Ryan Lobo photography

First rate rhyme for middle class people.

2011-11-21T12:00:00.024+05:30

Here I am after a long break at blogging for various reasons, including house renovation, cooking research, long discussions and unfinished projects related to genocide, writing, investigative reportage that has ended badly on at least one occasion, a general awareness of aging and a re-think of objectives I once held sacred. During these processes I have decided to put out three rhymes (and drawings) I made ages ago for my little sister Nisha. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

SANTA STEW

Santa had an horrible accident and ended up a snack for tea,

He lowered himself down the wrong chimney.

Santa dropped into a boiling vat of stew in his merry haste,

The poor man thought it was an unused fireplace!

"Oh my goodness!" Big mistake he reckoned,

Then disintegrated into bits of stew in a second.

That evening the Patel family kept going back for more,

Such delicious vegetable stew, they had never eaten non veg before,

The potatoes were amazing, though it was very well stewed meat,

Except for white clumps of hair that got stuck between their teeth,

Thus was consumed poor jolly Santa Claus,

Thus was digested the last truly giving man there was.

Went to sleep the Patels' though if they'd known they'd have surely barfed,

In the frozen distance a surly reindeer laughed.

The reindeer had told Santa it was absolutely safe to go,

there was no fire, as they’d peeped and checked before.

Now why would gentle reindeer stew Santa to the bone,

they were tired of just pulling sleds, and wanted pads of their very own

So they looked around for one who could break some labour laws,

And found one Mr. Patel to bump off Santa Claus.

The same Mr. Patel whose house it was,

The man who stewed Santa Claus..

Had made a deal with the reindeer that they had schemed it for ages

Post stew he sent a proposal to the elves that he’d pay them half wages.

The elves wrote back that they thought he was cracked in the head,

So he took the business to India and China instead.

Whole factories that work overtime to make all kinds of toys,

For millions and millions of girls and boys,

The reindeer and Patel keeled over with laughter.

The elves couldn’t compete and retired to a salt mine soon after.

I wish this had a happy ending but that really is not the case

Listen to the subtext with minimal distaste.

Squeezing down a chimney is very bad for health,

Never trust a surly reindeer, he’s after all your wealth,

Buy toys only where the toy company pays their workers true,

Or you’re just making rich the creatures that turned Santa into stew.

TOILET MONSTER

Sitting on the pot one day staring into space,

Thought i saw a peeping thing.... with a funny looking face

I shuddered and looked down between my feet,

And noticed a baby monster crouched behind the seat!

Frozen in fear i stared, knuckles all a grips

It stared back nervously with trembling monster lips

Spider legs a mess, covered in flies,

Saliva dripping teeth, two gigantic bug like eyes,

He seemed to be like me, staring into space,

A little bit lonely, a twitching furry face

I swung at him with a toilet brush and fell flat on the toilet floor,

(Try to swing with a toilet brush with your pants about your toes)

“Please don’t flush me, or break my monster bones”

He whimpered in broken English..."Me totally alones"

Your mum dropped a hair drier in the flush he said in a voice sad and muted,

And my family in the septic tank was instantly electrocuted!

(I felt bad for the monster baby as I loved my parents true

If anything ever happened to them I might cry behind the toilet too.)

I hugged the baby monster,his eyes filled up with tears,

Ill take away your sadness and help you with your fears

I washed the baby monster, scrubbed his awful feet,

Used a wire brush on his eyeballs and his teeth.

I bathed him over, under with the strongest ever floor cleaner,

and he looked so much less meaner.

I kept him in a dustbin,

By my little bed,

Fed the monster garbage,

And fondly scratched his head.

I take him to family gatherings

Nobody can tell

Everyone thinks hes an ugly relative,

As I dress him up real well

He small and ugly with his third eye in a patch,

Wearing Nikes, t-shirt and cotton pants to match,

I spray him with deodorant, and comb his disgusting hair,

but everyone ignores my friend, no one seems to care.

He tried to join the community and threw a party or two,

But people didn't appreciate the creature from the loo.

He baked cakes and did a lot of social works,

But just because people are poor does not mean they are not jerks.

Hes not the life of the party, just a monster with a heart,

(People did not like him as he did not fit the part)

So the day came and I packed him a rubbish lunch as well,

Hugged him, sobbed and made a fond farewell.

And he posed, heroic like an Olympic diver on the toilet seat,

The last i saw my monster was his disappearing scaly feet,

I looked in the swirling pot, he vanished in a flash,

My best friend had disappeared with hardly a splash.

The Carnival dustbin

Once lived a large family of brown rats 5,000 years old at least,
Living crowded, tiny and occasionally hungry somewhere in the east.
They did lots of things, which to many seemed quite odd;
They put it down to culture and animal headed gods.

One brown rat hopped in a suitcase
Flew across the seas
Thought he’d have some better luck
Looking for cheese.

From the midst of various huddled masses
He rushed through the airport gates onto greener grasses
And found a carnival dustbin filled with food,
And an off white mouse and soon a brood.

72 types of popcorn, 94 cuts of meat,
18 types of cheeses and 23 types of beet,
All high fat, sweetened, fully cheesed,
The rat was rather pleased.

For mice time flies,
In a month he was double in size
And one night over a piece of candy mid lick,
The rat felt homesick.

Into the airport he crept and into a handbag he leapt,
Close to the heart of a software engineer’s mother, the brown rat dreamt,

Of home and mother and other things true

Of food and smells and beauty too.

The plane flew over cities that lit up its wings with a gentle glow,
Over millions of rats running to and fro.
Mindless of the plane that hurtled above,
Just as the flyers were, of the earth below.

The wandered his home place
Looking for a familiar face.
And finally found the mice, still tiny in size
They said, "Who is this fat fellow…guys?"

The rat caught the next flight back across the seas,
back to the off white mouse with assorted fleas,

Over millions of rats running to and fro.
Mindless of the plane that hurtled above,
Just as the flyers were of the earth below.

If you're ever at a carnival, ever at a fair
listen carefully at the dustbin, if you care,
You might hear the strains of a sad old song,
And find a brown mouse that doesn't belong,
Anywhere.

India Urban 4 - Another Tamil Brahmin in Bangalore

2011-05-22T21:03:00.005+05:30

Objective: To reveal the epic in the ordinary and create a cultural and historical narrative from the inner lives' of India's urbanites, through the mediums' of photography and writing.

Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, who besides holding a PhD in Geography from Kent State University has also worked as a teacher of geography for over 25 years and is known for his cheeky and subtle sense of humour. I meet Chandra at a coffee shop on St. Mark's road, chosen for its quietness.

This identity of the Tamil Brahmin, what’s happening to it today?

This is purely anecdotal but I see more and more young people reverting or embracing of the identity of the Tamil Brahmin. True expression happens when people leave their country. I believe that people can express themselves in the Diaspora more than they can here. When your homeland doesn’t offer you the freedom to exist freely, people will leave and in time they will have another homeland. The further people travel the more they embrace their identities. That’s an old paradigm actually.

Would you say that you have experienced this lack of freedom to exist freely here in India and that is why you left for the US at one point?

I have never experienced this oppression so many people talk about, as I have never lived in Tamil Nadu where a lot of it happened. I am the 6^th of 6 sons. By the time the 6^th kid comes along my parents had become quite laissez-faire. I recall my dad saying even a monkey is cuter than you. I muttered that I was sitting here. They said they knew! This was amazing as it gave me freedom and the chance to explore a different course in my life.

Laughs

How important is the idea of being a brahmin to you?

You become a Brahmin by observing certain rituals and having certain practices. Like vegetarianism, using vibuthi or sacred ash on your forehead, going to the temple and performing pooja. My parents had come to believe by the time I came along that it is largely if not solely your value system that makes you a Brahmin. This was in practice in home all the time in the way “non Brahmin” people so to speak were treated. That is everyone was welcome in the kitchen, something orthodox households might frown upon, and how their “good qualities” were extolled and appreciated.

Learning Suprabatham, the name given to Sanskrit hymns recited in the morning to awaken the Lord was very important too. I am an Iyer and we had all this from a very young age. You had to learn when you were 6 or 7. In the 60’s every Saturday morning on the radio we would hear Suprabatham on the radio until my uncle got us this device from the Grundig telephone company – a spool to spool thingy. I listened to Venkatesha Suprabhatam by listening to a spool tape copy of M.S. Subbulakshmi’s rendition. I can actually see that thing. I could recite the Suprabatham along with that.

I can actually see it now. Really.

So you were taught these things and Tamil, the language of all Tamil Brahmins even though you lived in Karnataka where Kannada is ostensibly the local language.

In the first standard I started learning Tamil at the Kamala Nehru Makkala Mandira school in Bangalore. They taught all second languages, even Urdu. We had a brilliant teacher. I learned beautiful Tamil from her. In third standard, I was shifted to Kannada as second language so that I could get a job more easily in the future, since it was the official language of the state! This, based upon one single suggestion made by Mr. Nanjundaiah a highly respected and famous teacher.

I remember asking my mother what the language of the suprabhatam was. Mother said it was called ‘samskrtam’. I would keep asking my mother about the beautiful sounds coming from that Grundig machine and she would say “You can learn samskrtam in high school”. By the 8^th standard I wanted to study Sanskrit. I could hardly wait. It was not until 1971 that I could finally learn Sanskrit.

So these sounds from the Grundig machine were really important to you. This learning of something you might not have understood at that time.

That Suprabatham opened up all kinds of doors later. To Carnatic music, a love for Tamil and Kannada literature. Things I memorized affected my whole life. I studied Sanskrit from my 8^th std till college. I memorized things because I liked the sound of it initially. Later I learned so much through my knowledge of Sanskrit.

A person gets ¼ of his learning from teacher, ¼ from his own intelligence. ¼ his fellow students, ¼ from the passage of time. This I learned in Sanskrit class and it’s amazing how it influences what I do and who I am today. I see myself as an educator more than anything else now and that was a beginning, that learning.

Everyone wants results immediately today. We don’t let children reflect and develop in their own time. There is so little time for reflection for children today. There’s a certain discipline in learning things by rote, especially if they are beautiful. It’s a form of meditation. I learned so much from Suprabatham. Also, I had a brilliant Sanskrit teacher Mr. Vidvaan Alasingara Bhatrachar.

This time to reflect? How important is it?

There is a discipline with learning these languages and memorizing verses. It’s sharpened my memory skills. If I can find a rhythm in anything, I can remember it. In English I cannot find that rhythm. I can memorize any Sanskrit shloka so easily. In the Sanskrit I studied in my life I remember 80-95 percent of every verse I have ever memorized. These are all parts of my journey. Tamil, Kannada and Sanskrit.

How important to you were these rituals that accompanied your learning?

I see the importance of ritual. On the other hand my brothers have to have rituals. They love them, all the ceremonies and death rituals for my parents and temple visits. They observe a lot of ritual. None of those things have been very important for me. I love them, but they are not important.

Why?

Because I am lazy. Though I believe in them. And being in the US also made a difference.

How did being in the US make a difference to your observance of rituals?

I entered this phase of just dissing everything. Over a period of time and I cant clearly place the time frame I decided that I should recover my faith in these rituals, approximately at the time my father passed away in 1995. I had come back to involve myself in the ceremonies and rituals after his death and I suddenly felt the importance of ritual in my life.

Also my Professor Surinder Bhardwaj who was my guide and is a well-known cultural geographer who specializes in sacred spaces and pilgrimages had given me enough insight into the importance of ritual. I understood from my casual conversations with him that it allows one to incorporate some of the home you left behind into the home you are in now, in the Diaspora. I would have lunch and coffee with him everyday. He is truly a brilliant teacher. You need to understand that I felt energized and you know the great thing about this man is that he told me recently that he felt energized too when he spoke with me. In all my geography education workshops that I conduct, on the second slide, I show is his picture and acknowledge his influence in my becoming a geographer.

I realized that I didn’t have to take up this entire new American persona and could incorporate both my Indian as well as American persona. When I returned to India it was because of my professors influence that I now see certain textures to my life in Bangalore which I had not know before I went to the US.

Would you say your university experience of America has helped you appreciate India more?

Yes, it helped me do this and also overcome my shyness and become bi-cultural.

Your teachers seem to have played an important role in your life. This idea of the guru and shishya or student is a very Brahamanical one isn’t it? From ancient gurukuls or schools?

The idea of the guru is one of the most powerful things that has sustained me. The idea of recognizing peoples presences in my life. My teachers have played an enormous role in my education. Mr. Narasanna in high school gave me a way of looking at the world and how things are interconnected, which was truly amazing. With Mr. Narasanna I never got to tell him how fascinating my life got because of him. I have had to come to grips with this.

Would you say most Indians don’t have this larger view?

I suspect so. Traveling does give you a different perspective. For some it’s art and literature. For me geography opened up my worldview.

You seem to be deeply grateful to your teachers and you mention them often. As a teacher yourself today in India, after these experiences in the US, do you feel fulfilled in your work?

You see, I am doing as best as I can in India. I am not too sure if I can have the same impact though. The impact I have on a student may or may not come back to me. That kind of gratification I can hope for but I think it’s not realistic to expect it. Appreciation for me for my teachers came with the passage of time. With my Sanskrit teacher in high school Mr. Alasingara Bhatrachar, I was able to thank him.

Do you feel this same thanks coming from your students?

One way I feel fulfilled is when I hear this from other people, that I have influenced my students in good ways. To me it is much more powerful when I hear thanks from other people rather than from the students themselves. I have been teaching for more than 25 years now.

Once I received a beautiful letter from an American student for having helped transform his life. One of his friends had contracted HIV from a transfusion and died. Our conversations about cultural geography led him to realize how he could use it to accept his friend’s passing. The letter he wrote me made me cry.

The enablement for teachers and professors in the US is much, much higher than what you get here. In India there are a lot more constraints.

Would you say the "Brahmin value system" of learning, study, discipline and integrity in this process plays an important role in your life?

I identify strongly with people from my background so to speak in several ways. Pramod in Atlanta is an old classmate. From the 8^th standard we could both look at the same situation and understand the same points of humor, unlike other classmates. We remember such fine details, which other people miss and still do.

What work did you look for after your B.Sc in India?

I answered an Ad in the Deccan Herald newspaper from the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control after my Bachelors in science and joined them as an Insect Collector. I murdered a lot of insects for Science. I had delusions of becoming a scientist which culminated in a partly traumatic experience where I nearly drowned in Kepannuddhi tank in Bangalore trying to collect the eggs of a certain creature called a shore fly or Brachydeutera longpipes which lays its eggs on dead and decaying organic scum.

I remember this beautiful green carpet of scum on the lake. There were tons of eggs there and I got stuck in the vegetation when my foot went right through the scum and I was stuck and sinking into the muck in bell-bottoms and hawai slippers.

A Little kid named Narasimha pulled me out. He saved me. I was filthy. Disgusting. I somehow saved my slipper and went home and bathed in Shikakai, which is this antibacterial powder, all Brahmins love. No bacteria can withstand that.

I have never trusted a lake since that incident.

Tell me about your story in America. Why did you return to India?

When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, my brother wanted me to do the State Bank of India’s officers exam. I could get a stable job in a bank then. I decided against the exam and was put under great pressure from my family to do it. The ultimate idea of rotting for me was to be in a bank so I went for the exam and sabotaged it and answered c under multiple choices for everything. It was the first time I deliberately flunked an examination, all for America. My father was quite disappointed.

I arrived in America on January 1^st, 1982. I went for higher studies. Contrary to the stereotype I wasn’t a very good student. I had what is called a Gandhi second-class grade or any more and I’d have gone into 3^rd class, just like in a train in pre independence days. Basically, I had no chance of admission into a college in India.

Pramod, my friend said we needed to go to America. Both of us got admission and my brothers and friends helped me go financially speaking, though I had no financial aid. I went to Ohio university in Athens to study environmental studies and he went to Wichita State. I didn’t get a place in any Indian university. I transferred to Baylor in Waco, Texas eventually. From 1978 to 1982 all I thought of was going to America. It was a big thing. It was all I lived for. After my MS degree from Baylor University I went to Texas A&M and did 1 year of a PhD program there. That didn’t work out. Then, I transferred to Kent State and came under the guidance of Dr. Surinder Bhardwaj who opened my eyes to the joys and thrills of geography.

Tamil Brahmin fathers seem to want their kids to be in stable rather than highly placed jobs. Is that true?

Stability over money. Always.

Where are your parents now?

Both are rather dead.

What idea of America did you have before you went?

I had no idea of America. Whatever ideas I had of the US came from comic books.

Which comics?

Archie and Donald duck comics. I also knew about pizza (pronounced pee-zah) from Archie comics. I thought they tasted like dosa but I was terribly disappointed. Truly so.

I transferred to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the world’s largest southern Baptist university. David Koresh was still a teenager, getting screwed up slowly when one day I discovered that I had eaten beef accidentally. There was no major vomiting like I had often imagined and that was surprising. It was Tex Mex. I began to I love those places. Another trauma was Pepperoni pee-zah. I thought it was pepper slices on the pee-zah so I wolfed it down and it was delicious. I also tried the double cheeseburger. I eventually learned about cholesterol and stopped red meat.

Was the experience all-good or did you have hard times as well?

I experienced a lot of ups and downs. No funding at first and then I managed to get some after working very hard for it.

What sustained you during these times?

Prayer. I don’t think I am that spiritual but I prayed a lot. I have two main legacies from my parents. The first is a Kuttuvilakku oil lamp from my mother and the second is an oval steel plate from my father.

Stability verses risk, adventure and travel? Is that true.

My life is anything but stable. I travel but am not wealthy. There is a still a tussle between these things in my mind.

What is your anchor during changing or stressful times?

Rituals give good anchoring. I learned this from Joseph Campbell, the mythologist. Never underestimate the power of symbols in your life.

A definition of a dark age I heard recently is when symbols lose their meaning. Is that true today for Brahmins in urban India, especially in places like Bangalore?

It’s a valid observation and many people do not have these symbols these days. But there is a dichotomy here that is interesting. In changing times an anchor is important. In Madras I see these people who still retain this sense of identity strongly. Not so much in Bangalore for some reason. My mother’s younger sister’s son. He is one of the most spiritual people I have met. He works for a bank. He has decided not to get married. He has said, “As long as I am alive I will look after my parents. Then I will go to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai once they die.”

Chandra seems deeply moved by this.

Would you say that some Brahmins retreat into these symbols from just the trauma of living in today’s chaotic and fast changing world?

You try to recollect what you have. My parent’s generation was very close to these symbols and they gave me these symbols. Once I set them aside and totally rejected them. But when my father died I began the process of going back to them and they anchored me. These symbols remained within me and I came back from the US with a deeper understanding of them.

I was humbled.

Give me an example of how you involve these Brahamanical symbols in your life?

I teach geography now and these symbols play an important role in my teaching. For example I talk to my students about Pilgrimage. How many of you have gone on one? Temple steps can be symbolic, an inward journey of sorts. I try and impart this idea of an inner journey of sorts, to my students.

I recall a line from that Gandhi film “I’ve traveled so far and wide and all that’s happened is that I’ve come home”. Today I am an American citizen and I can actually say I am comfortable with it. Today I can actually say I love India and America and am comfortable in either place.

A successful merging.

This comfort you speak of. Has it come after this journey to America?

Absolutely.

You mentioned to me earlier that you don’t go for rituals like your brothers so but that you still feel anchored by these rituals?

My brothers have an issue with me, as I do not go for the annual rituals with them. I do not go with them, as I believe that these rituals are extremely powerful. And I want them performed with a great deal of understanding and the right aesthetic as well.

What rubbish I told my mother. I wont do this. My mother agreed with me. She actually once told me about her daughters-in-law. She said that hey refused to move with the times. She said “They’re drowning in tradition”. She was a liberal woman, my mother.

These traditions and their meaningfulness, Do you think it will survive current changes in India?

I am not pessimistic. There is a certain motivation for some people to recover their symbols of their past. And these symbols have endured. Though for me, it’s very private. It’s always a struggle to keep ones identity in the larger milieu of things. I don’t think I have a sense of being beleaguered. We adapt. It’s not been a choice. We have just had to. We will in the future also. We will endure. However, we need to hold onto the Tamil language and fight the Hindi hegemony.

Tell me about the so called “strident anti Brahmin” voice. How does the Brahmin respond?

We don’t respond. We move on and adapt. And I am glad theirs no loud reply. But many of us have a deep underlying anger. Very deep. But I have personally never felt angry; as I have never had to face the kinds of things some of these people talk about. Before I went to the US I would not talk to people based on certain things. I wouldn’t talk to people if they were smoking. And I was painfully shy. America changed all that. I had to survive, I had to teach and so I left it all behind.

Reservation kept many of us away from education in India. We went to the US and learned so much more. So much more.

Why did you come back to India?

I got a job at North Dakota State University in Fargo. Initially I was thrilled but after a year I felt the place was quite boring. I finished my PhD in 1993; and in 1995 my father died. In 1996 my mother passed away.I returned Bangalore in 1998 for 8 months on a senior research fellowship and fell in love with Bangalore and then also felt extreme hatred for Fargo. I returned to India in 2000 and found that geography education is pathetic in India and was in need of a kick in the ass. I started an initiative under The Dharani Trust called “The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies. I also teach at the Bangalore International School.

Two days later I climb the stairs to the roof of Chandra’s apartment building to take some photographs. It’s located close to Johnson market, a predominately Muslim area and his apartment is located behind the local mosque.

Does the mullah calling disturb you?

Well, some of them yell it out violently but there is this one young fellow who does it melodiously. I don’t mind him.

Chandra is moved, as was Suchindranath by the telling of his story. It’s a powerful thing, to tell your own story, he says. Crows circle Chandra and he tells me that they want to get fed, as Brahmins put food out for the crows, which they believe, are the spirits of their ancestors.

Chandra looks down at an empty ground next to the apartment and tells me that they slaughter goats there. He says so with apparent distaste. After I take come photographs we go down to his apartment, which is spartan, utilitarian and slightly messy. It overlooks a crowded section of houses. One wall contains a work desk with a TV on it with mixers for making chutneys lying beneath it. It lies right next to a pooja table with the metal oil lamp his mother gave him placed on it. Beneath the table is another lamp and I think that it is a ship’s lantern. I ask.It’s a railway signal lamp, says Chandra.

So are you interested in trains?

I went though a phase where I wanted to be an engine driver for the Brindavan express between Bangalore and Madras. Even now if I could get a chance I would love to be an engine driver. Not as a career but to just ride one. Mr. Pacheco was a really good engine driver, an old man with elephantiasis. He was a very senior engine driver and when I was a child he would let me up in the engine and show me how to use it. The throttle would go up 8 notches and he would change notches by the colour of the smoke. I loved traveling by train.

From where to where would you travel by train?

As a child, every Saturday my uncle and I would take the Bangalore to Madras express to Jolarapettai. We would eat vadai at Jolarapettai and take the Brindavan express to Bangalore. Very often we would return to Bangalore with Mr. Pacheco. I would sit with him and he would let me pull the whistle cord as well. When we saw the rear guard compartment pass out of reach we would give a really long blast.

In India we can keep the door open whereas abroad we could not do that. How beautiful is that. I love to stand at the door in a train, with it wide open. We would visit my grandparents in Tiruchchi and take the steam train there. We would reach Kullithalay at 6 am in the morning and wait for another train to pass. People would cross the tracks and eat breakfast and would also get vibuthi for their forehead. Then they would eat hot idlis, pongal and coffee. Then when the train re-started I would stand at the door, switching between each side of the train, between each open door. On either side of the track we would have alternating rice paddies and banana plantations. There was a gentle early morning breeze and the green was pure and bright.

It was about two furlongs from my grandmother’s house to the Cauvery river. As soon as we reached we would drop whatever we were carrying and run towards the river after grabbing a towel and soap. We would run barefoot, cross the railway tracks, the highway, scramble up the levee and slide down the other side into the river. We would swim for about an hour and then head back starving to the house where we would eat and sleep deeply. After all this we still had coal in our hair from that train. Later on when I read “Malgudi Days,” those wonderful stories from R.K Narayan about life within the village, I realized that this was the village those stories came from.

I never want to visit the UK you know.

Why?

I have an idea of the UK from P.G Wodehouse, which I do not want to ruin. I do not want to change this idea of Malgudi also.

This idea of childhood seems to give you great peace and joy.

Not entirely true. We also had traumas but the thought of the train journey sustains me. When stressed, these thoughts’ of steam trains’ and those early mornings give me a sense of romance, adventure and peace.

On the pooja table, the lamp Chandra’s mother left him stands next to a tiny statue of the elephant headed Lord Ganesha. The little idol is wearing a dhoti and suit jacket, the official garb of the Mysore State government servant at one time... though not anymore.

Thank you Chandra Shekhar Balachandran for allowing me to take this interview and for the usage of your photographs. Thank you Ashok Krishnan for taking the time to discuss symbology, Joseph Campbell and many other things with me, which helped greatly in my interviewing here.

India Urban 2: Abdul Raheem, Tropical fish dealer in Bangalore

2011-04-04T13:24:00.018+05:30

2010

Abdul Raheem’s father has died 3 months and 3 days ago. He sits on an ancient swivel chair, by a slightly tilted seemingly ill discus fish floating in a stark silicone sealed tank, away from the bustle of the market, isolated on the first floor of the 83 year old Russell market building (upstairs).

“Business is terrible. We are struggling but managing. It is our love for the fish that makes me do this” he says, when I ask how the recession has affected him.

Abdul tells me that business fell by exactly 88 percent after the current right off centre BJP government came to power. “They make sure people cannot spend on fish or other things”, he says. Then he tells me about his grandfather, a ticket collector in the railways who decided to follow his passion and started the “Bharat fish aquarium” In 1954.

“He was a great man, wild birds would come and sit on his hand. Wild birds. I swear! Now no one can do that now ! We are different from all those other fellows who sell fish. We have customers coming back to us for 30 years! I get calls at 3 am from my customers sometimes, for a house visit. Who will go except us?"

“It is the first ever aquarium in Bangalore. For many years it was the only option. We had film stars, politicians and even police commissioners. ” Says Abdul. “The Assistant police commissioner Mr. Ashok Kumar of crime is my best friend now and buys fish from me only” says Abdul. “Please feature him in your article. He will be very happy. He is a good man.”

Abdul snaps his fingers inside a fish tank and several sword tails emanate out of the green water and rise to his fingers. “They only think of money, those fish fellows” he says.

Abdul carries around pictures of his fish on his iphone. “It’s a 3g, a beautiful phone.” He tells me and slowly and unnecessarily and carefully peels off the protective screen to show me his discus fish.

“Nokia is nothing compared to this. The 3gs is much better. Costs 37 thousand. Give or take, grey market or from apple” says Abdul and replaces the screen cover carefully.

“My grandfather liked me very much. He even sent me to Damascus to work at the water life company in 2001. There, they love Indians, they don’t hate anyone, I swear”. Says Abdul emphatically. “They invited me to dinner everyday but I did not go because I wanted to prove myself and cleaned tanks and maintained the ph all the time. They challenged me to breed angelfish! They said it was impossible to breed them in cold temperatures but I did! Later they took others from Chennai to help them but they could not do what I did. My water after I treat it is better than Bisleri mineral water! ”

“In 1988 we started making silicon gel for making tanks. Before bitumen was used not everyone uses silicon and we were the first! I have designed so many tanks now “ and Abdul and he takes out some photos of fish tanks he designed and holds them up for a photograph.

“We have accomplished many things."

“Why did you come back” I ask him and Abdul thinks before he says, “ Home is home, no?”

A customer enters the shop and Abdul tells him that the discus fish cost 7,000 rupees and even then that they are not for sale.

There isn’t a customer in sight so I ask Abdul why he continues the family business. “My grandfather started it, my father just died, so I have to continue”. He says that his three brothers run other aquariums in the city but he runs his grandfathers old company, because he was the favorite.

“Also”.

Long pause.

“We are only paying 500 rupees rent a month in this old government building, the old corporation rates, whereas you will have to pay 15 to 25 thousand rupees a month in a mall.

Short pause

But they will never be able to breed angels in low temperatures. There is no unity amongst the fish sellers now. There are about 1000 different aquariums in Bangalore today. That’s 1000 times the amount of business in 1954 and it all happened in the last 20 years “ says Abdul.

Long pause

“But I do not care. We do not care. I swear!”

I asked if he wants to open up ship in a mall. “I have had some offers" says Abdul abruptly.

Then he exclaims.

“Who else feeds their discus fish goat heart? You have to clean it so carefully so they can digest it easily. Not even one small piece of fat should remain, otherwise the fish will fall sick. Tell me, which mall fellow will feed his discus fish goat heart? HUH? "

Abdul feeds his discus fish goat heart.

Many thanks to Abdul for the interview and also a big thank you to Ashok Krishnan for his time for the shoot and for his conversation . This conversation was published in edited form in Bidoun magazine 2010.

India Urban 1 - A Tamil Brahmin in Bangalore

2011-03-29T11:57:00.027+05:30

Subject: Mr. Suchindranath Aiyar, 2010

Photograph credits: Ryan Lobo and others. Photographs from Mr. Suchindranath's personal albums are used with his permission.

“He will say what a lot feel but will not express, what people are too scared to say. No magazine will ever publish your article”.

I had been warned about meeting Suchindranath Aiyer and was intrigued. He was well known for writing letters to newspapers and fighting what he called injustice. He had taken the Bangalore Club committee to court, survived two major automobile accidents and was well known at Koshy’s restaurant for causing offense to people with his views.

Brahmins at my alma mater in Bangalore, the Jesuit run St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School were (stereotypically speaking) non athletic kids who ate curd rice in groups, were easy to bully, dressed neatly and raised their hands milliseconds faster than anyone else. They would also often sit in the second bench, not close enough but not too far away from the teacher, who usually loved them more than his own children. At least, that’s what us rowdier castes and communities would feel.

The Tamil brahmins

In the early 19th century Tamil Brahmins had managed to educate themselves under the British and were hired in large numbers by the government. They acquired a near monopoly of government jobs, which led to huge resentment against them. The Justice party and later parties like the DMK ended their monopoly of government jobs and many Brahmins’ feel that they were and are oppressed by a state they once served. Thus began the great Tamil Brahmin Diaspora, which is still in effect today. Tamil Brahmins are frequently held responsible by the media and political parties in India for the historical oppression of lower-castes’. Most Tamil Brahmin families have at least one member of their family abroad, most often in the USA and very often in the Information Technology industry.

Suchindranath Aiyer

I reach the 3^rd floor apartment of Suchindranath Aiyer and the door is fortified. A small peep window with a sliding door has the following emblem with “To lead from Darkness to Light” inscribed.

(My family crest, he later tells me) The slider slides and the door is opened. I take off my shoes and walk down a corridor lined with Stetson hats and photographs of lions standing over dead zebras. The living room has a wooden shelf stretching from one end to the other lined with college trophies for debating, elocution and quizzing. Lying against the wall next to a crutch is a Masai Maran spear from Africa, or the spear of an uninitiated Masai youth. Also present is a large Japanese painting (done by his guru I am told). A Japanese Wakizashi sword is displayed on the shelf and besides these two objects of combat are idols of various Hindu gods. I had not expected to see weapons so openly displayed. The room is spotless.

Suchindranath takes me for the tour. He limps badly, the effects of the automobile accidents, but his back is erect. His bedroom walls are lined with the images of Lord Ganesha, Sharada and Chandrashekar Bharati, the former head of the Sringeri Mutt, the ancestral monastic order of his lineage. An image of his Japanese spiritual master Mokichi Okada lies above the mirror, his hand raised as if to bless Suchindranath.

“If I look in the mirror, all my teachers can look at me. I am aware they are watching me. Including myself, my greatest teacher.”

I didn’t know you spent a lot of time in Africa?

I was in Africa for 5 years. And the old Masai men are in their philosophy very similar to Brahmins and the covenant of Brahma. A Maran, or the uninitiated Masai, once upon a time, would have to kill a lion with a spear to become a man.

Suchindranath sits down carefully, his injured leg stretched out. I ask him if he is in pain and he says, “Only when I move” and laughs.

This notion of being Brahmin seems very important to you…

I have been brought up very deeply with this. All Brahmins are descendants of 7 sages who lived thousands of years ago. These 7 sages received a covenant from Prajapati, or Brahma, the creator, in human form and he gave them the purpose of man, which is to build a paradise on earth on 3 pillars of truth virtue and beauty and within the ambit of divine law, charity, mercy and moderation. Whosoever takes a step towards this goal will derive indescribable joy and anyone who steps away from this will suffer enormously. This is the covenant of Brahma and most Brahmins today have no clue about this. It governs my life and is what makes me a Brahmin.

The caste system has 4 main castes, the Brahmins (priestly class), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants) and Sudras (workers). All Aryas of all 4 castes have the sacred thread. Not just Brahmins. The word Arya means several things. By connotation in India it means noble. Aiyer or Iyer, my surname comes from Arya. In the south the suffix rr was added out of respect and Aryar became Iyer over time.

You speak of this with a lot of pride and even tenderness. Where does your faith in this idea come from? “Casteism“ and the idea of the Brahmin isn’t very respected today in urban India. The caste system is looked down upon by many.

The community is persecuted now. It wasn’t always this way. The Brahmins had a love hate relationship with the British. Don’t forget, it was Brahmins who the started the revolt of 1857 against the British.

We made good Clerks of the empire as we had discipline and good learning and language skills. At the same time the British had this suspicion, which became more than suspicion, which became a veiled anger. Strange as it may seem we served them well. My paternal grandfather was an engineer of the Madras Presidency and was given a title by the British. At the same time Sir Hood hated him as he was very outspoken and wrote a confidential report that said he was a communist. But to be fair and the British were far more fair than the rascals who rule us today, they gave Sir Hood a written reply and said that it was not possible that he was a commie when his two eldest sons had fought for the Emperor and were both commissioned officers in the air force, and one was a DFC.

We have served India well for generations, mind you. My grandfather owed his education to the Jesuits of Trichnapolly. A Jesuit was pleased with my grandfather and insisted that he be sent to college, as he felt he was too bright to become a farmer. He was directly recruited into the Indian Service of Engineers then. He got his title as he took the precaution to build barricades and barrages that saved much of the Cauvery riparian areas from flooding. It was a Moslem from Madurai who banged on the governor’s table and said, “How can you not give him a title?”

Who was this Moslem?

I can’t remember but his name contained Bahadur and Sait.

So when did the discrimination against Brahmins truly begin? What ensured that they left in such large numbers from Tamil Nadu?

In 1938 the British brought out a discrimination law called the Communal Gazetted Order under the Madras Presidency, to exclude Brahmins from promotion and employment wherever possible. The British were wooing the anti Brahmin justice party. This party has now turned into the Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu. They also supported the expropriation of Brahmin land. The South Indian Brahmin is now among the poorest. The pogrom began in the south of India and it’s still going on.

You are an orphan if you are a Brahmin especially in Tamil Nadu, one of our original homelands, because of political parties that make scapegoats out of us for their political ends. We form the Diaspora now, all over the world and in Bangalore as well. We are like the Jews in this way fleeing our homeland, but we shall survive.

What’s your understanding of the caste system? Who are you within this tapestry of caste?

I belong to the Naidrava-Kashyapa gothra. Naidrava was a rebel and belonged to this particular descent. The third sage is Apathsara, which has been woven into the tapestry of my gothra. Kashyapa is from the original seven sages.

Vadhadesha Vadama is my community. My name comes from place called Suchindran, 40 km from Kanyakumari, the tip of India. You can call it legend, but the chronicles say that we came to what is present day India from what is present day Afghanistan just before the Mahabharata war. We came south with Janameya Jaya, the great grandson of Arjuna. He eradicated snakes in revenge for his father’s death from snakebite and was therefore cursed. To escape the curse he came to the place Suchindran. We came south and settled in what is present day Madurai. On the way back to the Narmada valley we decided to stay in Madurai. This is who I am. And this story has been passed down for close to 5,000 years from Rig Vedic times, from mouth to ear, father to son, priest to child.

Why aren’t there books and just an oral tradition?

As in the Japanese Kojiki it was banned to write down history as the written word could be politically manipulated. So my parents and family priest taught me all this as a child as their community did, before them. This story has passed down orally through families, in good times and bad, through war and famine, genocide and peace.

This is so important to me. This imparting of knowledge culminates in the thread ceremony or coming of age ritual for all Brahmins. One’s father carries it out though one’s mother looks after spiritual growth before that. We are taught to recite shlokas or sacred verses and the Suprabatham by heart, and we learn our history and lineage. It’s a family effort, this education. It’s nice to know people are interested in these things. Nowadays, a lot is being lost.

Ravi and Suchindranath

So the symbols of your gothra have survived so long, without much interference?

Yes. Not suppressed by poverty or dark ages the tradition of Brahmins has been kept alive, within families and through priests. This identity, this knowledge about our selves in the universe, has sustained so many during dark ages, so many times.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Close the Bible and open the Manu Smriti”, which came up with the caste system”. He also criticized it for its abusive treatment of the lower castes claiming "This organization too found it necessary to be terrible."What do you think of this?

Initially the Guru of the Guru Kula or school of sorts chose the person’s caste depending on the person’s capability. Not the way it is today. Asoka the Great was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 269 BC to 232 BC. He broke the treaty of Bharatha as the supreme council of Kashi said he was too young to rule. He embraced Buddhism, and dismantled the Aryavartha system, which included the Guru kulas' or schools for Brahmins and the armed forces. The empire fell apart subsequently. The abolishing of the guru kul system led to a situation where castes ossified and their skills of trades could be past from fathers to son now rather than from the community to the entire group. This was the beginning of the rot. These are parts of history that have been eradicated by the political class for their own purposes. We have survived though.

Would you say the “old” ways were better than what we have now?

Absolutely. Look at what we live in now. Corruption. Bandicoots. We could abolish income tax for the next century if we get back what these politicians have stolen from us. Billions.

Suchindranath picks up a newspaper and points at an article where 336 crores or about 75 million dollars is being spent on buffets to entice government employees of the Life Insurance Corporation of India, to attend work.

Shouldn’t this idea of Hinduism, this inward observance, this meditation and your covenant of Brahma help unite different Hindus rather than separate them?

There’s no such thing as Hinduism. It’s an agglomeration of religions. They have included the murderous Thug cult and Brahmins as well. The Aryans came in and their law was imposed on a host of religions. That’s why it’s called a polytheistic religion. Us Aryans have the Sun as the living idol and we believe in Brahma. Basically. After independence the pyramid has been turned upside down. We have made sure the thugs and bandits are at the top and the intellectuals and thinkers at the bottom. We have ensured that people without philosophy and without cultural background are at the top at the cost of people with integrity.

Why don’t Brahmins fight back against these “injustices”?

We never felt it necessary to waste our lives fighting. We were skilled in other ways. We prefer, historically speaking, to leave and start again.

Most of my family is in the US. I made the mistake of not going as my parents brought me up to be patriotic. By the time I grew up and was enlightened, it was too late. One of my nephews is a neurosurgeon and the other is a radiologist. In India they would not have gotten admission to medical college, as they were Brahmins. My daughter is in Germany doing a Ph D in robotics. She got 99 percent in her entrance exam and still didn’t get admission to medical college in India because of reservation for lower castes. I have told her never to come back to this country. The reservation system ensures that even if we do well in schools and entrance examinations our children cannot get seats in colleges, government employment or promotions.

In the 1971 Satyajit Ray film Seemabaddha the hero of the film chats with his Tamil Brahmin secretary and asks him how he deals with the vagaries of life with such equanimity. The secretary replies “"Sir, it is simple. On a cold day, the best position to occupy is the place that is neither too close or too far from the fire. If you are too close to the fire, you could get burnt. If you are too far, you wont get warmed up!"

The Tamil Brahmin (stereotypically) prefers not to become king, because deep inside himself he knows that when the barbarians come hurtling over the wall, it’s the kings head which rolls and after some little trauma he would be hired once again to do the accounts, or maybe robotics, diligently, as before.

Why do you think that the Brahmin does not engage in warfare or secessionism?

We are separate from this idea of India that you have. With the abilities we have we can survive and don’t need to fight. We have however fought wars and we can do whatever is required on the material plane. Though our main calling is to divine law and dharma or justice.

There seems to be a lot of hurt in what you say.

It’s not just hurt. It’s hatred. Suppressed Brahmins here keep their mouths shut as you have the Indian state, cops, goons and others against you. I don’t keep shut but most Brahmins are family people and keep shut. I don’t because the laws in India have screwed me so much I don’t care. I don’t care. But at the first opportunity I will jump ship. This country has no allegiance from any Brahmin even though my parents brought me up to be patriotic. The Indian government rubs the patriotism out of you. America is the new promised land. They reward hard work, integrity and diligence there. All Brahamanical characteristics. The Brahmin contribution to India has been immense, to the freedom struggle, to its development and we are rewarded this way, by refusing our children education, even though they deserve it.

How did the Indian state rub the patriotism out of you?

In so many ways. I was in the State Bank of India from 1977 to 1983 when I resigned and joined the IT industry. When I was in State Bank of India the transfers and positions you got and they way you were treated was absolutely ludicrous in the 70’s and 80’s. Ridiculous. And the last straw was when reservations were imposed even for promotions. This was the first animal farm amendment. Schedule 9 of the Indian constitution says that some are equal but some are more equal than others. Schedule 9 says that in law one Indian is less than another. Brahmins are the least equal of the lot.

I hear you were slotted for a top job in the State Bank of India, and then you resigned, much to the surprise of everyone.

Yes I was slotted for great things at the Bank but I quit out of principle and this comes from my family. For us integrity is an issue. It’s been in our family for ages. My great grand father quit government service as a Tahlsaldar and went back to farming. Integrity is an issue!

Then I joined the IT industry. I headed NIIT’s franchising and education, which I did with a vengeance. It gave career opportunity to my community. A rope to escape the enslavement of building pyramids’ for the pharaohs’ of India.

I was advisor to the Modi group in 90-92. In 92 I joined the “Quit India” movement (laughs) and after being co-chairman of the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) for education and software. I then went to the US. One of the cousins, doing well in the US told me that the government has done us a great favor by chasing us to America. “You got psyched by your parents. The writings on the wall are clear. India does not deserve our brains. You refused to leave and now it’s too late. You are a blind idiot.” This is what my cousin told me. When I visited him in the US the first thing he did was take me to a strip bar. To get me used to the culture, he said. (Laughs)

A stereotypical view about Brahmins’ is that they look for stability over money and ambition. Is that true?

Some of us are introverted. But we are used to adapting and finding the best of Brahmin philosophy elsewhere. I have had fabulous communion with my community in the most unlikely of places.

So would you say that the community could exist outside this idea of India because of its philosophy and spiritual moorings?

Yes.

Where have you felt at home, the most?

I went to the US and didn’t fit, as I had too much seniority for the positions I was offered. However, in 1987 I went to London. The first time I have ever felt at home.

Why did you feel at home?

I don’t know. I never felt at home in India except for my early childhood with my grandparents. Cleanliness, orderliness, and rule of law were how the household was run. All very Brahamanical. When I got back to India from the UK, I realized that I didn’t lose my temper the whole time that I was in the UK, unlike when I was in India.

So culture shock happened when you returned to India. Not when you were abroad?

When I returned to India after visiting the UK I lost my temper for the first time in eight weeks. There was a Bombay cop at the immigration line going around and tapping everyone on the shoulder with his cane. I barked at him and the cop called his superior who left when he saw me standing there, dressed in a suit. He personified what India was to me, he reminded me of all that stinks, all that is unholy, all that is dirty, and all that the political leadership of India represents. This was in 1987.

After experiencing hygiene, order and rule of law I return and find that most Indians lacked hygiene, manners and etiquette. Ryan, You must emigrate. I am too old. You are still young enough. New Zealand is a good choice. Japan if you have the language which is hyper tolerant of eccentricity but your freedom ends where their nose begins. Switzerland is like Singapore. Intolerant. So don’t go there. In New Zealand you get elbow space and they have English, of a sort.

Tell me about Japan? Why did you go there?

Japan was in 2002 – I am a member of a Japanese spiritual organization called

Toho-no-Hikari. Light from the east. They’re into 3 activities. Spiritual healing, nature farming and the pursuit of art and aesthetics. Mokichi Okada was and is my guru to this day. (Mokichi Okada died in 1956).

What was it that attracted you to this organization?

These people do exactly what the Covenant of Brahma expects. They are the only organization I have found that pursues the covenant of Brahma. They had an office at Richmond circle in Bangalore in 1995. However they fled India with great suspicion as they were cheated here. I followed them to Japan to persuade them to return.

What happened?

I failed.

How did you fail?

Actually a bus I was in went off the road and my left shoulder and right leg was crushed. I took the bus company to court for 2 ½ years, as I was not eligible to receive the same amount of compensation from the insurance company that a Japanese could. The spiritual organization looked after me as a mother would look after a child during that time, as did the Tamil Brahmin community in Japan. They would get me idlis and sambhar to eat in the hospital.

Did you win the case?

No. The Japanese Supreme Court ruled that a Japanese life is more important.

How did you feel when you lost the case?

I was deeply disappointed. In court cases no matter how right you might be, laws take their own course. You cannot go to courts expecting justice. This is what I have learned in India. But I was given a chance to fight and seek justice. I am happy for that, very happy for that.

What’s the failure of Brahmins? Have they not shared the value system you speak of, this philosophy and learning?

I have pondered this a long time. In Mysore at one time the Brahamanical values were state values as the king Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was under Sringeri Mutt. Brahamanical values were revered and Mysore turned into something great at the time. The head of the Sringeri mutt was like the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Ministers of Mysore State before independence included a lot of Brahmins, including my great grand father. But the point is today that the pyramid is inverted. The Brahmins are at the bottom now.

In ancient times the place of last resort, where the 5^th varie or 20 percent of taxation would go, was to the temple. When invaders or disaster struck people would flee to the temples. The temple was like a bank and the money would be spent only in the case of a disaster. There are no last resorts now. The government has been stealing the offerings at the Tirupati temple for ages. Did you read the papers yesterday? They have stolen millions.

Today the Brahmin has neither power nor wealth so why would anyone want to emulate him or uphold order, law and integrity? All anyone needs to do is see a Brahmin and know that that integrity, rule of law and competence leads to poverty and worse. There is no last resort.

Suchindranath with the present "Maharaja" of Mysore

Note: Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV was a philosopher-king, seen by Paul Brunton as living the ideal expressed in Plato’s Republic. Mahatma Gandhi referred to him as Rajarshi, or "saintly king", and some Indian researchers have often described his kingdom as Rama Rajya, an ideal kingdom akin to the perfect rule of the mythological and religious figure Lord Rama.

What is your last resort?

My foundation from childhood, the rituals I was taught. The meditations I do. I mediate for two hours every day and commune with my Japanese spiritual teacher. This act of watching oneself, this comfort that is within, is the last resort.

A Brahmin is taught to look within? To put his inner life above the outer?

Primarily. Yes.

The life of the Brahmin is the quest for the immortal in oneself. It’s not just a caste. It’s this value system and we are losing it in this banana republic. I have a name for India; I wrote a letter to the Guardian regarding the upcoming Commonwealth Games and all those articles on the corruption of its administrators. I called them the Turd World Games. We are not Third World. We are a Turd World. You know what they asked me? First they asked if I was Brahmin and then if I was Catholic. (Laughs)

In the historical immensity of India, in the midst of demographic change and migrations ferocious and quick, where dreams do not correspond with a changing context turbulent with the emergence of latent histories and hurts, Suchindranath Aiyer anchors his self to what had once given him security and a more eternal idea of himself.

Would you say the idea of success has changed in India or how to achieve it?

How to access success has changed. It’s through criminality now. In the West its still money and power but the middle class, the academicians still have integrity. They’re all Brahmins. And these qualities spark creativity. Your real quest is the God quest. In the Ramayana, Sita gives Hanuman the monkey god a pearl necklace out of gratitude for rescuing her from the demon king Ravanna. Hanuman bites each pearl and throws it away. Sita is upset and goes to Lord Rama. Hanuman says he opened each pearl to see if Lord Rama was in each pearl and not finding him, he threw them away. The three principles in the delineations of Brahmanism encompassed in one verse, which he then utters.

When I identify myself with the body you are the creator and I am eternally your devotee

When I identify myself with my spirit I am a spark of the divine fire you are

When I identify myself with my atma you and I are one.

What’s the atma?

That’s the soul of the soul. The Japanese have this as well. What is valued in this country is wealth and power. These Naxalites will destroy India and from that horror, that blood letting will hopefully arise a hatred for injustice. A hatred. And then there will be hope.

That’s quite an extreme view unlike the stereotypical Brahmin view of non-violence. Thoreau says that one needs to have shelter, food and clothing and only then can one aspire to greater ideas? Wouldn’t you say things are slowly balancing out?

In India the rulers are addicted to crime and corruption and who has to pay are the poor and helpless and they are growing in numbers. I think there needs to be a change in what rules this country. I would like it to be ruled by a truly democratic constitution where all Indians are equal under the law. None of this reservation.

Two days later I meet Suchindranath at the Imperial restaurant with his childhood friend Ravi. He announces that he plans to visit “old ghosts” on a walk through Bangalore. We pass by the War Memorial built by the British to honor the dead of the Great War, and he points out another smaller and very new memorial set up by a construction company next to the imposing British war memorial. He says the monument built by the construction company needs to be destroyed, as the company’s logo is larger than the message below it.

Suchindranath: This needs to be blasted.

Ravi: I am glad that those DMK chaps screwed you fellows.

(Both of them laugh)

The streets are being repaired. We walk by construction rubble and open manholes. Opportunity has beckoned and for millions of people Bangalore is a point of arrival and they have arrived with the relatively bad taste of the new. Communities and histories held in limbo by poverty or lack of opportunity and education are waking up and moving forth. He is pleased to tell his own story. It seems to me that this act of telling his story to me is allowing him to create a new level of cohesive meaning from disparate incidents, ostensible failures in his own life, which I am having the privilege of hearing. He limps past construction material lying by the roadside.

“Neither China nor Pakistan would want to waste ordinance on India. It’s rubble already.”

Later we re enter the sanctuary that is his home and I sit on the sofa beneath his trophies from debating, elocution and drama competitions in college. Symbols of a simpler time.

Stereotypically speaking, the Tamil Brahmin does not fight against the injustices of history. Their adaptability seems at odd with some of your qualities like stubbornness and hatred as you say, of injustice. The Tamil Brahmin supposedly prefers to function from behind the scene, rather than from the front. Where did you get these fighting qualities from?

At the age of five my grandfather had gotten me a cricket set and he said that I had to bat last as it was my cricket set which my friends and I would play with. I found this unjust. I was terribly offended and this was the start of my rebellious streak. To date I prefer to bowl rather than to bat. My hatred of injustice and cricket began with that incident.

My stubbornness came from the Boys Scout camp at Doddballapur. A lot of the kids knew how to swim, as their parents were members of the Bangalore club at the time. I taught myself by jumping off the deep end without anyone egging me on. I thought to myself, you’re going to learn how to swim or drown, and jumped into the deep end.

You seem very self-aware. Have you ever considered unlearning some qualities, which might have caused you trouble?

A huge superstructure is built on these critical incidents. I would lose a lot of things about myself. I love my hatred of injustice. I don’t want to lose it so it’s more a question of accepting myself now.

You know, I empathize with the Kashmiris' and the Manipuris’ because they fight injustice. Like so many of India's separatist’s movements, I would take up arms if I were pushed into a corner like these people have been. But remember that I have been brought up in parts of old Mysore state with it’s Brahamanical values. Life’s not too bad… not too bad yet, to take up arms.

What about your automobile accidents? You had the bus accident in Japan and a head on collision with a 16 wheeler in Kenya?

Yes, I went head on into a 16-wheel truck in Kenya on the Mombasa Nairobi highway to avoid going off a cliff at a place called M’teito Andei, which would have killed three friends and myself in the car. We had a cliff face on one side and an abyss on the other.

That took something, to go head on with a huge truck like that, but I did it and my friends survived. Later the doctors told me that I had braced myself too hard against the brake and gripped the steering wheel too tight and had absorbed the whole shock of the impact with my hip, which was shattered. If I had only relaxed, I would not have been injured.

You know, M’teito Andei means places of eagles.

So if you had relaxed and not fought the impact you might not have gotten so badly hurt.

Yes.

Suchindranath gets up and picks up the Masai Maran spear. He demonstrates to Ravi and myself how a Maran youth would hold the spear against a charging lion by bending over and using his foot to allow the other end of the spear to be driven into the ground by the charging big cat. Ravi loses interest and wanders off to the kitchen.

“Like this, when that lion charges, you point the spear at him, hold tight and brace yourself.”

War and Forgiveness

2010-09-16T10:05:00.008+05:30

The general asks for forgiveness from a woman whose brother he murdered.

Exhibition on view from

28th February to 19th March, 2011

11 am to 7 pm (Sunday holiday)

RSVP : Priya – 080 40535212 (10am to 5pm)

at 26/1, Sua house,

Kasturba Cross road,

Near the British Library,

Bangalore – 560080

Guided Tour by Ryan Lobo

Friday, 18th March, 6 pm onwards

Ryan Lobo co-produced the critically acclaimed feature documentary "The Redemption of General Butt Naked." which was awarded best cinematography at the recent Sundance film festival 2011.

http://www.generalbuttnakedmovie.com/

He also discusses the project in his TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ryan_lobo_through_the_lens_of_compassion.html

WAR AND FORGIVENESS

War enjoys exciting press in our storytelling tradition. Photographs of men firing guns and charging forward make for great selling visuals. A Pandora’s box of pestilence, humiliation, rape, egos’, NGO’s, poverty and intensely debated editorials read by people too far away most of the time, usually do not. Our headlines are normally readable. Our images are often of the ordinary and the obvious. They reinforce our worldview and our view of ourselves. After all we are normal and ordinary people deserving of justice and the right to live peacefully. Until Pandora comes knocking.

In 2007, I traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia. I experienced other peoples suffering at close quarters, immersed myself in stories and on occasion experienced fear for my own life. Unlike many people, I was fortunate enough to leave.

Child of poppy farmer watches photographer as fields are destroyed

Besides Iraq and Afghanistan I traveled to Liberia to shoot a story about a brutal warlord called “General Butt Naked”. He got his name from fighting stark naked and claims to have personally killed more than 10,000 people during Liberia’s civil war . He commanded his child soldiers to commit unspeakable crimes and enforced his command with brutality. The general is now a Christian evangelist named Joshua. We accompanied him as he walked the earth, visiting villages where he had once murdered, and as he says, seeking forgiveness and as he says, endeavoring to improve the lives of his former child soldiers.

I expected him to be killed outright but what I witnessed opened my eyes to an idea of forgiveness, which I always thought seemed impossible. In the midst of incredible poverty and loss, I watched people who had nothing, absolve a man who had taken everything from them.

Child of Afghan poppy farmers

Does forgiveness or redemption replace our idea of justice? Joshua says that sorry isn’t enough and one has to live it and prove it. He says he does not mind standing trial for his crimes and speaks about them from soapboxes across Monrovia to an audience that often includes his victims. Our ideas of victory often involve defeating an enemy outside ourselves. A terrorist. A naxalite. Not within.

Iraqi prison

We look upon these victims and perpetrators as others far away. We prevent ourselves from seeing ourselves in them. We do not allow ourselves to see what we fear the most, and which is so much a part of our deepest potentials. I am fascinated with the general because he represents the possibility of what we could be, for worse and for better.

“The banality of evil” is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt that was used to describe how the greatest evils in human history were not executed by psychopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises and ideas of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal, and ordinary.

I have come away from war with a sense of guilt which for a long while I could not explain. I wondered what use it would be to exhibit photographs, which I know will not sell, of faraway wars in India until I decided that the most depressing thing about working in war zones was not the fear of death. It is seeing the same thing, perhaps the seeds of the same thing within ourselves, in our conversations and in the way we treat our own people.

Disease, war and horror weren’t the only things that exited Pandora’s box. The last thing to exit was hope. If someone as atrocious as the general can attempt to redeem himself, regardless of whatever idea of justice prevails or its execution and regardless of the good or bad opinion of anyone, there is hope.

Child of Afghan heroin addict pretends to be a monster

Before one begs for forgiveness, he had to forgive himself. Healing comes with confession and acknowledgement of perpetration and then hopefully, forgiveness. Healing for all sides. And that is hope. Maybe for all of us.

Hindu Kush

Joseph Ollapally

2010-04-13T00:24:00.028+05:30

I am lucky to have spent a lot of time with Joseph Ollapally during his last few weeks on planet earth. He touched my life with his madness and clear and present sanity, all at the same time. Joseph lived his life like it was an idea whose time had come. Some say that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And his time was the present moment.

I would have great conversations with Joseph, the type where one free flows and from the depths of this connection emanate things from oneself, one thinks they never knew, but has always been there and has been made evident by the interaction.

Joseph and Arun have a conversation

What some people thought to be only craziness I felt to be a deeper connection, appreciation and understanding of existence. I believe Joseph had a deep sense of his own divinity.

Some people attempt to draw connections and find meanings in things after a tragic accident has taken place. This is not my endeavor here. I made some photographs with a pocket camera just a few days before he died and soem others from elsewhere. I hope they illustrate the larger experience of Joseph Ollapally, his humanity and insanity, his connection with the earth, his own body and the people he engaged. Because it is so worth recording.

At his funeral, I was amazed at the number of people who attended and more so by the number of lives he had touched. I sat at the rear of the church on a large balcony and along with me sat laborers from his families construction company. They sat about quietly throughout the service, in worn shoes and chappals and some wiped tears from their eyes. This is not something you see in India very often. People of different socio economic backgrounds don’t cry for each other.

I recall another time when he told me that he went to Harvard to become a “Kakoose cleaner”. Joseph said it with pride because he cleaned toilets for an extra job in Harvard. In India the “lowest castes” do the same job and Joseph would laugh when people asked him what he did at Harvard. “I cleaned shit! I was a Kakoose cleaner!” For those of you'll who live in Bangalore, there is immense value in these words. Jordan, a friend of his writes that Joseph was especially proud of getting his hands dirty cleaning toilets and did away with his gloves. So beautiful this if you understand its achievement. He spoke seriously to me just 3 weeks ago of getting a job as a laborer at a construction site, to experience the daily humiliations of the poor. There was no vanity in his suggestion. He genuinely wanted the "experience."

Posing for an image I made for an art project

Jean Paul Sartre said that he felt his mind was a cage full of birds. Some of Joseph's birds were cuckoos and many definitely got out and spread their droppings on various heads and intellectual offspring in various nests.

One flew over the cuckoos nest

One of the first times I connected with Joseph was at a fancy dress party where he came dressed as a mutant tadpole, in a wetsuit, wearing two large fluffy clawed monster feet. I was dressed as a watchman and proceeded to tell him about an eastern European girl I had kissed at a nightclub. Joseph casually mentioned that he thought it was his girlfriend at the time and then proceeded to ask me if she kissed back, what the lip movements were and whether I had enjoyed it or considered it merely just another random eastern European kiss at a nightclub. Later, I learnt that she had become a nun and Joseph quipped that she had chosen Jesus over Joseph. What was remarkable as we spoke, was his expression. His face was thoughtful. Like an Indian Rodin’s thinker. He was feeling various emotions and during those feelings Joseph was watching himself and asking questions and watching some more. And this observance, this separation from his self and ego and his intense curiosity separated Joseph from most of the people I have known.

Kindly note: All males in above image are heterosexual including tadpole and watchmen

I felt he was in some ways what we all want to be from the deepest portions of ourselves, unfettered by convention, the good opinion of others and conventional frameworks of thinking which often allow us to make decisions based on fear rather than our inner callings. Whether it was walking a marathon naked totally unembarrassed, or jumping for no good reason down the road as high as he could, or dancing like no one was watching, Joseph filled me with delight at these manifestations of our greatest potential, to live wholly and with intense enjoyment in our present moment. Unembarrassed and un self conscious.

Women were intensely comfortable with him and he hugged and held them with no "ulterior motives," at least most of the time. When he did have different motives, I don't think they minded. Peter Pan. He's like peter Pan, said one. The Little Prince, said another. Porki paya! (translates to street brat) said another. Bloody little rascal, said yet another.

Spot the Joseph

A young lady, just broken up from her boyfriend of many years and suitably in need of wisdom and possibly marriage with a suitably wise boy, invited him over for dinner. She cooked dinner for Joseph. According to the girl, after some conversation, which probably included the phrases “Why not?” “”Really?” and “hmmm” Joseph politely asked the young lady if he could roll about on her floor.

"Why would you want to do that?" said the puzzled girl.

"Because I feel like it" said the Joseph.

Spot him?

She said it was okay to do so and he rolled for a while, stretching and contorting himself, before suddenly getting up and leaving. Later the girl tells me that he "touched her soul".

So whats a nice Malayali like you doing on the floor like this?

I recently chatted with him and told him how I was afraid I was becoming what I hated. Arrogant, a victim and judgmental.

“Be kind to yourself, embrace it and I am fine with you being in a bad mood, as long as it’s authentic” said Joseph and then fell to the floor and did a handstand.

It was not just what he said but Josephs whole body that did the speaking sometimes. Inaudible often, but sometimes understandable.

Joseph does a handstand

A young lady at a party seemed rather low. She had come to India on a Fulbright scholarship and her expectations of India did not quite match up to the reality she had created for herself. I told Joseph that she had had a rough time. Immediately, he said that he felt her toes needed sucking. After washing them, very much like Jesus would have maybe, he sucked them, very much like Joseph would have. The young lady did not protest and allowed her toes to be rolled about in Joseph’s mouth.

“I felt she needed it, she really did Ryan”

I find it remarkable that Joseph could do this, and be so unembarrassed, though when I raised the camera he did say he did not want his face to be on face book, while sucking a strange girls toes. He said it was okay if he covered his face. I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the image as much as Joseph might have enjoyed those toes.Mys sister Leisha took this photo.

Joseph knew how to hug. He did so whole-heartedly and took time to do so, holding people close and saying things they knew he meant. He made people feel special by seeing and genuinely appreciating good things about them. He told people he loved them, when he was alive. Several people have recently told me that they regret not having told him, the same, when he was alive. Some regret not having showed him. Some so much more than others. Maybe we take our time here for granted sometimes and don't see it as the precious gift it is.

So many girls. So much sadness and some of it is so much their own creation. As Arjun says - they were like passing clouds and he was the blue sky, the same spirit, dancing and unchanging. He might have asked a cloud to stay, or maybe two, but they chose not to and losing Peter pan can be quite a loss. Basically, Joseph was also a rascal, maybe of the finer kind.

Sometimes a death is like a lens. It brings people into focus, and the photograph is not pretty. Everything stops, is frozen and people take stock of their own lives. So much grief now and so much of it can be externalized. Peter Pan lives on, young and Dionysian forever while Wendy realizes that she grows old and Tinkerbell dies.

Some people have told me that they wish they had met Joe when he was alive after reading about him on face book and this blog post, which reveal the loving, mad joe as his close friends and family knew him.The truth is that there is beauty in the people they already know and maybe often, they do not see it, appreciate it, give and take from it, because that is how they see themselves, with less love.

Wendy can remain young at heart and Tinkerbell can fly into the sun, but one has to bring ones own self into focus, and that can be very hard.We so often let fear masquerading as practicality rule our decisions and present moments. So important to tell and show people that you love them, now. So important to love yourself truly and follow your hearts innermost callings also, now.

Only now.

There really isn't any other time.

hug hug

I recall Joseph telling me that he so enjoyed doing nothing once when I asked him what he was up to. Being at home alone. Having a bath and doing nothing. Meditating. stretching. nothing.

“Its amazing, its so amazing” he would say, describing his shower. And he meant it.

So many people are worried about their purpose in life, their mission, and ambitions. I fell Joseph felt viscerally that his purpose was to enjoy, experience and live and love in the present. So many people spend their lives striving. Joseph enjoyed arriving, I feel.

Mock fight

“You have to surrender when you fall,” said Joseph and I remember us shoving each other around at a party. Joseph was trying to teach me feldenkrais moves or greater awareness of ones own body through movement.

“Relax your body”

Freeman and Joseph stretch a bit.

He showed me dancing where one used someone else isometrically, whirling and allowing the push to become a part of you, spinning, and not resisting but allowing and actually enjoying the force of impacts.

Freeman and Joseph spar

“Don’t resist it, embrace it, enjoy it, watch it, appreciate it” and he would whirl and recover and come back as I shoved him as hard as I could.

Joseph and Freeman shove each other

This flexibility, this awareness of Josephs body he claimed one could apply in ones own life experience.

“Surrender, learn to surrender”

Joseph died by falling off a waterfall in Thailand while trekking. The girl he was with wrote in an email that he fell gracefully. I was initially offended by what she had said but during meditation, the words above came back to me. She said he did not make a sound as he fell about 30 feet. I would like to believe that he died as he lived, immensely.

If you were to tell me that Joseph would die the way he did, I would not have ever thought so. He was superbly fit, a feldenkrais expert, a kalaripayattu martial artist and an athlete. The future is promised to no one indeed. As he was being buried I noticed a kite stuck in the tree next to his grave. The kite flyer has flown.

Joseph reads "Take me to your leader"

We have only a few precious moments with each other. Two minutes with that man sitting next to us on the bus, a few scattered conversations with neighbors, a few years with friends, a few more with family, some years with parents and then, they are gone and so are we. Joseph in some ways showed to me the immense value of our time here on earth. The immense power we have to enjoy ourselves, the value of suffering and what precious treasures we have to offer with love and immense enjoyment to the world.

I give thanks for the time I have had with him. It has been and is a precious and timeless gift. The poetry of his being will remain with me.

Joseph

May Cordeiro 4th Aug 1918 - 30th Jan 2009

2010-03-22T13:29:00.006+05:30

My grandmother May died last year in January.

Success or the sum of a person is usually measured in how much that person has accumulated, how many awards have been received and what the rest of the world thinks of the same. I would rather look at my grandmother’s life not as a list of achievements, but more as a work of art. A painting maybe, smudges included.

Everyone who knows "Mama May" well knows how she raised her children alone in Bangalore for many years while her husband worked in the gulf, in days when there was no email or cell phones. How she handled bankruptcy and the loss of her home to a tenant who decided to force the sale of her home to him. How she looked after anyone ill in the family with devotion and perseverance. How she made life hell for some people also. Moving, repeated loss and slow resurrection.

moving out of the brigade road house, for the last time

I'm trying to cut a very long 90-year-old story very short here, and it’s difficult to squeeze a lifetime of memories and conversations with her into a few paragraphs. To express memories that also involved smells, feelings and other intangibles. I would like to speak of her as I recall her truly and maybe this can illustrate her humanity and at times, lack of it, all of which played such an important part in my early life.

My earliest memory of my grandmother was of Yardley powder and the smell of dog. The smell of Yardley powder filled my nostrils as she carried me, held me in her arms and walked about her home on residency road. Walking fast, in the earlier years. May Cordeiro was not the sweet doting grandmother you read about in children's books. She was much better and worse than that.

I remember horrific cocktails of ragi porridge, egg and Waterbury's compound which I was forced to eat with threats of "ill tie it to your stomach if you don't eat it". I recall her fights with my quieter grandfather who enjoyed his drinks a bit too much, according to my grandmother. They were numerous arguments and she could be mean and relentless, and she aged so fast when he died.

I remember my grandmothers numerous dogs, being bitten by them and never learning and still playing with them thinking i would not get bitten and getting mauled again. Like so many Daisy Buchannans. Brandy with milk for the dogs and a yelling for the grandfather, every night. She would attend to my dog bite wounds with liberal amounts of undiluted dettol and bits of cactus which she heated on a flame and tied to the weeping teeth holes.

Pogo

Marchello A.K.A. Macho

She loved her dogs, maybe more than people sometimes. Neil wrote me and told of a time when he stepped on a dog turd. My grandmother said "Shit happens, deal with it". It doesn't sound like her as she did not have that American experience of the line, was incredibly proper and never said the word shit. She was so careful with her words, but it's a story I like, even though it's probably not true.

Macho, the miniature doberman was 23 years old here

I remember sitting with her at housie at Catholic club, surrounded by what she referred to as "her gang" and she being overly thrilled when I won 50 rupees and asking me to get her a whiskey " a large one please" which she whispered so no one could hear. I recall her playing the piano, while I stood by getting poked in the ribs if I messed with the keys. She was an accomplished piano player with all kinds of degrees but later on in life she refused to play because she was afraid her arthritic fingers would miss notes and that she would make a mistake.

May and her children

I remember her whacking with a broom a cart driver for setting the tail of an exhausted bullock on With 90 year old Mrs. Kamath from down the road she called the police on the man and brought the cow into the house to prevent it being led away. Later I was instructed to help Narayani the maid clean up a large pile of cow dung which I did before we went inside for a lunch of beef curry and rice. I had felt sorry for the cart driver as he looked tired and small and sickly.

Recently in December 2008 she has asked me many times to come over as she wanted to give me old photographs as I was interested in archiving them and finding out about the people in them. She called me several times but I postponed the visit and even when I visited I left them behind because I felt she was preparing herself for death. I told my parents a few days before she died what i felt but they felt I was being overly concerned.

On Ulsoor lake in Bangalore in the 50's

May Cordeiro was not a physical touchy feely kind of person. She was only affectionate with her dogs. I recall her sitting with a relative who had a troubled marriage and holding her hand once though. I hugged her at Leisha and Chris's wedding a couple of weeks before she died and it was a proper hug. This time she hugged back and held me very close for a long time. I told her I loved her and my heart broke when I said so, for the first time in so long, and she said so as well. So important this, to tell people you love them, when they're live. I recall how tiny and fragile she felt in my arms. We were surrounded by the legacy of so many of the family from all over the world, 13 grandchildren and one great grandchild.

"I'am tired of this noise Ryan, take me home"

Great grand child

After her eye operation a few years ago

I stood by her hospital bed as she lay there in a coma and as she died and talked long and earnestly to her about things I cannot repeat. Her heart monitor faltered as i spoke . I held her arm as she died and was profoundly present, with all my senses. Outside things went on as usual and cars honked and nurses walked by and when I walked to the window a flock of parakeets shot by like green comets, just like the flock I had seen the day before from the same window.

I do know of her failures with people she loved and I do know of a few of her successes. I know to some extent a little of her childhood and the traumas of relocating from war and violence in Iran. My mothers story of looking out of her window and seeing a British man being dragged alive behind a jeep and my grandmother slapping her to stop her screaming.

She, May, was abandoned by her parents at a relatives house in Goa for 2 years as a small child, and they did not tell her and left for Africa with her brother. This was something she spoke of with a trembling lower lip, 85 years after the fact. What makes us be who we are and how important our present moments are. And what power we have to sow whatever it is we sow.

Most of all I remember holding her and she holding me back.

I know that her mother, my great grand mother (Avo) had carried May in her womb, on a ship that suffered a cholera epidemic from Africa, to India, to undergo a kidney removal or die. The dead were buried at sea, dropped into a warm shark filled ocean from a stinking ship and I can only imagine those endless windless terrifying days. Avo survived and underwent the operation after trekking halfway across the country when there were no tarred roads, while pregnant with my grandmother.

Many years later my mother randomly met the son of the american doctor who had conducted the operation and saved the life of both my grandmother and her mother. What courage, what resilience and faith would have propelled this woman to survive that. And what of the child in her womb? Would May Cordeiro, suspended in the womb have felt her trepidation and terror, resillience and courage? And how much a part of her would they have become.

And how much of me?

90th birthday party

With angali at the big banyan tree

Christina and Veronica amd Angali and May

Pogo

May and Gavin her son

her makeup mirror while she was moving out

Her plants

Alphone, maid and companion at home for many many years

Tomas and Pam, her grandchild with her at her 90th birthday

"We are not amused" (as Sandeep her grand child in law fools around with a wig)

ok maybe a little

TED talk

2009-12-16T09:18:00.001+05:30

Chennai 9-5

2009-11-19T10:59:00.000+05:30

A passage of time

These are diptychs and a triptych which I photographed on the city of Chennai. Urban Indians are in the grip of transformations, numerous little yet historically epic revolutions of economics, society and culture. We have all heard that India is poised to become the world's third largest economy, that it will have more English speakers than the United States eventually and that we have the world's fastest growing middle class.

A long walk to the sea

However, in a country of over 1 billion people, only 35 million mostly urban Indians pay taxes. Nike wearing yuppies jostle for space with rag pickers, store guards earn less than the price of a pair of sneakers that they watch over, billboards promise everything in a landscape of inadequate infrastructure and a much hyped InfoTech industry employs only about 1 million people. In 2001, the population density of the Chennai metropolitan area was 5,922 per km² making it one of the most densely populated cities in the world. It has a sex ratio of 951 females to every 1000 males in a total population of about 8 million. The judicial system has a backlog of thousands of cases and resources like water and electricity are limited. It has the fourth highest population of slum dwellers among all cities in India, with about 18.6% of its population living in slums.

Pride, masculinity, starlet and a little adjustment

Chennai seems to defy definitions with exceptions to the rule and rules to the exceptions. Traditions, histories and processes of the past adapt and evolve with an apparently uneven modernizing present. It also has literacy of 80.14 %, much higher than the national average of 64.5 % According to the CII, Chennai's is estimated to grow to a $100-billion economy, 2.5 times its present size, by the year 2025. It has a vibrant film and music industry, a burgeoning “international dance class” movement, India’s best Health care facilities and has the beginnings of some of India’s most forward political movements.

Lunch item

It is within this ethos, subconscious and conscious that urban Chennaiites’ live. I have attempted to delve beneath clichés and with photographs tell stories about the secrets, trials and ethos of urban Chennai. Given the impression that the urban yuppie so to speak is literate, English speaking and “modern” in his thinking I have consciously avoided only shooting “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect (emphasis mine)”. … To hopefully compassionately and on occasion with humor reveal to you my take, on what it is to be young, employed and alive in Chennai today, regardless of ones language, economic class or social skills.

The pressures of corporate life

I chose mainly “mid level” and “lower level” employees and professionals to include in my frames as they form the bulk of Chennai’s work force which does not only cater to MNC’s and the IT or electronic industries. I made images while on a walk with a friend who regularly comes to the beach, as “it’s the only place to go”, as most arcades and pubs, or this idea of entertainment, is unaffordable to most professionals in Chennai. The beach is free and is frequented every day by tens of thousands of working people with nowhere else to go.

The persistence of imagination in the work place

I have used a single image from this walk, a forced daily walk of sorts for many for lack of other options, in juxtaposition with other images from different times of day, from the lives of various people kind enough to let me into their worlds.

Men on the beach

A distant meeting

First flight

Shopping

References:
Srivasthan, A (April 12, 2007). "New land use proposals mooted in draft Master Plan". The Hindu. http://www.hindu.com/2007/04/12/stories/2007041213350400.htm.
"Urban Areas by Population Density" (PDF). World Urban Areas (World Agglomerations). Demographia. March 2007. p. 77. http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf.
"India". CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html.
"Districts performance on Literacy Rate in Tamil Nadu for the year 2001". Department of school education. http://www.tn.gov.in/schooleducation/statistics/table7and8.htm.
"Slum Population – Census 2001" (PDF). The Government of India. Archived from the original on 2007-06-21. http://web.archive.org/web/20070621135109/http://www.censusindia.net/results/slum/Intro_slum.pdf.
"IT in India". Business Standard. September 30, 2007. http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=299725. Retrieved on 2009-02-19.
"Management of water supply during acute water scarcity in 2003 & 2004". Operations and maintenance. Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewage Board. http://www.chennaimetrowater.com/engg/operationmaintenance/cmwdrw04.htm.
Second Master Plan - II. Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority. pp. III-14, III-19, III-20. http://www.cmdachennai.org/pdfs/SMP/C_Chapt%20%20III_%20Economy.pdf
"Seminar to focus on Chennai’s growth potential". The Hindu Business Line. 2008-08-21. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/08/21/stories/2008082151132100.htm.
http://www.indiainbusiness.nic.in/know-india/states/tamilnadu.htm
Macaulay’s quote from “minute on Indian education” about forming a class of people ““a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect “

Thanks to
Adarsh NC for fixing and coordinating the shoot
Jai Iyer for his comments on Chennai history and culture
Hari’s extended family for his assistance in Chennai
Mahinder, Kadambari and Hari for their kind assistance in Chennai
Abhishek Poddar for his suggestions and thoughts when it came to conceptualizing and editing this work.

Guns, bombs, death and the Indian family

2009-02-20T12:20:00.033+05:30

"What they are using this for?" asks Mrs. Iyer

Lady Britomart: There is no moral question in the matter at all, Adolphus. You must simply sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and criminals.
Undershaft (determinedly):No: none of that. You must keep the true faith of an armourer... to give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of person or principles.
- George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, Act III -

Here are some images I made at an air show that was held in Bangalore a few days ago. Several countries, including the Russians, Americans and Brits were present peddling their wares and looking bored with Mrs. Iyer asking "But what does it really do, I say?"

Complex technology, fighter jets, "ship busting missiles" and other unique, amazing and incredible instruments of death were laid out in air conditioned sheds. Also present was the unique, amazing and incredible Indian middle class, all guns blazing.

Tappa you will get TAPPA!

Full speed Raju

Actual overheard conversation at the air show

Mr. Iyer: Americans will help us against Pakistan no?

American gentleman in stall: Well sir, we represent freedom and democracy all over the world.

Mr. Iyer: Oho, how much this missile costs?

American: Sir, they are not for sale to the public.

Mr. Iyer: You sold to Saudis,Israelis,Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis. Why not me? Tell i say.

American: I just work here Sir.

Mr. Iyer: That's what the Nazi's said...no?

American: We are no Nazi's sir

Mr. Iyer: And i am not a dictator. So how much?

Baghdad 2007

2008-12-13T23:24:00.038+05:30

I ended hanging around Baghdad for about a month in 2007 October with my friend Eric. Most of the time I spent in a small room in a security contractors compound waiting for permits for us to shoot a film on Iraqi women. The permits never came through and after several problems which the person who had hired us had with various people (According to the contract I signed I am not allowed to talk about these issues) , I packed my bags and returned to India after almost a month in the red zone of Baghdad.

During my stay in Iraq I shot images, most often through the window of our armored car which was escorted by mercenaries who looked after us and prevented us ending up on youtube videos against our wills.

Baghdad is a stricken city and I felt it was eating itself from within, community against community, sect against sect, distrust and suspicion everywhere. The scars of this war will take a long time to heal.

detainee a Baghdad prison

Baghdad, Oct 2007

Ive waited a whole day and a half at Jordans airport, forbidden to leave the airport premises as being Indian, the Jordanians probably expect me to jump my visa and work on a construction site somewhere in the city.I am headed to Baghdad to shoot still images for a documentary film on Iraqi women.

To avoid being shot at by Iraqi insurgents, our plane at about 30,000 ft. until its more or less exactly over Baghdad airport. It then spirals downwards tracing the outline of a ice cream cone until it banks sharply near the end of its descent and lands. As we plummet earthwards, I out of the window and see sharply lit and yellow city with square compounds and houses. A pariah kite circles way below and I wonder if its the same species we get in Bangalore. American helicopters and warplanes are everywhere, parked in neat lines far below. How tiny we really are. Smoke from a distant fire heads up straight in a windless landscape, the plane banks sharply and I feel my innards rise up into my chest cavity and attempt an exit through my nose. A couple of gentlemen who looked like they for the WWF in a seat nearby and another shut his eyes tight. Everyone was silent.

Baghdad airport is eerie. After a long wait while our extensive paperwork is checked, we exit the airport into a desolate exterior. Concrete silent and gray. Andy, our close protection security contractor is there to see us with his crew, a group of Fijian and Iraqi mercenaries , politely referred to as security contractors, and we head off towards the red zone on an eight-mile drive into the city, along what's called by some journalists “the Highway of Death” - the road from Baghdad airport.

A gun truck in the front and one in the rear. We are given instructions in case of an attack.Clay the Kiwi guy tells us that we might get rammed from the back and to keep our heads down if that happens.

A bill board post explosion on the road from the airport

A convoy of petrol tankers pass by one of Saddams sculptures

It took the Americans almost two and a half years after George W. Bush triumphantly announced victory over Saddam on an aircraft carrier to maintain control over this eight mile road into the city and attacks still happened according to our security contractor. We headed out of the airport at high speed past shattered buildings, bombed vehicles and blown apart billboards towards a fortified compound in the red zone – or the zone not exactly in the control of anyone. We had thought we were staying in the green zone but this is not to be. A bit late.

Everything is deserted and there are very few people on the streets. The few I see walk fast and glance nervously at passing vehicles. Suicide bombers are a daily occurence and our contractors are on high alert. All our vehicles have signs that warn vehicles to stay at least a 100 meteres away.

One of the contractors vehicles after it was blown up by a suicide bomber

Some of the images I shot over the days I spent shuttling between the red and green zones are as below.

in an Iraqi prison. He covers their faces to prevent retribution against his family

Detainees in an Iraqi prison. They cover their faces to prevent retribution against their families

As we drove to the airport when we left Iraq, we passed a field. I dont know what was growing in it but it looked overgrown, wild and beautiful.

Nisha

2008-09-21T10:39:00.013+05:30

Here are some images I made recently off a very special and beautiful person named Nisha on her first holy communion day. She is my sister and has a condition called Icthyosis which affects her skin, only.

Her condition is painful but Nisha doesnt seem to allow the same to get in the way of her life. She speaks several languages, does well at school and annoys everyone equally. People at different times have been rude, stared incessantly and passed some incredible comments. Once in a shopping mall, a lady spat on her, and Nisha told my furious mother

"Dont worry mama, its her problem."

End of the day shes a very wise little girl with a huge personality and immense love to give. I love her and she has added to my life in a way that is intangible and beyond words.

The road to Jalalabad

2007-08-28T14:07:00.024+05:30

The owner of a poppy field watches it being destroyed.

So we left Kabul for Jalalabad to film poppy fields being destroyed under the supervision of Masood, a man entrusted with destroying the "heroin" in the area.

The journey involves a long road trip through rugged mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Brian, the head of our security detail, tells me about an armored truck of theirs that went over the edge of a precipice into the raging river we drove by . The truck had not been found. The road is known for Taliban attacks and suicide bombers and the mountains the road cuts through is home to hundreds of taliban and Al queda fighters. It’s the same story I hear everywhere in Afghanistan…suicide bombers, Al queda and betrayal. Distrust, fear and separation.

The stories we hear.

2 cars, one armored land cruiser and an armored hilux form our convoy. In Kabul at the security compound Brain gets us in a circle and speaks. He tells us that in the event of an attack, if the vehicle we travel in is immobilized, that we are to follow his instructions to the word and get out of the vehicle on the side not being fired upon. The rest of the security team would stay and fight while we would be escorted off to the other vehicle. As clients we would be protected while most of our security team would stay behind to repel the attack.

We leave and when we exit the city the scenery is exquisite. Stark mountains rise out of the earth and extend skyward, silent and immense. Never ending vistas, caravans of wrinkled bent over people, and dogs walking by old women with gazes and faces just as infinite.

Mountains, snow on the horizon. We pass donkey caravans of gypsies and I wonder at their lives in such desolate expanses. I notice tiny figures of men and horses and patched tarpaulins far away. Black hawk helicopters cruise low in the distance and they look like mango flies against the mountains. They cruise low over the earth so that gunmen don't have enough time to draw a bead on them.

spot the blackhawks

man on the road to Jalalabad

We stop to fertilize the desert and Naz stands guard by the car. It is the only time we stop on our trip to Jalalabad.

It is windy and very silent.

Jalalabad was founded by the Mughal emperor Akbar and had been occupied by the British and then the Soviets. When the Taliban was in power these mountains had many al queda training camps and thousands of “foreign” fighters had lived in the mountains we traveled through training for wars against India, the soviets and elsewhere. Across the border in Pakistan, numerous guerrilla groups supply arms, cash and men to the Taliban. The Taliban, according to the Americans, pays for some of their weaponry with heroin, which is grown in great amounts in the fields surrounding Nangahar.

We pass ruins of towns that look old. I ask Naz what ruins they are and he does not know. “No one knows” he says. Anonymous lives in anonymous landscapes . Correction : Anonymous to me that is.

The hills we traveled through are still home to various men from far off nations, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan. I wonder at their lives and what has made them become fighters. What stories they have to tell. What reasoning. What cultures. All fighting and shedding blood for ideals and purposes the mountains care not about. One day all our houses will be in ruins.

The scenery is stunning and I am transported. I imagine at the war which has raged her for so long .

At times I look out of the window and the drop makes me dizzy. A frothing muddy river gushes past for much of the road. Vehicles that have fallen off can be seen stuck in the rapids. Brian put on an afghan hat and put his sig rifle on his lap under a towel as we drive. To make a potential attacker think he was Afghan.

Brian tells me a story of a convoy of contractors who ran into some Taliban on the road. The Taliban thought they were other Taliban as the contractors were dressed up like afghans…and waved them on.

I think brains disguise is awful but I don’t tell him. He looks like an Brit with a strange hat. A few seconds is all we need he says and he is probably right. We drive fast, very fast along the winding mountain roads and along the extreme other edge away from cars parked by the side of the road. Any car with a single driver could be a suicide bomber. I hold my breath a couple of times.

I wonder if the drivers in the parked cars held their breaths too.

We reach the governors house in Jalalabad. It is large and like a hotel. Our rooms are ornate.

I climb to the roof and in the distance, I see the White Mountains where fierce fighting had erupted during the war between the Americans, and the taliban and al queda. The mountains are still home to Al queda and Taliban fighters Naz says. I sit down and a ragged flag of Afghanistan blows over my head. Naz tells me about his life in Helmand province and how his own uncles want to kill him for working as a translator for the Canadians .

Brian shows me images of his vehicle and of corpses post a suicide bombing. 10 people died but he survived even though the man had blown himself up right outside the window of his armor-plated land cruiser.

Freaking out the clients

Former suicide bomber (Pic courtesy Brain C)

We meet Masood. He is suave and very young. He is to lead the trip into the fields the following day. Brian and his men prep their weapons. They put in a laser bore sighter and aim at a target in the governor’s house in the corridor. I join them awhile. I learn that the ak47 9 mm round does a lot more damage than the 5.56 mm nato rounds.

“If you want to drop them on their arses' use an AK,” says Brian. He uses a NATO round gun. I play soldier awhile and then retreat the roof, drink tea and talk to the men who run the house in broken Hindi.

The next morning Masood arrives. He has truckloads of soldiers with him. Brian is edgy. There has been a suicide bombing on the road. He does not want to be a part of the convoy, as a suicide bomber would head for the flashiest vehicle. He tells Masood this as we drive along as the other vehicles come up alongside despite the instructions given to them before the trip. Masood yells and curses at the soldiers. They fall back. Brian watches everything as we drive by. We had been seen entering Jalalabad. People know we are around.

This is it.

The road to the village is green and canals flow alongside. Fruit orchards can be seen as well as wheat fields. Poppy everywhere. We enter the fields and the houses are visible in the distance, surrounded by high walls. All the houses in the area seem clustered and surrounded by high mud walls. To repel what or to keep who in?

We drive to the fields. They are extensive and carry on till the horizon. Men get out of trucks and start destroying the fields, knocking the poppy buds off with sticks. The plant dies after this is done. They move across the fields while people from the village watch.

The soldiers spread out and stand guard as the men destroy the fields.

Masood meets with the elders. They are not pleased but they are very respectful to each other. Masood later tells me that if there were an attack the village elders would be held responsible. I ask him what responsible means and he does not reply. Young boys stand about and stare. The men with our soldiers walk about swishing away. Insects flee and poppies are crushed underfoot.

Guards crouch and sit down in the afternoon heat. I look nervously towards the horizon. Young boys stare at us and they do not seem happy. The don't reply to my hindi questions.You can tell a lot about how a culture views you by the way the kids treat you. Its what they have been told otherwise and elsewhere before necessary politenesses or lies.

It takes time to destroy the fields. Some of the children curse us. But the elders are present and chat with Masood. Later some of the local headmen so to speak invite us to lunch. We leave I notice Masood looking at a poppy flower. Maybe he plays to the cameras but he seems to marvel at its beauty.

Masood and the owner of some of the fields

We are led into a walled compound. Our soldiers spread out. Within the walls are fruit trees and it is cool, unlike the barren outside. I wonder why the rest of the countryside is not planted and why the trees are walled. I wonder why they invite us to lunch when we have just destroyed their fields.

"This is the Pashtun way” says Masood. “We destroy their fields; they invite us for a meal, we are an honorable people.”
We eat. We leave. Brian gets a call that a bomb has exploded on the Jalalabad road. We speed back to the governor’s house. On the way we pass an American convoy. We slow down and pull over, as the Americans have been known to fire on any vehicles that get too close.
“Give a bloody 19 year old a 50 caliber and what do you expect” says Brian.

In the next couple of days we head out to meet with a farmers family to discuss the impact of the poppy destruction on his life. It is a Pashtun area and a local informer has promised us that we will be safe. He has spoken with a farmer who has agreed to speak. The farmer says on the phone that we will be his guests. We believe him as the Pashtun honor code is supposedly inviolable.

Brian is very edgy as we have only 2 vehicles . After a long drive without any backup we drive into the mans house just off the main road. The cars are turned around and face the road. One car is closer to the road just in case we have to flee suddenly. Naz stands guard concealed close to the road with his ak47. The people in the house say it is not necessary but he stands guard anyway.

Aan old man explains the Pashtun guest code. They say that they would all rather die than let us face harm in case of an attack. I ask the man "So basically we’d all die if there were a concerted attack". He laughs and says yes.

We are offered sweet tea and biscuits. I take some photos of the kids. A girl comes out of the house. She is about 13. She smiles and I take her picture from a distance. The men present shout “ZAI” and she runs off. She comes out again and smiles from a distance. The men walk to her and scream at her. I decide not to take any more pictures. The boys stay out and pose. They are allowed.

Daughters

sons

We walk around the house to the poppy fields. Men stand in them with poppy tar stained clothes scraping off from the poppy buds. We set up and interview the farmer. A crowd of mostly children collects and sits around. He says that he has to feed a big family and that destroying the farms will leave him with nothing. He says that he is unaware about what the drugs will do to the end users eventually. He avoids eye contact when he says this. He finds it difficult to answer questions as to why he prefers to plant poppy as compared to other crops. He finally says it pays better. He makes eye contact when he says so and laughs.

I notice people walking over from across the fields. In the distance I see figures running through trees. I am suddenly nervous. The children are behaving differently. I shoot pictures of the fields and I set up a time lapse.

Suddenly our informer friend appears and he is perspiring heavily. He looks worried and says that we have to leave immediately. His hands are shaking. Brian says that we have to leave and we head back, walking fast but not too fast. Some men are walking towards us from a distance. I remember the camera on the tripod and walk back to get it. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I wonder if I am over reacting. I probably am, I think to myself and as we hurry back I see the boy, the same boy who I had met earlier as we walked out towards the fields. He looks at me and he isn’t smiling. I say hello and he stares back. I take a picture.

Maybe I am not over reacting.

We get back to the house and brain says that we have stayed bit too long. A crowd has collected and people are asking us why we are leaving. They crowd around the car. Visions of Brians suicide bombing images come back to me. I ask for a photograph and people crowd around. I shoot myself with a group of men. I am away from the car and Brian and the rest load up quickly. Too many people in one place and the situation could change. Click.

I turn around and away from the crowd, a little boy looks at me from a doorway.

We get in and leave suddenly. No goodbyes. We speed off. I wonder if our hosts were insulted. I wonder if we needed to leave the way we did. I think of the "Pashtun code". I recall images of the suicide bombing.

Our “informer” later tells us that those fields are controlled by taliban, and that government troops have not visited the area since 4 govt soldiers were killed the previous month during eradication measures. I think that maybe he should have told this to us earlier. I think that the taliban might have got us if they wanted to.

I hear that it was risky for the farmer to let himself be interviewed as both the taliban and the government might not have been pleased. I wonder at his risk and his code of honour. The decision to possibly die for unknown filmmakers and photographers because he gave his word. I hope that they aren’t offended. I hope he understands that fear propagates itself; that Brian was doing his duty and that the risks did not warrant us staying or being polite.

We had heard horrific things about what could happen, had happened. The probably had too. I take a picture from the window of the car as we speed away. No one looks pleased.

We leave and they watch us leave. Two enigmas meeting. These strange people who come and go hurriedly. Distrust and separation on all sides with attempts to be polite in the middle.

Our versions are accountable. It sounds so good to speak of the savages beyond our borders. They’re always beyond our borders. In the next town, next cities. The monster is always a foreigner. They make for good stories, far away.

We drive back to Kabul. On the way we see the truck from Brian's security company that had plummeted over the edge of the precipice into the river and that had not been found.

Afghan addiction

2007-08-12T13:05:00.001+05:30

20,000 feet down, the Hindu Kush mountains floated by, distant, desolate, ethereal.... and I remembered the books I had read during my summer holidays, curled up, lost, mother calling for dinner…ignored.

In 1857 a long British caravan straggled across the same mountains. Most were massacred, picked off by tribesmen with long barreled jezails. Betrayed and crushed, the British empire had been brought to its knees.

A lone bloodied doctor survived... and had stumbled into India.

The view would be amazing I had read online. I flew into the Islamic republic of Afghanistan on the IC Delhi Kabul flight, over the Hindu Kush ...down the rabbit hole. I was headed to Afghanistan to help a friend shoot a film on the poppy trade.

”It means Hindu killer...hindu kush” said the tiny man seated next to me as he leaned over to read the file I read. He had a pooja mark on his forehead and cleaned the food off his tray with much open mouthed chewing. He kept the sugar sachet in his pocket for later.

"hindu killer" mountains

NGO workers, contractors, loud americans who chatted in groups, smelling of deodorant, gelled.
World bank employees, reconstruction, mines, IEDS...the words floated across the plane aisle to my ears. Groups had formed and people seemed keen to be friendly, to bond and coalesce as we cruised over bare mountains sipping coke and looking down at the starkness below.

Stark mountains and starker people. Romantic. Unforgiving. Dangerous. Beautiful. a black hole, a place of death and fear, war, warlords and Rambo, women being stoned, Islamic fundamentalism and Osama bin laden scuttling about the shadows.

This was the Afghanistan that existed in my head. A monster, imaginary.

Thus I flew, thus i descended, and the nervous brahmin tore open his sugar sachet and poured the contents down his throat.

"For ear blockage" he said.

We had hired security contractors', a polite terminology for mercenarys' to look after us while we were in Afghanistan. I was picked up at the airport in Kabul by Brian who walked into the immigration line, rifle on shoulder. "You...national Geographic?" and taken to a land cruiser parked out side the wrecked airport sans baggage which would be picked up later by an aide.

"Right", said Brian…. "wear this", and gave me a gradel level 3 flak jacket, and "if anything happens listen to us, get down and get out of the vehicle on the side we are not being fired on only when and if we do. Okay?

Ok.

We drove thorough Kabul, fast, down the Jalalabad road and through crowds of vehicle, going off road when possible and racing ahead of traffic. Brian watched out the window, sig rifle on his lap. Later I found out that an informant had reported in a suicide bomber who had been looking for a target .He had been wandering about at about the same time we raced towards the contractor compound.

The city looked stricken…. Bombed out buildings, bullet holes. Kabul is over 3,000 years old. and many have fought over the city due to its strategic location between Europe, the middle East and Asia. More than 20 years of war have scarred the city.

We drove to the “compound” where the contractors lived at high speed.

Q"Why do you drive so fast?"

A "Suicide bombers mate"

Some afghans, especially the ones we almost ran over, cursed us as we zipped by.

FAK YOU!

Other people waved and smiled.....

But most seemed....

The armor group compound was located in a secure part of the city and we traversed several checkpoints with tiny Nepali gurkhas wielding seemingly oversized Ak-47s . Gurkhas seemed to always be the sentries. The compound gates were opened and the armored land cruisers were checked for bombs before being let through. Manicured lawns, wire fencing, bar, air conditioning, buffet, sterile.

Approximately 50 percent of Afghanistan’s GNP comes from the drug trade. Afghanistan is the world's largest source of illegal heroin and has a long history of opium cultivation. The Taliban cracked down on the trade and almost eradicated the same. After the Taliban regime was overthrown by the US-backed Northern Alliance in 2001 opium production resumed. This year, it’s been the biggest harvest ever and according to the Americans the Taliban fund their war with profits from the same. Eradication efforts drive angry farmers into the arms of the Taliban who levy a tax and protect the farmers from government troops.

The Americans have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a huge effort to stop heroin cultivation. Helmand Province, the center of the Taliban resurgence and temporary home to a huge number of British and American troops, produces more opium than any other country in the world.

We were to film the destruction of fields by afghan troops. It will be dangerous we were told as often the villagers would fight the troops and sometimes the local taliban would pitch in. Many had been killed already.

But first we visited the Nejat treatment center. The only treatment center for heroin addicts in Kabul. Located on a side street close to a rubbish dump the Nejat treatment center looked after a few addicts.

I took the following images there during filming. The men would have group therapy outdoors where they would recount their experiences with the drug. The stories were similar...unemployment, boredom, no education. 99 percent of Afghanistan is illiterate. Lives with very little hope and no ambition. Like the stark mountains I had flown over they had very little except for their history of violence, war, fundamentalism and exploitation. They were very much a part of the landscape.

A 2006 United Nations report estimates that the total number of drug users in Afghanistan is nearly 1 million - almost 4% of the total population.

Afghanistan is suffering from a huge rise in heroin addiction. The easy and cheap access to the drug has found many users in an unemployed and ill educated country suffering the ravages of 30 years of war, grinding poverty and unemployment.

addict

After the American and NATO takeover of Kabul in 2001 and the resumption of heroin cultivation on a huge scale, the number of heroin addicts doubled between 2003 and 2005. It is believed that a lot of the addiction began in refugee camps where boredom, frustration and loss rules the day.

Addict

About 60,000 children are addicted to narcotics in Afghanistan, the World Drug Report has said. Female addicts find it very difficult to access treatment. The UN report says there are about 100,000 female addicts in Afghanistan. It is believed that the real figure is much higher.

Many men do not permit their female family members to seek drug addiction treatment. In war stricken areas treatment is impossible.

The country is one of the worlds poorest.

The damage drug addiction is doing to Afghan families and society is very real. No real statistics exist due to tribal leaders being embarrassed to disclose figures as in the past drug addiction was criminalized under the Taliban. The social stigma remains.

I watched a group of men teased, laughed and joked their way through the sessions. The moderator seemed warm and kind and occasionally many of the men would laugh.

They played musical instruments and a few danced Tajik style, moving in a circle.

One young man refused to dance and sulked in a corner.

It looked like a Bangalore neighborhood AA meeting. All the characters were present. The loudmouth, the quiet one, the sulker...

And except for the location, it was.

We visited with two heroin addicts. One brought his little daughter along.They were quiet men, soft spoken and skinny. Their families had been wrecked by the drug and all they lived for as they said, was for their next fix. They took us to an abandoned building some distance out of Kabul. The structure was bombed out, bullet hole marked and littered with human feces.The little girl waited and they smoked up with raw unprocessed heroin. They were methodical and practised. The inhaled deeply and one used a pen minus the refill to inhale the fumes from the burning chunk of heroin. We filmed away, the men crouched in a corner and thick clouds of the drug wafted by. After awhile I felt dizzy and nauseous but it was soon replaced with a feeling of euphoria and joy.

We finished shooting and I stood outside the building, high on heroin for the first time.
So this is Afghanistan, my version, I thought to myself. The mountains looked beautiful.
I was beautiful.

I wondered what would become of the beautiful child at my feet. No education, no parental guidance, no jobs, no future, no hope. No Rabbit hole this. No wonderland.

"Maybe she will be sold," said Brian when I asked him."Heroin can make people do awful things," It was true in some ways. The anecdotal Afghanistan of my head, but not as romantic.

Brian and the girl

The little girl found me and my Nikon quite funny. My "Afghan girl,"I thought to myself minus the perfect lighting. Brian gave her bar of chocolate. We left her with her father and drove back to Kabul. As we left the little girl made scary faces and stuck her hands out in front of herself to make like monster claws. She growled and roared.

---
Next post

We were headed into the fields of Nangahar province. The trip entailed a drive through the mountains into East Afghanistan. Several hours on a narrow road with huge drops and gorges. The taliban had conducted several raids and attacks on this road in the recent past.The area were were to visit had seen a lot of violence and soldiers had been killed.

"Potentially very dangerous, this here field trip" muttered Brian, who seemed nervous.

I was too.

to be continued......

An intent to share

2007-04-10T03:28:00.001+05:30

Ive often asked myself whyI so enjoy photography and why I do it in the first place. I make images with certain ideas and view points that are mine which I want to share. The images are subjective and I assume, sometimes wrongly that people will have the same experience and understanding of my image as I do. I want them to see and feel the same things I experienced but their views, like mine are subjective and depending on their backgrounds and experiences of the world, people see their own image, every single time.

When I shoot an image I choose what to include or exclude in the frame. I choose the light and exposure...all to project onto that paper what I see or want to see. This personal view of the world through an image is my photography.

It nice when you get someone close to where you stand when it comes to your aesthetics and all the intentions, motivations and reasons you shot the image for in the first place. To get someone to see and feel what you have created. Sharing what you hold dear, sharing your truth.

So, Id like to share some images that might not be that visually stunning in themselves but the process of creating them and the experiences that led to them being taken meant a great deal to me.

Plastic marks the spot.

We had a budget and a very expensive helicopter service deep in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. I had been contracted to shoot a film on the initiation rites of the Bena tribe. First, we had to find the Bena tribe and a local translator and guide had already sent word to clear a helicopter-landing site for us and mark the site with flags. We had the approximate coordinates for the landing but it still covered several square kilometers of forest. In PNG fuel is very expensive and air and canoe travel is the only way to get to various parts of the island nation.

I hate helicopters simply because they make me feel like I’ve just eaten several plates of pani puri with a dash of dysentery and cholera for flavor. Cruising through incredibly beautiful sun shaft lit valleys and above dark and mist filled Jurassic type forests didn’t do it for me, even greener in the face.

Cockatoos’ wheeled about above the forest and incredible vistas stretched in all directions. Untouched rain forest. We tried for 2 days to find the landing spot. On the last attempt, and almost out of money we saw the flag through an opening in the mists. One bloody tiny plastic packet. We landed and the local tribesman smiled. He had been waiting by the "flag" for 3 days.

I took a picture of the flag. We met the locals.

The shoot was hard, it rained all the time and I got myself a staph infection on my legs. We slept in a leaf shelter and a leaky tent. I rolled down a hillside and got hurt. I heard stories of downed American airmen during the Second World War who had died in their planes, stuck a hundred feet up in the canopy. I imagined the pilots, some wounded, spending their last agonizing hours in the trees, suspended, little creatures going about their daily lives all around and on them. One pilot had written on paper, reminisced a very old man. They had found him with this long letter on his chest and as they recall they used the paper to roll tobacco and smoked it. Just going about their daily lives. The Bena bena tribes people knew the locations of some of the plane wrecks but we did not have the time to trek to them. Somewhere in the mists hung airplanes from the trees.

We shot the initiation rite. It involved getting shot in the tongue with a bow and arrow. I can’t find the slides right now. I’ll post them when I do. I ran out of cigarettes and smoked local tobacco wrapped in the pages of a bible that gave me a headache. I watched little creature walk across the top of my tent. Wounds on my legs oozed. It rained some more.

The tribe had a feast and shared their wealth with us. Pork was a delicacy enjoyed only rarely and the pigs were like their pets, tended for and even breast fed by women as piglets. In PNG ones wealth is determined by how many pigs you have. Pigs were treated like children and behaved like pet dogs. Sharing meat in the protein starved highlands is no small thing. They shared.

They killed their pet cassowaries and killed their pigs. They did so methodically and with clubs.

The shoot was hard and towards the end I argued with my friend and business partner Eric. After awhile and tempers flared and we didn’t speak. We muttered terrible things about each other’s countries. No one understood us we were mean. We were the only people we could be mean to, each other. Everything else was unfamiliar and stared for long periods of time. wE argued and sweated and itched and in time I could see how I could kill someone. My friend. Easy.

We were the exotics.

We waited for our helicopter that never came sitting apart on a hillside with an amazing view, me feverish, in pain and hot. It was late and Eric was furious that the chopper hadn’t arrived. We trekked back to the clearing for another miserable night in the tent. It rained and my legs ached. I ate an old piece of cassowary...tasteless, lean and flavorless. No salt.

I gave away my shirt to the man above on his request. The same man who had arrived naked from the forest when we had arrived. I also gave him a pillow and he was touched and almost cried. Our dirty shirts and caps were highly prized. He said he would give it to his wife. He seemed to like my brigade road bought export quality surplus shirt very much.

Eventually the chopper returned and the flag still stood. Plastic takes a long time to go away. The village watched as we left and waved until they disappeared into the distance and the mist swept in.

We flew away.

Goa flux

2007-02-12T15:06:00.000+05:30

I am of Goan origin. I live in Bangalore, India. Post this post (http://ryanlobo.blogspot.com/2006/07/traffic.html) I decided to leave Bangalore and live in Goa for maybe half of the year.

I flew to Goa to look for a plot or apartment to buy. I decided that I wanted to move back to the homeland where my great grandparents came from, the ether from where the extended family emanated to various parts of the planet. A refuge from pollution, intellectual conversation and traffic jams. I imagined Konkani classes, writing on an old desk by a big window, walks through old Goan neighbourhoods, meetings with distant and quirky relatives, weddings and beautiful beaches

Goa………. a topic of conversation at family dinners where grand aunts would smile and talk about churches and breads and various relatives who had gone from which village to Canada, and what happened when Goa was liberated and in which church who was married and how the breadman would come by in the morning for a cup of coffee.

Pride in an idea of a place that was solidified whenever I visited Goa. Nice relatives and nicer hotels, big beautiful bungalows, old trees, empty streets, unique smells.

An edited Goa. A tight edit. December vacations, pretty girls on the beach, Banana pancakes with honey, great food, cold king’s beer, hot sleepy afternoons, the smell of feni and swimming pool chlorine, lazy lunches in big houses, little girls in white dresses, sea swims at dusk, cold showers, hot afternoons and sun baked pinkish white tourists who smelt of sun tan lotion.

I reached Goa and headed out from the airport in a taxi, to Morjim beach, to look at a piece of land. I was hungry so the taxi driver and I went to the “turtle bay shack” for a bite. There were no prices on the menu.

Me: How much is the prawns curry and rice?
Waiter: 600 rupees
Me: You must be joking
Waiter: In konkani to the taxi driver
“Why do you bring Indians here…only bring foreigners as we do not want to serve these people.”

My taxi driver berated the waiter and then enquired with the owner why “Indians” were not welcome at the shack. The owner said to leave if we didn’t like it. At a nearby table several British tourists watched. A Russian girl lazed on a deck chair. I realized that besides the owner and the waiters, we were the only other brown skins about. We left and the owner laughed as we did so. The waiter sneered.

The deck chairs opposite the turtle bay shack

Anger and humiliation. The Goa of my childhood, the romantic Goa I thought I knew existed in just one place….my head. It was absent elsewhere and I was guilty of abstraction, guilty of making my mind up on a place based on holidays only 1 percent of the population could enjoy.

Basically, I, Ryan Lobo, suddenly realized that I, Ryan Lobo, was a tourist.

The Goa I enjoyed existed for a select few. The rest, including most Goans have to contend with casteism, classism, corruption and overpriced prawn curry for brown people only. It isn’t just economics that run Goa but a caste system and years of colonialism, separation, exploitation and division.

I went back to my hotel at Calangute beach. A procession was being carried out by the "Save Goa campaign". Passionate young goans carried banners that called Monserat, the corrupt planning minister a “monster rat”. They seemed genuinely upset. Goa was ready to be saved!

“Protect Goa from outsiders”, said a banner
“Jail corrupt politicians” said another.
“Foreigners choice, Indians privilege” read the menu on my table.

When the Portuguese converted Goa many hundreds of years ago, they converted whole villages. While people adopted or were forced to adopt Christianity, their social structures remained intact and that included the caste system.

To date educated Goans all over the world, including some members of my extended family would prefer that their children get married to Goans of the same caste despite belonging to a religion that does not support caste divisions. Maybe I simplify too much but in essence Goans identify themselves by the villages they come from and their castes. What lies outside, lies away.

I decided to take pictures. I found signs of change. A decay and destruction of the remnants of Portugese culture not equipped to survive the new economies and hungers entering its space. Goan culture or “Catholic Goan culture” or 40 percent culture is being inundated.... evolving.

Kashmiri traders, Bihari labourers and Kannadiga contractors have caught buses and have moved to Goa, setting up shop, construction companies and beach shacks.

Land barons from Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore have invested hugely on beach facing properties, shaving of old trees like weeds to put up badly designed vacation homes for Delhites, Maumbaikars and Bangaloreans. Whole hillsides converted to housing developments … but not for local Goans for the most part as much as for vacationers, people who might visit Goa once or twice a year.

Fishing communities on the coast are being displaced to satisfy a growing middle class's desire for holidays. sun with sunblock and sand with plastic wrappers strewn about.

A temporary economy. Empty houses being taken care of by those that owned the same lands once.

The Goa I remember from my vacations, from tourist booklets and from my imagination fades away. I wonder if it ever really existed.

It does, in the minds of vacationers.

In the relative bad taste and money flowing into Goa lies a renewal of sorts. A death of older orders and the birth of new ones. When enough people from other parts of the sub continent come to Goa and build their houses and start their businesses, those who survive economically will write their own histories and in time they too will be upset when people from across the hills come to visit, especially if jobs and land are at stake. Hungrier people with no need for siestas are pouring in from all over the country. Old homes are being torn down and being replaced with “modern” square and ugly architecture, corrupt governance and police, reactions that include the closure of all music by 10 pm unless of course you pay off the cops, traffic jams and plastic pollution.

The discrimination has never ended in Goa. The caste system has always been present. Goa has never remained separate from India in the sense that Goans have made sure that a significant number of their own, regardless of religion have remained economically and educationally backward. Today its corrupt Goan officials who choose to de-notify protected beach areas with their short sighted "regional plan". It’s Goans who refuse to sell to their own and elect their representatives wisely and who unsustainably develop their tourist areas. Symptoms of a divided society where one looks for ones own immediate gain rather than that of the whole... longterm.

The "Save Goa Campaign" might have come into being a bit late and it remains to be seen if the youth can truly affect change, change in a way of thinking and acceptance of corruption and graft.

Young goans seem to be banding together, enraged at the degradation of their home state and environment. Their reactions are passionate though predictable in the anger towards "outsiders" and lack of action directed towards the creation of awareness and eradication of corruption and rot in their own communities and government. Corrupt politicians still function in office, apparently unaffected.

Jingoism, Goa for the Goans…..it won't work. It might for a while but not for long. When a culture is under threat it's people look outside themselves for the convenient enemy. A deep look within one's own culture seems lacking. Why corrupt politicians haven't been hauled up and why they got elected in the first place.

There a little over a million people in Goa. That’s about one thousandth of India’s population. Too few people in too rich and beautiful an area to keep everyone at bay for long, especially when the outsiders are either hungry for opportunity or have cash to spend in areas where cash is welcome, as its never been experienced before. India is "on the move" like the newspapers say and Goa is becoming another destination. If it weren't for the Portugese, Goa would be just another little province. In time it will become just another little province if Goans do not start looking after themselves, regardless of what caste one belongs to. They will need to clean up their government and have accountable candidates stand for elections instead of complaining about "outsiders," a symptom and not a cause. An underclass will vote its candidates in as they expect nothing from a society thats never looked after them in the first place. Spin, jingoism and free alcohol are sureties during elections whereas education and infrastructure require more blood and sweat than anyone seems willing to give or more importantly, expect.

Out of state labourers wait by the roadside to be hired

In time Goa and its culture, the remnants of 500 years of being under the Portuguese will possibly disappear. It will immigrate to Canada, other parts of India, Australia and the U.S where two generations down the line it will melt away. Goans will become the same "outsiders" in other places, as many have been for the last few generations, that they complain about now.

The poorer lower "caste" fishermen and traders sell their lands to men from Delhi and Bombay rather than develop the lands themselves. Quick money, for now. The cycle repeats itself and they will possibly remain poor.

I decided that I did not want to move to Morjim beach. Land was available but it was within the “protected” CRZ 500 meter construction exclusion zone of the beach, a "protected" nesting ground for Olive Ridley turtles.

“We can get you the permissions,” said the realtor’s friend…. “There are ways.”

Short cuts, bribes, violations of building and land use regulations.

I declined.

A hotel at Morjim beach within the 500 meter CRZ boundary

Morjim Beach or "little Russia" as its locally known

Last I heard, a group of businessmen from Delhi bought a lot of land there. A Russian mobster has invested there heavily as well as a well-known paedophile.

In time the cuisine will change, land prices will go up, apartment buildings will replace bungalows, fishermen will be displaced, the turtles will die, the beaches will become polluted and the illegal structures too close to the beach will be torn down by the same governent that was bribed to permit their building in the first place, when enough frustration and passion has built up.

I still want a place in Goa, minus the corruption. (Any guidance would be appreciated).

The turtles probably feel the same way.

One day the “foreign” tourists will leave for greener pastures.
People from other parts of India, hungry for opportunity will not stop coming though,

and they will stay.

Lovely eyes

2006-12-13T01:17:00.001+05:30

Woman and child - Jharkand

Everyone loves the beautiful rural Indian woman photo. She looks happy, romantic and lovely. Often she has big breasts and also looks mysterious and enigmatic. What an idyllic life says the photographer and clicks away. Later in drawing rooms in the city people will exclaim and say how pretty she is and what a beautiful image and what lovely eyes, and this is just like that afghan girl picture whatshisname shot and the photographer smiles and acts like it was nothing and maybe even simpers a bit before asking for her phone number.

(Guilty)

Rajasthani women

To cut a long story short, many rural women in India seem to be treated terribly from before they're born until they die. They are considered beings of lesser value by a system supported by mythologies, traditions and histories of exploitation and suppression.

"The persistence of hunger and abject poverty in India and other parts of the world is due in large measure to the subjugation, marginalization and disempowerment of women. Women suffer from hunger and poverty in greater numbers and to a great degree then men. At the same time, it is women who bear the primary responsibility for actions needed to end hunger: education, nutrition, health and family income." - The Hunger project

Rural Tribal women have the highest mortality rates for infants, the highest fertility rates (related to malnourishment where fertility increases to compensate for infant mortality) and chronic malnutrition.

Most Indian women spend about three hours a day cooking in poorly ventilated rooms. The impact of fumes includes eye infections, respiratory problems, bronchitis and lung cancer. One study quoted by WHO in 1991 found that pregnant women cooking over open stoves had almost a 50 percent higher chance of stillbirth.

Tribal women especially have a lower life expectancy than the national average. With cervical cancer, more than 130,000 new cases—roughly one-fourth of the global total—are reported in India every year. Health facilities are inadequate and often non-existent in rural India. India’s maternal mortality rates in rural places are among the highest in the world.

There seems to be an alarming rise in atrocities against women in India (at least their reportage which means that there are far more crimes than reported) in terms of rapes, assaults, harrassment and murders. Female infanticide, sex-selective abortions and the witholding of education for the girl child are additional forms of violence that reflect the devaluation of women in Indian society.

Sexual exploitation of tribal women if commonplace and many are sold off to brothels in cities from impoverished places. When large development projects happen, sexual exploitation of tribal women is rampant. Violence against women in UP and Rajasthan where many of these images were taken is very high. Uttar Pradesh ranked first and Rajasthan ranked fourth in the ratings of recorded crimes against women according to the National crime bureau.

Just going by "reported" crimes in India, on average every 26 minutes a woman is molested. Every 34 minutes a rape takes place. Every 42 minutes a sexual harassment incident occurs. Every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped. And every 93 minutes a woman is burnt to death over dowry.

That’s just what’s reported. The real numbers are much higher.

A woman who sold her kidney. Her husband drank the proceeds

A quarter of reported rapes involve female children below the age of 16. The vast majority sexual assaults are not reported due to the social stigma attached victims of such crimes. Convictions are very rare.

Violence within the home is widespread all over rural India and in the cities as well. Methods of killing women at home includes setting them on fire, beating them to death and poisoning. Gender discrimination against women seems deeply embedded within traditional societies across the nation.

Rajasthani Village girls

The literacy rate of the rural tribal female is the lowest amongst all social groups in India. Their schools are inadequate for the most part. Many girls are not sent to school.Families are far less likely to educate girls than boys, and far more likely to pull them out of school so that they can work in the fields.

Even if girls do get schooled employment opportunities in the country side are most often non existent. Women and girls receive far less education than males, due both to social norms and fear of violence.

In India, the illliteracy rate for women is 62 percent verses 35 percent for men.

India has the largest population of non-school-going working girls on the planet.

Rajasthani women

The Indian rural woman does not have property rights for the most part. She is paid less than her male counterpart for the same work. Women work roughly twice as many hours as men.

(Mies 1986) found that the work day of an female agricultural labourer during the harvest season lasts for 15 hours a day. Her male counterpart works for seven to eight hours a day.

A woman underges an exorcism in Uttar Pradesh that involves the ghost being beaten out of her.

Divorce is very rare in India and most often occurs only due to overwhelming abuse— it is a considered an admission of a woman’s failure as a wife and daughter-in-law. Our mythologies support this crap. When people say India has a low divorce rate and act proud about the same, do remember that that is because women arent able to dump the losers theyre with most often as they arent not able to support themselves. In 1990, divorced women made up a miniscule 0.08 percent of the total female population. When a woman gets divorced, she is often treated as an outcast.

Maintenance rights of women in the case of divorce are weak. Although both Hindu and Muslim law recognize the rights of women and children to maintenance, in practice, maintenance is most often violated.

Chopping wood for the family

Hindu and Muslim personal law do not recognize matrimonial property. After a divorce, women have no rights to their houses or to other property accumulated during marriage. Basically, their contributions to the family and asset accumulation seem to go unrecognized ....totally.

Women in India are subject to discrimination not just on the basis of gender but on numerous other factors such as caste, community and religion. One member of the UN Human Rights Committee observed in 1997 that ''women are expendable in India''.

Sounds a little extreme? Look it up city slicker.

Does what I write offend you as an Indian? Its all old hat by the way. Do you think that this is a "foreign" idea of India, an outdated version, an exotic version, something in the past?

"Amartya Sen points out that when he took up issues of women's welfare, he was accused in India of voicing "foreign concerns." "I was told Indian women don't think like that about equality. But I would like to argue that if they don't think like that they should be given a real opportunity to think like that."

A child maid servant being "rescued" in Delhi.

I've heard ( in various living rooms ) a lot about fundamentalist Islamic countries where women are treated horribly, while an underpaid maid gets yelled at for dropping marie biscuits on the carpet. Our own country "numbers wise", is worse off. Many more women get burnt to death, murdered, bludgeoned and tortured to death in India every year than all the middle eastern "Islamic" nations put together. Most of these women in India, who suffer these agonies, happen to be Hindu.

A free people cannot be born of slave mothers. We live in cities and are removed from the gross realities of our own country or choose to ignore them. Class and caste separate us into little islands of ignorance and masterbatory conversation. We exploit and underpay our maids. We take dowry. We offer it. We ignore what lies outside our social spheres. Our inferiority complexes do not allow for criticism. We take offense at what the world says when its negative and act like puppy dogs when praise is doled out. It is all a part of our “Indian culture” or better put, our distinct lack of the same.

References and sources : Amnesty International, United Nations website, The hunger project, Mies report (1986),