Photo Essay / A Reflection On My Year In India (10+ Photographs & Article)

India is a world of explosive colour and sound. It is a wonderful and obscene assault on the human senses, at times inspiring and motivational but at other times, it is a crooked place that harnesses fear and indescribable anxiety.

Like Ancient Sanskrit text, the faces are unreadable but the form and shapes are familiar, impossible to read. I can only interpret the raw history behind every glance and glare. As I photograph social India, in the modern world, I can only speculate about my subjects and the stories they could tell if our languages allowed us to do so.

In my wanderings, it became apparent that groups of men with blood shot eyes and striped shirts, chain smoking cigarettes and drinking Chai, gawking at passers by, particularly females was to be a common theme. These groups of intimidating men were literally found on every street. As a man myself I was comfortable watching them, talking, photographing and mingling alongside, but in my observation it was clear my gender was favourable. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be in India if I wasn't a man. A lesson my wife learnt the hard way.

The best way to talk to locals was to hire an Auto Rickshaw for the day and get to know the driver. I found Hindus to be very forward with there politics. They almost always had something nasty or presumptuous to say about Islam without prompting and enjoyed boasting about their own beliefs and families and country. Muslim men were more candid, more accommodating and in general in my opinion incredibly more trustworthy and humble in their own existence. This was my experience at least.

A rigorous moral code and social caste system seems to have desensitised India to poverty and the less fortunate. There is a strong belief that someone facing uncertainty, disability or poverty were paying for mistakes made in a past life. At best this was a coping mechanism. Poverty and suffering is everywhere in India, it is physically impossible to help every living thing that needs it. Desperation is the main experience of India and it's everywhere, I mean everywhere.

The country at times can look bleak, a series of sad stories hidden in the rubble of a shambolic political system left in the shadowy past of British Imperialism. At other times it is overwhelmingly beautiful, and full of colour and life. Sunsets are surreal, the flora and fauna is abundant even in the darkest corners of major cities, for example in Mumbai, at night when the city partly sleeps, Leopards enter the city streets looking for a meal or dog, cat, pig and sometimes people.

India has a love/ hate relationship with automobiles, large areas of cities are often always congested with traffic and noise, but in Varanasi if you venture into the thin streets, cars and motorbikes are replaced by bicycles, and the air is fresh. This little cove above has a distinctly Mediterranean feel about it.

Nature is the winning force in India. Despite all the concrete and pollution the country is consuming, weeds and trees grow out of every crack and creak in the pavement. Whole banyan tree's consume houses from the inside, rip up roads and topple structures. The entire urban jungle across the continent is a homage to the power of nature and the vulnerability of mankind.

In the mountainous north of India it is easy to feel insignificant, and with a recent Earthquake (2014) in the area this only heightened those anxieties. At the end of the day all the worries of a natural disaster perish in the wake of such beauty and the Himalaya holds that perk with a tight grip. Some parts of the natural world are simply impenetrable and I hope it stays that way.

This concludes my micro-thoughts on India as I observed it. I hope you enjoyed the snaps, taken out of my b-sides :)

Follow, share and comment if you you like.

Cotton x