Renovations, renovations...Living on a building site

Hi Folks,

Well, here I am, back in action and with the new look for the blog...!

Thanks to those of you who mailed me to ask what's up...no, nothing sinister is happening...I was just sick of the old look, I have had it for over a year or so, and it was getting old hat. Not to mention the black background, which might look slick, but it is just absolute hell on my eyes to read. So I closed up for a few days to do the necessary renovations...hope you like it, and that it is kinder on your eyes too. I've also tidied up the links list, deleted old links that have dissappeared and added new ones..

..and speaking of renovations...the past months since we moved into our 200 year old antique house...a national monument and tribute to the workmanship of builders and craftsmen of days gone by, we have all been very busy working on the house.

As time allowed, we managed to get a lot done. A family project where we all pitched in to make it habitable a.s.a.p, as who can afford to rent and pay off a house, while still spending money on renovating? In the past weeks I did the room downstairs, where I want to set up my painting and decorating studio, re plastered and painted and moved in. As promised previously, here are some pics of the progress in the rest of the houses so far.

Studio

Before
Just look at that horror wall...it had water damage down to the brick work after a pipe burst in the kitchen upstairs some years back. I had to chop plaster off down to the brick, re plastered with a heavy duty cement plaster, then a layer of ordinary plaster, and then a smoothing gypsum..was a mission, but finally got it sorted out.

After

Last week Tuesday I moved all my kantundu from the old studio over to the house. Major stress moving the kiln...but all went well, and now everything is under one roof. At a later stage I will put in the new ceiling in this room, as this trip I was pressed for time..all the rough clay work I will do in the garage outside, which is massive, so there is enough space for a workshop for both Pops and me..

Before

After

Downstairs Kitchen

Then I also helped Cheeky Chops renovate her kitchen, which now looks much better, clean and new again.
Stripping layers of old mouldy wallpaper off the walls and re plastering.

I will add the after photos as soon as Cheeky Chops tidies up and makes the place look more presentable..!

Dining Room
Before

This is the small dining room off my kitchen upstairs. It was panelled with wood that made for a wonderful place for cockroaches to establish a Kakerlakville, so we pulled all the wood off, and found an old tap behind that thin 'cupboard' like door...heaven knows what the hell that was for..Please note the very 'rustic' light fitting just peeping out the left hand corner...I've still got it in the cellar if anyone wants it..

Wood off - Paint on

After

A new look, with my Stinkhout en Geelhout Muurkassie finally hanging on the wall where it belongs after years of being hidden in a corner of by bedroom...My Klimt, framed antique spoons, Imari plates and other treasures displayed on the walls. Rustic light fitting replaced with Moroccan glass lamps.

Before

We had to deal with a lot of water damage under the window, that was coming through due to bad drainage outside.

Breakfast in the dining room. We a actually had this room done before Christmas, so it has been put to good use since then.

My Bedroom

Before

110 layers of old crappy wall paper, poeffie stained carpets, wading ankle deep in dust balls. We stripped the wall paper and chipped the plaster off some of the old oak beams.

Walls stripped of wall paper

After

Once the walls were free of wall paper, we re plastered to get them even, and I repainted in two different colours, distressing and stippling in a teal and then in the lower half in burgundy.

Dressing room

Before

The small dressing room leads off my bedroom and is an absolute pleasure now that it is fixed up.

In both the bedroom and the dressing room we ripped out the carpets and sanded the beautiful old strip wooden floors.After

My kitchen upstairs - A Horror Story

Before

Need I say more....

We knocked down the wall into the passage and got rid of the door to gain some space. Ripped up the linoleum, knocked off the old 70's retro tiles, and re plastered and painted the walls, and tiled the floor with with terracotta.

Pops almost lost his nerve and had a heart attack when it looked like this (above pic)...he recovered his composure after we had plastered and started on the floor tiles..

Before we took down the wall...

Afret we took down the wall

Almost there...but still a bit to do..

Since the above pic was taken we have finished the last bits, and must just get the dosh together to buy decent kitchen cupboards. In the mean time we make do...this renovating business is expensive stuff...

Downstairs Lounge
Before

..again, heaps of old vrot wall paper to strip off the walls, re plastering to do..ripped out the old linolium, new plaster and paint..and voila..!

After

a much more comfortalble lounge, and the old kacheloffen works like a charm. We fired it up all winter..

and bedroom
Before

...and....

After

All re plastered and painted up in pink..!

Downstairs Bathroom

Before

....and...

After

Downstairs Passage

Before

Grey...boring..!

.After

....messy...but colourful!

The Pope Room

This room is right at the top of the house, hence the scew ceiling. It was so smelly and yik, full of pigeon nests in the eaves and we hauld out loads of crap from the little 'cupboards' on the side (the kids call it the Jüdenkammer, where we could hide Jüden..) Sonny had to don a NASA space suit to crawl on hands and knees into the deep recesses of the eaves to remove pigeon nests and half a ton of poo crawling with bugs and other assorted goggas..was a dreadful job..poor lamb...he felt quite ill after that poep operation..!We put in a small kitchenette for Sonny, but still in desperate need of some kitchen cupboards to hide all the 'goedters'..slowly slowly as Rome wasn't built in a day..

Before

We had to insulate the whole top level, get rid of the numerous Pope pictures, tear out wall and wall paper (again), sand down the floors, put up new panelling and paint..see the difference..and thats it for now..to be continued..! Work in progress. Next I will be doing my bathroom aand putting in my French slipper bath tub!

Lichteneck Castle...Sunday outing

Some time back, a few years ago, the family and I took a bicycle ride through the Kaiserstuhl one sunny summer Suday, to get to know the area a bit and see the sights. On our travels through the orchards and vineyards, we see, in the distance, perched atop on a hill, a castle ruin, which the kids wanted to go and have a look at. So we figured, no big mission, not too far away, all flat riding to get there...only a little hill,(as you can see from the above pic), on we, toward the hill, all smiles, sun blazing down like mad, birdies tweeting, a warm summer breeze blowing...something like out of an Enid Blyton adventure..

Well, from a distance the hill looks like just a small little hill..no problem...hmmm...yeah right... that is very misleading, because once I got to riding up that hill on my 'dik wiel' bicycle, it was a bloody high, steep hill. So we start the assent, I hadn't even gone 100m and it was me pushing my bicycle all the way to the top, sweating, swearing and gasping. Half way up I wished I hadn't bothered, but I bit the bullet and pushed on so as not to be the family fader...all this effort and sweat to check out the old ruined castle..alrighty then!

....once we finally reached the top, (breathless, red in the face and huffing and puffing) ...BIG BUMMER... we were confronted with 'PRIVATE PROPERTY', 'NO ENTRY'..the ruin was fenced off and closed to the public..! So we parked off under the trees and packed out the picnic.

As I said at the beginning, that was some years ago. Then last sunday the girls asked me if I wanted to go and see Lichteneck castle with them, as they saw in the local papers that it would be opened for a guided tour. Well most definitely not if I have to huff and puff my way to the top of the hill, thank you very much! But they assured me we could drive up via the farm road and parking was available outside the entrance. Goody! So off we went.

The property was originally part of the inheritance of the Graf von Freiburg, and although the castle wasn't huge, it did play a significant role in the defence of the area since the 12 century. The pic above shows the original layout of the castle, with the defensive keep separated from the yards by a deep gorge which had a draw bridge that was pulled up when under attack. In the yard, (the area where we parked the car) was originally walled, and there were buildings that housed workshops, an inn and all the stables and outbuildings where the animals were kept.

I poached this photo above which I found cute, it shows the ruin back in 1945, very over grown with trees and shrubs, before any restoration work was started. During the time when the castle was inhabited there were no trees what so ever growing in and around the walls, so as to keep the view clear (I guess so that any enemy armies could be spotted from far off). Back in the 1990 when restoration work started, they cleared all the bush at the foot of the walls, and came across a small door. When they opened it, they found an ammunition store room still filled with black gun powder stored in wooden kegs.



This pic above I took from the bottom of the gorge, beneath the draw bridge, and shows just how high and imposing those protective walls are.


The bridge that links the north side of the castle to the main castle keep. It is a very long drop from the bridge to the bottom, and very likely one of the reasons the property is only accessible to the public by appointment and guided tour, as it's way dangerous.

This tree is growing the middle of the courtyard of the main south castle,where there was also a well and out buildings.


Above is what remains of the walls of the north yard where the stables, inn and workshops stood (now the parking lot)

The view across the Kaiserstuhl toward the French border.

Pic taken coming up from the cellar

Member of the historical society in medieval costume were having a braai for the visitors in the ruins of the vaulted cellar.

Absolutely Fabulous...!

....designer rings by Jean Boggio..

Phoenicians in the Cape of Good Hope..

Pic - A stone carving from the 1st century AD shows the kind of ship that the Phoenicians used on the Mediterranean Sea.- The Granger Collection, New York

Did you know....that there were ancient Phoenician shipwrecks found on the Cape Flats..? Bet you didn't!

I picked up on this subject on a forum where, sadly, it will get lost in comments, so I thought it worthy of a post just for interest and posterity. I know the Cape Flats, and drove the Strandfontain Road, which snakes along the shoreline of False Bay, it was my trip to work for two years, but I had never heard this facinating story about Phoenician shipwrecks being found there...here is a great brief on the Phoenicians and their early adventures around the Cape, but click on the links to read the full articles.

Lessons from History

By Mike Smith

In the next few years two movies will hit the circuit, both are about Hannibal, the Carthaginian General (247-182 BCE). One will be, "Hannibal the Conqueror", staring Vin Diesel and the other, not named yet, staring Denzel Washington as Hannibal. This is not only an outrage, but it will make both of them look like fools. Why, because Hannibal was a white man. These movies are nothing but Liberal propaganda trying to portray blacks as conquerors of whites and I want to urge every single respecting white out there to boycott these movies.
The Carthaginians were descendants of the Phoenicians, a white race who inhabited the area where Lebanon is today. From coins and other artifacts it can clearly be seen that the Phoenicians were not only white, but highly advanced. They were master ship builders whose ships’ carrying capacity of 100 tons, steel ships only bettered. The Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa (in three years) around 600BC and in 1992 two of their galleys were dug up in Pinelands near Cape Town, where they used a riverbank as a dry dock. The Phoenicians were also brilliant architects and master builders. King Hiram I of Tyre designed and built the temple of Solomon. Their alphabet was even adopted by the Greeks and their language so closely resemble Hebrew that Hebrew is used to translate their manuscripts. There is even doubt whether they were Semitic or more Caucasian.

The Phoenicians were merchants and traders and their ships had to be replenished along the merchant routes. The Phoenicians therefore had many colonies around the Mediterranean. One of them was Carthage, where modern Tunisia is in North Africa. Unfortunately many of the Carthaginian records were destroyed in the third Punic war by Rome and most of the records today about the Carthaginians are from a biased Greek or Roman perspective. What we do know is that Hannibal was from the Carthaginian upper class that were pure blood Phoenicians and therefore white. The local people around Carthage were Berbers and Kabyles, not Negroids. If you want to know how a Kabyle or a Berber looks like, look at Zinedine Zidane who is a Kabyle, from Algeria.

Read the full article HERE.

From Uncle Cracker-

"I read about those two vessels in a Cape Town newspaper article in the early 1990’s, but subsequently could not find it again online. There is a book written on the subject and a few online references."
Strange Shipwrecks of the Southern Seas – Jose Burman
http://www.catholicchurch.co.za/main.html
http://penandspindle.blogspot.com/2008/02/lost-and-found.html
http://sacoast.uwc.ac.za/publications/2D-Mgmt,Policy,Legislation.pdf
Last link scroll down to pg 11.

Lost and Found


Several years ago Gavin Menzies published 1421 The Year China Discovered The World, the story of early Chinese exploration. The research into this subject is still active, and Gavin is assisted by a team of researchers who maintain the 1421 website.

Long before Menzies published his ground breaking history, rumors existed about prior global cultures based upon trade and the ever-present myth of treasure that permeates the human psyche.

Lawrence Green, in Eight Bells At Salamander, explores the possibility of both Phoenician and Chinese expeditions around the Cape of Good Hope.

As a young reporter in Cape Town, Lawrence was summoned to the Cape Flats, a piece of land that joins the African continent to the Cape Peninsula. The Cape Flats was once under water.

Lawrence was told that an ancient wooden wreck had been found buried in the sands of the Cape Flats. By the time he arrived the local people had broken up the wreck and taken its beams home for fire wood. Lawrence was extremely disappointed, but he traveled to the archives and dug around, and came up with similar stories and an equally frustrating endings.

George Thompson, an observant Cape Town merchant, writes Lawrence, rode about the country and described his travels vividly. He seems to have been the first person to describe in any detail a ship on the Cape Flats. He did not claim to be the discoverer; but writing in 1827 he stated that there was discovered a few years ago what seemed to be the timbers of a vessel deeply imbedded in the sand. Thomson suggested that it might be the remains of some ancient Phoenician vessel wrecked when the Cape Flats were under water.

Captain WFW Owen, the naval officer who charted much of the South African coast, visited the spot with Thompson, and also formed the opinion that this was an ancient ship. He thought the timbers were cedar. This wreck, or another one, came into prominence again in the middle of the last century, when Charles Bell, the surveyor-general, examined it and reported that, however extraordinary it may seem, I am compelled to believe that this wood is part of a large vessel upward of seventy feet in length, wrecked when the sea washed up to some of the ancient sea beaches now raised hundreds of feet in height above the present highwater mark and left at least ten miles from the sea. This wreck seems to have been washed open by a change in the course of the stream about thirty years ago. When first seen the ribs and knees stood five feet above the stiff clay surface, partially connected by the planks of one side. They were broken off and carried away. A wagon-load of the timber was sent to England, but could not be identified. Iron bolts were found, but no copper.

No more was heard of ships in the dunes until 1880, when a ship was found six feet below the surface while workmen were taken out gravel and making bricks. This spot was several miles from the sea. The timber had a peculiar smell, but it burnt well and sold easily as firewood.

Lawrence concludes, those discoveries on the Cape Flats were mysteries indeed. But the brooms of time, the stinging south-east gales and merciless winter rains, have swept away the last age-blackened fragments which might have provided some clue to the lost ships. I can only say that if the Phoenicians sailed around Africa, they made the greatest voyage of all time.


SOURCE- The Pen and The Spindle

Onse neef...Pierneef..

A little while ago one of my readers requested I do a piece on our 'neef'...Pierneef...you know, the great South African artist...Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef. I am not going to go into his whole life and career, but will just give you a brief, and my opines on the artist and his work...

Born in Pretoria in 1886 to a Dutch builder and a trekker decendant mother was our boy, and he makes us proud of his achievement and contribution to South African art...

Due to family financial constraints, Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef received little formal training during his younger years, but did attend the Staats Model School in Pretoria, where he excelled at drawing.
During the Anglo-Boer war, the family left for the Netherlands, where he came into contact with the paintings of the old masters. He must have been a fan of Van Gogh, if you ask me. During 1900, Pierneef studied drawing under an architect at Hilversum. He worked part time in a paint factory, attending night classes in drawing. In 1901 he studied at Rotterdamse Kusakademie.

Now I have never been a big Pierneef fan really, I'm a kitchy Tretchi girl myself, but many Afrikaans folks used to love Pierneef paintings, and many old tannies used to do tapestries and felt work copies of his landscapes to hang over the fireplace in the sitkamer...so maybe that's why I wasn't so keen on them...I saw to many kak copies done as handicraft!

I have always found his works very 'thirsty' and a bit sad, but that is all a matter of personal taste. I have seen many of his originals, the most impressive were the very large canvasses in the Anne Bryant Museum in East London, which are perfect examples of his style.

In my humble opinion, Pierneef was like the South African Van Gogh...he had a style that even a layman would recognize, just like Van Gogh had...and his thing was thirsty, dry South African landscapes dotted with tall trees....never fat lush trees... and these desolate landscapes he painted, can be very sad, especially if you are a farmer trying to raise crops there... but I have to admit, from a technical point of view, he did it very well, and in an original and unmistakable style....so...he was brilliant...like Van Gogh...but, he wasn't a nutter, he was just married to one, and that was probably why his paintings had a bit of a 'vibe'...another sad man, married to a dark dank cloud of misery, he plunged himself into his art to compensate...sound familiar?

His main thing was his trees...and the first top pic is a very typical Pierneef...those longggg tall umbrella shaped trees in flat gray/blue and muted colours, scattered over his earthy landscapes..they look so lonely and desolate...not a hint of man or beast in the near... almost like a landscape from a forbidden planet...This second pic, although earthy and of trees, has a very different look...the trees are like Art Deco/William Morris style...Jugenstil...I like it best...Notice those rain clouds and thunderstorm clouds gathering in the background...you will see them in many of his paintings...I like it...the sound of thunder far away...

I think Pierneef was the beloved artist of the government of the day, because he did many large commissions for public buildings, panels and murals for schools, and public offices, the Joburg railway station had a whole lot of Pierneefs...wonder if they are still there...one of his mentors was the sculptor Anton Van Wouw, with whom he also exhibited...so I guess that also helped kick start his career and kept him in commissions...


Dear reader, rest assured, if you are a proud owner of an original Pierneef, you are sitting on a goldmine, because they are worth a tidy sum!
My tip would be to hang onto it, because as time marches on, and all that was White and right in South Africa becomes part of history and fades away, to be replaced with the new feelgood history...the landscapes depicted, morph into something ugly filled with tin shacks and plastic shopping packets fluttering on the trees...so these remnants of a forgotten time and era will become ever more valuable, and less frequently found in private hands...they will be snapped up by galleries and museums, and fetch enormous prices...just like Van Gogh's paintings..!

SA artworks rake in millions

Artworks by South Africa's old masters are still raking in a fortune despite the current global economic turbulence, say auctioneers.

A two-day auction of decorative and fine artworks held at Stephan Welz and Co in Cape Town, in association with Sotheby's, brought in R43-million.

Auctioneer Bina Genovese said paintings alone yielded close on R39-million, accounting for 85 percent of the sale total.

"Despite negative financial indicators, these outstanding results prove that the art market in South Africa is very much alive."

'Art is a good place to go. People buy art for all sorts of reasons'

Artworks by local masters continue to rocket in the UK too. At a recent Bonham's auction they fetched R100-million.

Giles Peppiatt, director of South African art sales at Bonhams, said: "Our recent sale of the South African art movement of the early 20th century was the biggest sale of South African art ever.



"We set a new world record, including the highest price ever paid for a South African painting. Jacob Pierneef's The Baobab Tree sold for R12-million. We are still seeing strong demand and have a very good sale pending in February."

She said art was doing well for all sorts of reasons. People looking for a home for surplus cash were reluctant to put it into stocks or property.

"Art is a good place to go. People buy art for all sorts of reasons. Every picture is different. The quality of this Pierneef was wonderful and probably won't come onto the market again for the next 10 to 15 years.

"Artists like Maggie Laubscher, Irma Stern and Pierneef are receiving prices and critical recognition which would have delighted them had they lived to see it."

Genovese said back home, South African art holds strong despite negative financial indicators. All sort of records were achieved at the recent auction; one painting sold for over R4m, two for over R3-million, two for over R2-million and two for over R1-million.

Nineteen new art records were achieved, including R1,6m for a work by Alexis Preller called New Eden which, after ferocious bidding, sold for five times its pre-sale estimate.

An outstanding work by Pierneef Naderende Storm in die Bosveld sold for R 3,1-million, matching the previous record set in 2006, followed by Wild Fig Tree, which sold for R2,6-million.

Genovese said the market for quality Stern works held strong: a record of R3,5-million was achieved for a series of 14 works on paper depicting scenes on the French Riviera, an exceptional portrait titled Woman in the Kitchen fetched R4,4-million and Tending the Garden fetched R2,2-million.

She said the sale also featured top quality period English, Continental and Cape furniture which achieved good results, including R392 000 for a Cape armoire, R224 000 for a Victorian walnut and inlaid gilt-brass-mounted bookcase and R212 800 for a pair of Empire mahogany gilt-brass mounted and marble-topped commodes.

"Modern and contemporary furniture is highly collectable and this is apparent from the high prices realised for the examples offered," said Genovese.

Consultant for the auction house Ann Palmer said the catalogue for this auction was put together in June.

"Two weeks ago we were really anxious. But we received lots of support. The art in particular flew out the door."

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20081103053221295C940102

Voodoo Donuts - The Magic's in the hole..!

Let me tell you what I love about America. America has some really crazy and funky people. I have seen things there that I've never seen anywhere else in the world, and just left me shaking my head in disbelief, because peoples innovation and creativity seems to be boundless... a good example of this has to be Voodoo Donuts...

Take a simple confection like a donut...In SA the most folks would do with a donut is coat it in chocolate icing and sprinkle 100's and 1000's over or coat it it cinnamon and sugar. Here in Germany they are filled with strawberry jam...but in Portland Oregan...not a chance will you find such boring stuff...

Sunday nights DMAX screens Anthony Bordain's foodie proramme, which let me tell you, is always a scream to watch. I don't know if you poor folks in the Heart of Darkness get to see it, but if not...WHAT A PITY...anyway, this last Sunday's show Bordain was in and around Portland Oregon, and it seems like a pretty neat place if you ask me. But the best thing about the city just has to be Voodoo Donuts! No lies...it sounds pretty creepy for a donut shop, but it is really a wild place. They have got a donut menue to blow your socks off. Check this out...


-Grape Ape(raised doughnut with vanilla frosting and grape powder

- Dirt(raised doughnut covered with vanilla glaze and oreo cookies)

- Arnold Palmer(cake doughnut covered with lemon and tea powder)

- Butter Fingering(Devils food, vanilla, and crushed Butterfinger)
























- Neapolitan (chocoalte doughnut with vanilla frosting and strawberry quick powder)

- Triple Chocolate Penetration(chocolate doughnut, chocolate glaze, and cocoa-puffs)

- Voodoo Doughnut(voodoo doll doughnut coated in chocolate filled with red jelly...when you bite it it bleeds!)

- Dirty Snowball(chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and surprise filling..???...Hmmm....might be fill qualudes!)

- Apple Fritter(apple/glaze/doughnut as big as your head)

- The Memphis Mafia(chocolate chips/banana/ peanutbutter/glaze big!)

- Portland Creme(raised doughnut filled with creme and covered in chocolate with two eyes)




- Cock-n-Balls(Bachlorette party favorite, tripple cream filled, with your favorite saying written right on it. Comes in its own pink box. $4.95 Order ahead as supplies can be limited... I bet!)

- Nyquil Glazed and pepto-bismol (currently on hold)

- No NameA doughnut so good we couldn't come up with a better name. It has chocolate rice crispys and peanutbutter on it.

VEGAN(thats right, vegan doughnuts! assorted flavors, come in and eat many)

Not only is Voodoo Donuts Portland Oregon's home of the Pepto Bismol doughnut. Pepto-Bismol. by the wayside, is an over-the-counter drug produced by the Procter and Gamble company used to treat minor digestive system upset and is aparrently bright pink....but they also used to make a donut called a Speedball...yip...as in speed! That is cough mixture and caffien donut...but they had to take that off the menu, too many late night ravers were raving on Speedballs, so the F&D police told them they were not allowed to combine medicine with food...The Pepto Bismol is also on hold despite the fact that one would probably need it after noshing down a half dozen of these baby's.

But being inspired by the idea of custom donuts, I thought I would create a few of my own for all my mates...so here goes...

Moonie Donut - Triple Death by choclate. Chocolate donute with choc chips, filled with chocolate syrup, coated with a dark choclate glaze and covered in smarties...(they lady is expecting...have a heart.!)

Gerrie Donut - Make that a Black Lable donut toped with a green Jägermeister glaze

Jaynie Donut - The woman is homesick...so a mielie pap donut topped with a tomatoe and onion sauce with a chunk of Boerewors on top, should chase away all the homesickness and bring on some other 'sickness' which might be fixed if she pops a Pepto Bismol donut afterwards...

The Jolly Jack Donut - A vanilla donut with a half a bankie of Durban Poison, glazed with a lime glaze and sprinkled with peanuts, served with a 2L Coke and 5 packets of Simba chips for the munchies.....

The MfG Donut - Keeping things traditoinally Germanic, make that a plain donut with saurkraut and schinken topped with a brattwürst and rounded off with a Löwensenf glaze, comes with a 6 pack of Krombacher Weitzen's...

The Jenny Donut - Plain donut no frills...just a Malborough on the side..

Lee Donut - Vanilla donut with guava and custard filling, sprinkled with choc chip cookie crumble..

The Stroy of Krishna and Radha

When I was a little girl and it came to dress up time, I never wanted your run of the mill fancy dress outfit...oh no! My Ouma had to dig into her fabric collection to drape me in meters of silk and chiffon to make me a sari!
Yip...it's a fact, ask Oupa. I wore a sari and put a red dot on my forehead with Ouma's lipstick long before I even started school. Don't ask me where I got those ideas about being an Indian girl, but to this day I have a love and fascination with India, the people and their history, and I admire and enjoy Indian art, architecture, miniature paintings, sitar music, Madras curries and the Karma Sutra...and that all loooong before it was made fashionable by Bollywood!


Which brings me to the topic of this post...I have never been into Hindu belief at all, don't get the wrong impression by this post! I was brought up in a Christian home, where any curiosity in such heathen belief was seriously frowned upon...and of course, it is all quite complicated and so, I suppose, like most other Christians, I was never really bothered with it in case it brought bad vibes, if you know what I mean.....But once I did read a bit about Hindu mythology and belief, I found it is very beautiful, and most interesting! There are many parallels to more familiar stories, and the perfection of the paradise setting...so much like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and I could go into it deeper and point it all out and give you my wise opinion on it all, but time and space here does not allow for that today...but oh..THE ART..I LOVE the art!...and it is the art that tweaked my interest in the stories behind the paintings and sculptures in the first place...

By now regular readers to this blog will have figured out that I have a bit of a thing for Kitsch, and so, of course, I have a wonderful collection of garish Hindu paintings that my family cringe to look at...but being the Queen of this blog, I will force you to appreciate the beauty and romanticism of Hindu art by introducing it slowly, with the love story of Krishna and Radha.


The Radha-Krishna amour is a love legend of all times. It's indeed hard to miss the many legends and paintings illustrating Krishna's love affairs, of which the Radha-Krishna affair is the most memorable. Krishna's relationship with Radha, his favorite among the 'gopis', has served as a model for male and female love in a variety of art forms, and since the sixteenth century appears prominently as a motif in North Indian paintings. The allegorical love of Radha has found expression in some great Bengali poetical works of Govinda Das, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and Jayadeva the author of Geet Govinda.

To cut a long and involved story short, as you should know, Hindu's believe in reincarnation, and so the Lord Krishna was the reincarnation of the Lord Vishnu. (I told you it's complicated!), but for now lets stick with one life time at a time....


So who was Radha you might well ask?
Well, Radha was one of the gopis in the Vrindavan village...and gopi is a word from Sanskrit (गोपी) meaning 'cow-herd girl'. So Rada was a cow herd girl from Vridavan, and also the reincarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi. Different 'sects' of Hindus believe different things about the deities and gods, some believe Radhar is a higher diety than Krishna and vice versa...but anyway...that's why it's complicated..


Just as Lord Vishnu was born as Krishna, Goddess Lakshmi was born as Radha! And so the story goes that Lord Krishna and Srimati Radha were each other’s best friend from childhood, and who grew up together. I must point out that Krishna was a married man, who had quite a few wives, who were also very jealous of Radhar! But for some odd reason he never married Radha. Then as I said, other Hindus believe she was his wife. In a number of versions of her story, although Radha's first love is Krishna, she is later forced to marry Abhimanyu, the son of Jatila. One source for this information is Sri Sri Camatkara Candrika by Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura. Other traditions give the name of the husband of Radha as 'Chandrasena'. Be that as it may, Krishna and Radha spent all their time in each other’s company, and they loved each other very much, so it seems odd that he didn't just marry her. So maybe all along they were these desperate lovers who couldn't have each other, Hinduism does confuse the matter somewhat..



Well.. taking a look at the art work featuring these two 'best friends' I can tell you without a doubt, Radha was absolutely smitten with Krishna! So if it wasn't that she was forced into an arranged marraige that she hated, then what's the story?
No ways does a woman look at a man like that when they are just 'friends'! But Krishna, *sigh*, typical male, thinking like men do, probably realized that to marry her would just spoil everything....and he was probably right too...I mean look at how marriages start off...and how they end up...oh hell..yeah.


And how did Krishna and Radha show their love for each other? (NO..not like that...!)
They wore each other’s colour and tried to be like the other person...(hmm..yeah ..right)

Okay, let me explain. As Krishna was as beautiful as the moon and his skin was blue as a cloud and softer than a blue lotus , Radha would always wear a blue sari and bedeck herself with blue sapphires. And because Radha’s skin was golden in colour like a flash of brilliant lightning, Krishna would always wear a yellow or golden dhoti. Radha wore tinkling anklets or payals on her ankles, and so Krishna wore them too. When they walked together it made a beautiful sound ...all far too romantic for just platonic friendship in my humble opinion! I mean just take a look at the pic below of them in different scenes together...


Krishna wore a peacock feather on his head, which shimmered and caught the light resembling a bright and beautiful rainbow, and a garland of pearls (moti). The pearl necklace that hung on his chest looked like a row of swans flying across a blue cloud. Krishna also wore a garland of colourful wild flowers called the Vaijantimala. Their bodies would shine with an unusual glow, and while Krishna shone and sparkled like the soft silvery moon, Radha seemed to dazzle like golden lightning.
Krishna also wore fish-shaped earrings and carried a flute. So when Krishna played his flute, Radha knew Krishna was in Madhuvana and she would go running to him.


All the cows, calves, deer and birds would stop on their tracks and listen enchanted by the divine music of Krishna’s flute. Krishna would hold the cow by its chin and Radha would pat its head. The swan would come waddling from the Yamuna and gather around them. The deer would rub its soft nose against Krishna’s feet and nuzzle. The birds would perch on the tree listening to the music of the flute. Sometimes when Krishna waited for Radha to join him, he would spend time talking to his animal friends in the solitude of the groves.

And a the story goes on , that the day would melt into evening, blue clouds and the moon would be up on the sky and Radha's eyes would be fixed on Krishna, and Krishna’s on Radha. Krishna was as beautiful as a moon and his skin was as blue as the heavens. Seeing the moon and evening sky, Radha would be full of love for Krishna. Krishna was her life and soul—the treasure of her life and the very life of her own life. Radha adored Krishna with all her heart, all she wanted to do was to make Krishna happy—and making him happy was what made her happy. She found joy in his joy. She did everything in her power to please him even if it meant putting Krishna and his wishes before herself and hers, asking for nothing in return. Hmmm...does seem a bit naive. Is that what true love is all about...ahh...don't you just wish!
And what about Krishna? What were his feelings for Radha? Let’s see what Krishna had to say about this himself…..

"The whole world finds true happiness when they are in my company, but what about me?I feel true happiness only when I am with Radha.

Everybody says that I am more beautiful than anything they have ever seen and that they feel joy in their heart when they just look at me. But my eyes find pleasure only when they rest on Radha.

The soft melody of my flute attracts everybody and everything to it, but my ears are enchanted by the sweet words of Radha alone.

Although my touch is cooler than coolness of many moons put together, I am refreshed only by the soft soothing touch of Radha.

I am the life and soul of the whole world but my life and soul is Radha, and Radha alone."

Oh my goodness...no wonder Radha was crazy for him! Such is the love of Radha and Krishna...*sigh*.. how do we put that back into our lives in this day and age of cold, harsh reality? Gosh..we can only try!