All posts tagged: Tales from Rural India

When a wedding arrived Magically in Rajasthan

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 …

In loving memory of Dhapodi Ji

Dhapodi ji became a shepherd once she learnt that she would not be able to give Ambaram any children. I saw her whole life as she slowly walked away, Limping for her daily work. She looked after seventy goats and four cows. Takes them all together for grazing daily finding newer fields and trees to eat from. Meanwhile Ambaram married again, in search for a boy the new couple got five beautiful talkative girls before a quiet boy arrived from the younger wife. All children are going to school except the youngest girl. I remember Dhapodi jiji because we never spoke. Over all It must have been over eight days as she brought me tea each day and food in the night before leaving to her hut. Falling sick around her was like i became her new goat. She gave me home medicines like my mother is giving me now for cough. One night when the family had gone out, i found her working in the candle light in the kitchen. I asked her if …