You always hear it said that people come to India to find
themselves. I wasn’t lost when we left the United States for Chennai, but like
Paul said- visions of “the shooter” stuck with him, fading into the distance,
being trampled by careless travelers on the jet way - I can’t imagine that the shooter
didn’t represent just a little bit more than the power of the Lego Chima that
day.
Every time I look to be found, I head straight for the ocean
for a quiet open space and for the rhythm of the sea. I certainly, in search of
answers, would have never headed directly into the heat of the action.
Nothing is
particularly easy to find here, but with eight million people - a thousand
villages spread end to end - nothing is impossible. Least of all something you
didn't even know you were looking for.
I don’t really recall feeling lost since: I began art
school, met Paul, first picked up a camera and stopped time, since I became a
mom and again when I rediscovered film. I’ve been found a few times in between
and don’t doubt that I will be found again. I am certainly not the lost soul I
was for so long before these grand events, though; trying on lifestyles, like a
teenage girl trying on clothes for school. Seattle, Palm Beach, Small town USA.
I spent my early years trying to be the round peg when I was
really always the square one, but I’ve learned to be me and in that I’ve found
comfort in my own skin and confidence in my own path. I’ve traded youth for
wisdom again and again. I’ve chosen the path less traveled, a jet-way to a long
flight to a place somewhere most people only dream of.
I don’t believe that it is possible to get on that plane
from your home, leaving everyone and everything you find familiar and comfortable behind and
not lose at least a little bit of yourself in the jet-streams.
Stripped of familiarity immediately upon landing and
ultimately the comfort of anonymity afforded by melting into the pot that is
the United States, I have not only become lost in a neighborhood of this city
and in a country of millions, I have also been found in the very same insanity.
I may as well be naked standing on the sidewalk at times, even with all my forbidden
bits covered from shoulder to knee-cap. I can strip myself of everything I feel
is quintessentially American about me and I still can’t seem
to regain that comfortable anonymity that America afforded me. I don’t always
want to, I never wanted it when I had it, but being naked in a city of eight million isn’t an easy feeling to
process. Instead of feeling vulnerable, though I feel very welcome. I am
invited to tea in people’s homes and I am greeted warmly from all directions
and people are eager to share their homes, their tea and their history.
I jumped right in like I promised I would. It has made the
incredible differences between life at home and life in Chennai dissolve into
something my brain has begun to read as normal. I’m grasping to the initial shocking
differences that my senses registered in those first weeks and am holding on to
them by fraying strings. I continue to document the differences that I want so
desperately to share, but cows in the streets have begun to feel commonplace, the
smells of local foods, smell almost familiar like home and the colors of the
seas of saris have begun to fade together like a melted box of crayons.
I attended my first yoga class this past week. A familiar setting:
A clean and modern studio, plastic yoga mats laid end-to-end, men and women
sitting comfortably cross legged awaiting instruction. The only thing visibly
different here is the lack of ego and name brands and revealing clothing that we think is required in
yoga in the States. I’ve begun to rethink yoga, as I’ve always known it and to replace the sameness of brand names and comparison of bodies with a
sameness of souls; as a way to suppress everything that makes you an individual
and express everything that makes you one.
I’ve been spending one morning a week with a group of 20
plus Indian “Gentlemen” photographers from local photography clubs I've learned
about online. They accepted me warily yet warmly and, was it not for my
persistence, my focus and my dedication to the sheer insanity of shooting film in
this place, I might have been left behind in a vegetable stall by now.
I wake up at 5:30 and pick up a friend down the street; a 60
something retired photojournalist - turned retired Foreign Service Officer - turned spouse, who
reminds me, so of my Uncle Robert. In fact, our driver, Sundar, calls
him my uncle after I tried to tell him how much they looked alike. He may not know that he really isn’t my uncle, but his passion
for Indian history and politics and his appetite for exploring the city, has
earned him high standings with our often-partial driver and he does well to fill the large shoes of my very adventurous, mustached and much loved Uncle Robert.
We join up with a group of photographers, mostly hobbyists,
from the city in a new neighborhood each week and we explore the labyrinth-like
streets and markets of Chennai. I’ve run out of batteries and film on occasion
and have been left with only iPhone photos, which turned out to be a delightful
blessing. I’ve played with the children of the city, taken their photos and delighted
them with the images on the screen of my phone. Naked babies on the hips of older
siblings and cousins, proud moms, dads, shop-keepers and the elderly are eager
to have their photos taken. Owners will return to their shops to retrieve their
prized baby cow, will offer to pose with baskets of fruit or to engage in just
the labor that you desire to capture, until you’ve captured it just right. It’s
all too easy, too beautiful and sometimes too overwhelming for a daydreamer
like myself.
I’ve fallen in love with the kids. No clothes, no shoes, but
with more joy eeping out of them and into me that I am afraid I might burst
into tears or into song. They ride their bikes in circles around us and they
gather all their siblings from surrounding blocks in seconds to join together
for a portrait. I can’t seem to break away from them and always end up back in
the middle of them again. I show young moms pictures of Sam, Peter and
Clementine on my phone and somehow - so very different - we are all one.
Photograph by me of a photograph, gifted to Paul by Ed Malcik. |
I step in poop, I step over sleeping people in the streets
and pass people digging for leftover garbage in piles on the street. It isn’t all-beautiful. It is not. But that story has been told a million times before.
I am collecting so many beautiful images and am foraging for
the perfect way to tell the story of my time here. Perhaps this will be I am
meant to find in India.
I fret that I might run out of time each day to capture
every bit of beauty that I see, that I might not capture it all in a year or even
two.
In one moment I wonder how I’ll stay here another second and
in the very next I wonder how I’ll ever leave.
2 comments:
Lovely. xo
Just lovely. xo
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