“Waking up in India is like waking up to life itself.” - R. Page
The world is a work of art. And in this world, India is surely a masterpiece. Only God could create a country that is at once both overwhelming and humbling, fill it with an incredible amount of life, and add more diversity than an eye could behold. Going to India is always a journey for the soul and maybe I have a little bit of a bias, but I don't know how it cannot be this way for everyone. For me, India always evokes a lot of emotion all at once. I feel a sense of belonging as well as a feeling of being an outsider. A feeling of being a part of a great something - steeped in history and a witness to the constant evolution of culture.
If you can manage to go and keep a part of your heart open, you will most definitely fall in love with it. I certainly fall in love all over every single time.
The prime example of the incredible beauty that is in India is in its faces. It is a country of many faces - and I mean this in the most obvious and literal way as well as in a metaphorical way. The population is booming, duh. That's going to give you a lot of faces to look at (lol, bad humor). But I also mean it in the sense that you can find so many different subcultures all within one country. India is made up of 29 states and 7 union territories and almost each state has its own language, cuisine, clothing. How, then, can one person go to India and expect to have really experienced it? You could live there for your whole life but never know the desert songs of Rajasthan, the tea plantations of Darjeeling, architectural marvels in Tamil Nadu, or life by the ocean in Kerala. SubhanAllah.
Here are some of my humble attempts at capturing some faces:
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| those eyes. |
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| He had no desire for his photo to be taken |
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| Selling accessories and other shiny things to put on clothes |
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| Jalebis for days |
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| At recess :) |
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| beautiful boy |
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| He told me, "What you do becomes you, do it with integrity and remembrance of God" |
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| Casual beedi at work |
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| Bargaining for green mangoes. Don't go to India if you can't bargain, you'll lose all your money. |
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| so much life |
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| Inside a town bus |
With all my heart,
- S
P.S. More India posts to follow :)
