Contemplations and Ruminations

Just got back from a madcap road trip across five countries in Europe and I am still reeling from the effects of the past two weeks. There were about seventy of us on this pilgrimage trip (thirty from my parish) and I was wondering how it would be... We landed in Madrid and traversed through Spain, to reach Fatima in Portugal, then went on to Lourdes and Paris in France, stopped in the mountains in Switzerland for a day, then on to Turin, Padua, Venice, Assisi, Rome and Milan in Italy. Stayed in eleven hotels and received wake up calls at insane hours like 4:30 am... the wake up call from our hotel in Rome was quite amusing. I answered the phone to hear Michael Bublé crooning to  'I want to go home...', those people at the hotel have a nice sense of humour. So we arrived in Madrid, roamed around for a bit, then reached the hotel and I started updating the family on whatsapp about our day. They asked for my room number to call on the hotel line, so anyway I'm still che...

The Colour of Paradise or Rang-e  Khodā (which literally means ‘The Colour of God’) is  an Iranian movie set in a beautiful little mountain village near Tehran. The film is visually appealing, in fact the landscapes and its accompanying sounds form an important character. They help to establish the world of the blind protagonist, a tender hearted young boy named Mohammed who is a student in a special school in Tehran. The school is quite amazing in the way they train and care for the visually impaired children. Mohammed’s father, a widower, doesn’t seem extremely fond of his blind son whom he considers a burden. When the school closes for summer vacation, he reluctantly takes the boy back to the strikingly beautiful village where Mohammed’s doting grandmother and sisters reside. The outpouring of love that Mohammed experiences from his grandmother and sisters is poignantly portrayed. So much love and warmth abounds in these frames, it’s almost like the beauty of nature ...