An artist (R) gives finishing touches to a New Year mural painted on his house in Chennai on December 29, 2022. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

A sparrow feeds its nestlings inside a hole in a building while waiting for food in Lalitpur, Nepal on Friday, March 17, 2023. (Photo by Skanda Gautam/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Devotees gather to take part in the celebrations to mark the Krishna Janmashtami festival at a temple in Jalandhar on August 26, 2024. (Photo by Shammi Mehra/AFP Photo)

A man uses an umbrella for shade as he carries a dismantled car on a cycle rickshaw to a scrapyard on a hot weather day on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, May 19, 2022. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

A Tibetan girl reacts as she gets ready to perform in a function organised to mark “Losar” or the Tibetan New Year in Kathmandu, Nepal, February 11, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

The current world Champions in the Men's and Women's RS:X, Piotr Myszka of Poland and Blanca Manchon of Spain arrive at Bathers Beach carrying the ISAF World Championships Flag to be raised to officially open the 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships on December 2, 2011 in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)

“Mehndi or menhdi is the application of henna as a temporary form of skin decoration in India, as well as by expatriate communities from the country. The word mehndi is derived from the Sanskrit word mendhikā. The use of mehndi and turmeric is described in the earliest Vedic ritual books. Haldi (Staining oneself with turmeric paste) as well as mehndi are important Vedic customs as a symbolic representation of the Outer and the Inner Sun. Vedic customs are meant to awaken the “inner light” and so the gold of the inner Sun has an important symbolic function”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Application of henna or “Mehndi” to a girls hand in a market on October 18, 2010 in Jaipur, India. (Photo by Simon de Trey-White/Getty Images)

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)