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Showing posts from February 28, 2013

#255 What difference will shoes make?

The globe is agog with the news that retired Pope Benedict XVI will stop wearing his official red shoes. He will not be allowed to wear papal red-shoes, it is said. He will have to start wearing brown shoes. Packing is very important in trade. This everybody knows. But, packing is the-most-important in religious-preaching. Preachers wear uniforms of different colors, patterns, and symbols, reflecting their authority-clan-cult. Christianity has a tendency to mock other religions for such practices, whereas Christianity itself is not devoid of those same practices. Back-to-Vivekananda. Traditional-foot-wear for Hindu-monks: topless-wooden-bottoms, with one sculpted-wooden knob for the head-toe and the second-toe. These are called 'pAvu-kOLLu' in my mother-tongue telugu. This is an All India tradition. I am unable to quote Indian language equivalents of pAvukOLLu. Mendicant-monks (theoretically, every Indian-Hindu-Monk should-be a mendicant moving all the time).