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Paying Respect

Nice essay on expressing connection with things that should have been ours but are not - which these Cambodian artifacts sitting in an American museum are to a person of Cambodian descent. Reading this brought to mind several things at once. The ease with which people pray to things as they appear randomly along the way when you are out and about in India. A little temple, a shrine under a tree, a deity set up somewhere you would not expect but shown respect all the same. People do stop by and pay their respects. 

No one thinks anything of the incongruence. We also don't take ourselves too seriously when it comes to prayer, temples and such - there are some oddities out there that draw people too. The wayside shrines that dot India can be treated as organic part of the culture without going too deep on the topic as some have done, it can be delved into as a research topic. Whichever way you, everyone has a right to express their religiosity if they so wish to any shrine they feel a connection with. The museum guard had not received the memo.

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