All posts filed under: A Rural Asian Wedding Travelogue

One Bengali Monsoon Wedding and a Rare Feast –III

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After I experienced the most dramatic Orchestra by the Frogs and Company, drunk Kaushik later that night told me to rethink leaving for home instead consider this as a mystical invitation for a tribal wedding that he will be attending later that week. I was already on an extended journey here in Bengal, but incessant downpour set me up for long at Kaushik’s home in Jhargram. During one of those rainy nights Kaushik received a phone call, where his friend invited him a day prior to his sister’s wedding . I got excited and we decided to leave, with a condition. His friend asked us to reach by the daylight. We started from his home on time, but rain and bad roads took whole day to reach that place from where we had to take the last jeep for the wedding home to his friend’s village. It was a strange place. There were many people but I felt there was no one talking. Like at any crossroad in the world, people were walking, buying things, …

One Scary Night at the India Pakistan Border – Visiting Tanot Mata Temple Longewala

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Amongst the six major wars since Independence in 1947, India fought its deadliest battle with East Pakistan which resulted in the Birth of a country called ‘Bangladesh”, in 1971. But, even though, the Indian Army was confronting the rogue Pakistani soldiers in erstwhile East Pakistan, Pakistan decided to engage Indian Army and opened the western front in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan where only 120 Indian soldiers were manning their territory against 2000-3000 Pak soldiers with 40 Tanks. It was a night attack in a vulnerable open desert landscape which back fired for Pakistani Army six hours later but by then they had bombed most installations with heavy causalities. It is known that amongst all of this the only structure that was left as it was, was a mother Temple called Tanot Mata Temple, with 120 men winning an unusually long fight. My work was done by the noontime. After a whole morning of chasing a Manganiyar tribe, I finished my interview with the old tribal singer and requested Veeru’s great grandfather to sit under …

A Memory of the Most Beautiful Woman : A Photographic Recollection of Three Days Living in a Rural Rajasthani Home

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Dhapodi ji became a shepherd once she learnt that she would not be able to give Ambaram any children. Limping, I saw her whole life in that moment as she slowly walked away from us, with his cattle family. She took the responsibility of walking seventy goats and four cows to greener pastures. She used to take them all together for grazing, in rain, in dusty, deadly heat of Rajasthan daily, finding newer fields and branches to eat from all day to come back as the sun sat and help his husband’s second wife in cooking. Yes, second wife! Ambaram married again, in search for a boy to continue his lineage. Instead the new couple got five beautiful talkative girls, each a year apart. They went to every temple and sage to pray and ask for their blessing- leaving the older wife- Dhapodi and children back home. It became an irony that on the day Ambaram and Dhapodi got married- twenty years later, a boy arrived from the younger wife. As i Sit on the …

About Kashmir, A Tale of Keepers and Rowing a Shikara to a Friend’s Wedding in Lake Dal Srinagar

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Learning how to row was the most profound, useful as much as useless, but one hypnotic skill that arrived at one point in my life. I was living with the Huns, a houseboat community in Dal Lake. The boat in general is called Shikara in Kashmiri. And Rowers were called Keepers, an English word. And perhaps it was this word that lured me to become one; a keeper. The one who keeps. Kashmir; the most beautiful valley on Earth. Not because it is pretty but perhaps the most complex. Also, the most militarised one, around that time. The aura of violence and terror was ever present in everyday Kashmiri life. When the valley was going through its longest curfew of their existence, I was there, walking, documenting the flatlands of Srinagar and hiking up the Harvan Mountains, even finding my way to the Mahadev Rock in the Pir Panjals while also finding myself bathing in the waters of the river Lidder, formerly Lambodarini and the mighty Indus. I was learning to live with the birds …

When a wedding arrived Magically in Rajasthan

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It was a time of peerless freedom. I was a young Yogi travelling with a backpack, pen, diary and a camera travelling through villages, walking on the mud roads of rural India, in search of stories. I had just finished a two-day assignment for an Indian magazine, documenting the popular cattle fair that took place around the ancient temple site of Pushkar. And while at it I had learnt that after this fair in the ancient city of Brahma, the camels will travel for weeks on road through the desert and forests, crossing the oldest hill range on earth, the Aravalli to take part in another fair, hundreds of miles down the western coast in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. I wanted to find that route and travel with them, with the camel tribes documenting, and writing about this beautiful, unusual journey. But on my way, I couldn’t find any transport, which could have taken me to the state highway, from where I could find the travelling camels. It was night and I had …

When a wedding found me travelling in Mumbai

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It was then my first visit to Mumbai. And hence everything i was laying my eyes on went deeper than only seeing. I was hearing, more. Walking more. A place that promises light to your dreams ever since you earned consciousness, a place known for many a rags to riches story. Famous or infamous for world’s second largest Film Industry. I was there looking at every action, motion, observing how people move, react, are. Yet, I hadn’t been able to go out much then in Mumbai. One thing that i had loved walking in mumbai were the dairy shops where you would get Chai from the fresh milk. So one day while having malai/cream chai at a milk dairy I had started having a liking for, only because there was a beautiful big peepal tree I could sit under. And secondly. unlike in north India where there is milk a plenty but there is no way you can sit and enjoy different variations of milk in a dairy shop. Mumbai seemed to be bathing in …

The Wedding Song

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In her wedding dress that one day she stopped counting years   I met J uncle on a very cold january morning this year. It was raining and we stood outside an empty swimming pool. His room – 705, is just beneath my room – 805, where i am writing this. J uncle had his own quiet world till he met my sister. My sister, Ruspsi is a kathak dancer(banaras gharana). J uncle would not know about it for a month till one day they meet in the elevator, she moved and her ghungroo rolled from her bag. J uncle and his lovely wife had come from Banaras. In a quest to live with their son, they sold their house. They used to sing all morning there, he told me. He disliked it here. Everything. But he never spoke about it. He was just visibly sad. In his walk, thats how mostly i saw of him. A singer coming from a gharana who doesn’t sing anymore. In the meantime J uncle grew fond of my …

Jaimaal – The Wedding Song

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An image of my parents wedding in 1982 I met J uncle on a rainy very cold january morning this year, near an empty swimming pool. His room – 705, is just beneath my room – 805, where i am writing this. J uncle had his own quiet world till he met my sister. My sister, she is a kathak dancer(banaras gharana). J uncle would not know about it for a month till one day they meet in the elevator, she moved and her ghungroo rolled from her bag. J uncle and his lovely wife had come from Banaras. In a quest to live with their son, they sold their house. They used to sing all morning there, he told me. He disliked it here. Everything. But he never spoke about it. He was just visibly sad. In his walk, thats how mostly i saw of him. A singer coming from a gharana who doesn’t sing anymore. In the meantime J uncle grew fond of my sister and attended one of her performances in Delhi. That …