Spirit sans Spirits
I found myself sitting shoulders tense and raised, forefingers plugging my ears as hard as I possibly could. Damn – I’d forgotten my earplugs, even though I knew I was going to ‘The India Fair’. On stage the singer, a young man, yelled into the mike – ‘volume, volume’ and the volume rose even higher.…
‘Speakability’ – Dutch style
A few seconds after I have been overtaken by a lady wearing impressive goggles, a memory of a couple of years ago drifts through my head. I had stopped in front of a jet of water gushing out of the swimming pool wall to get a back and neck massage as I sometimes do at…
I found my India in Amsterdam
It’s as if those feet that I bought in a shop in Amsterdam walked me into the museum quite spontaneously. I bought them because somewhere in the various layers of my brain, I knew they had some spiritual significance. I placed them on my altar at home, which consists of a motley collection of holy…
All that’s spice can’t be nice
‘It gets especially out of hand in the evenings when at 10 pm at night, a bus arrives on the street and twenty people stand outside it, including children talking and laughing loudly carrying bags of rice. It’s not New Delhi on the Amstel’! For a (Dutch) resident of Westwijk in Amstelveen, this strange behaviour…
‘We came from far’
My friend Sara commented ‘I feel like I’m on holiday’ as we walked through the city centre. She had travelled from Olst, near Deventer to Breda, and I from Oegstgeest. She’d never been to Breda and I once before.’ But you’ve lived your whole life in the Netherlands!’ I said. To which she and her…