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Stopping along a ridge, we beheld the Garhwal Himalaya range as it came into view: a tumble of mountains crowned on the horizon by an irregular, saw-toothed range ... In that brief moment between sunrise and daylight, when a once-secretive world would be illuminated, our wonder at the world was multiplied many times over.
A thread of male entitlement binds the American literary world to a shepherd's world in India's Kashmir valley. Days ago, the American author Junot Diaz left the Sydney Writers Festival amid allegations of sexual abuse. In India there is another, more sinister and tragic manifestation, woven with the use of rape as a weapon of war.
The state doesn't have an opinion on whether God approves of the union because theocracy went out of fashion in the West, along with the Divine Right of Kings. These days in Australia, the state doesn't even care to enforce sexual exclusivity of partners, although once upon a time that was a major element of marital law. Divorce is all about distribution of assets and establishing proper care of the kids. So why the brouhaha over marriage for gay people?
If Peedom was expecting to find signs of a growing sense of self-agency behind the docile facade of the legendary 'Smiling Sherpa', she couldn't have predicted a rawer or more tragic scenario against which it would play out. Predictably the turn of events does not sit will with the Western climbers and tour operators, who feel that the outlay of time and money, not to mention the 'bucket-list' imperative to conquer the peak, entitle them to proceed. Polite facades peel away to reveal ugly attitudes.
As a kiwi I had grown up with earthquakes. I remember them large, small and intrusive. Awed by their power, I cherished the still that followed. This is what made Nepal’s second major earthquake so different for me. I will never forget the beginning of the 7.3-magnitude quake, but will never recall the end.
Peace has come to Kashmir, but it’s a tentative, fragile peace. My guide Younis swiftly apprises me of the virtues of his homeland: ‘Pakistan wants Kashmir, China wants Kashmir, India wants Kashmir. It is a very beautiful place and here we have [so much]: electricity grids, land, fruits.’ He pauses, then says, ‘But nobody likes Kashmiris.’
Ignoring the Greek tradition of family names, my son and his Cretan wife called their son Orestes. The name means 'he who can move mountains', and it is almost as if some instinct informed the young parents of 'naming power', and of the possibility that such power might be needed. The first mountain resembled Everest: the operation on the day of his birth, which was necessary to correct a malformed oesophagus.
The children go holiday wild, swarms of them drenching us with holy water. Skin soaked, we fall off our bikes, flattened by their rabble-roused blessing ... Inside it's a garden, well-kept trails between the mounds, fooling us they were designed to please the eye ... Look, that tree, so graceful — against which babies' heads were bashed ... I check for red-handed stains but they have long since dissolved into complicity.
My tutor in Kunming was deeply shaken by the mass stabbings last weekend that left 29 civilians dead. When Chinese authorities put out a request for blood donors in the city, giving blood was all she wanted to do. The city's blood banks have struggled to accommodate the throng of willing donors, the upturned arms of ordinary citizens replacing some of the blood spilt by the long knives. This strikes me as profoundly Eucharistic.
The Victoria Police 'electrocution email' scandal has again displayed Australian inhospitality to the world. Despite this, Indian hospitality remains steadfast. The guest is God in an Indian household. Australia's athletes would know this hospitality well.
The old people in the mortuary silence of the doctor’s waiting room, rehearse the look, the patois, become familiar with the creeping symptoms, the medicines of resistance, the gentle small steps on the way.
After many thousands of years, modernity is sweeping away nomadic existence. Cosmologies such as Aboriginal Dreaming encode irreplaceable knowledge of the natural world, and nomadic cultures emphasise qualities of tolerance, adaptability and human interconnectedness.