.
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Caught In The Rush Hour
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“Rush hour: That hour when the traffic is almost at a standstill”
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I find I have fallen in love with my adopted home
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New Beginnings
Now is a time of change.
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The house, once filled with laughter, falls quiet.
Now is time to open the gates
and not look back.