We sometimes exchange pictures with some of our guests at the Ashram. When there is a big celebration and we take a group picture with everyone in their nice clothes for example, we prefer not taking the picture from ten different cameras but with one and then copy it to other people's computers, cards or memory sticks. In that process, people sometimes offer us their pictures, too, and copy them for us. This is a very interesting way of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. Sometimes however I am shocked about what I get to see.
It is India, often starting in Delhi. There are the pictures of the road, many of them out of focus, taken out of a driving and shaking taxi or auto-rickshaw. Clicking through pictures you see how fascinated the photographer was with the world around him or her. Numerous photos of the animals on the road, monkeys on the houses, dogs lying on the footpath, cows lying on the street and a camel pulling a loaded wagon. You see the colours of the markets, the spices, the vegetables, some signs with Hindi words. It reads 'Gopal Singh Drugstore' or maybe 'Do not spit' but with its colours, it gives an impression, you take it home and show it to your family.
Then there is Agra, the Taj Mahal. Posing in front of the building, sometimes holding the tip of the tomb with the fingers, as though lifting it up – sometimes the hand hovers in the air just next to the building. Excited faces tell your thoughts: 'Wow, I never thought that I would do something this silly when I am at one of the most impressive buildings of the world!' Photos of mosques, temples, palaces and museums, full of people, tourists from all over the world and all over India. Again posing, this time together with Indian families, a school class or Indian students, eager to have a picture with you. On your own camera, you wonder, they will never get to see it, but well, you have it on your camera now. It is India, it is an adventure, it is fun!
Coming to Vrindavan, the scenes calm down. There are the colours, still, but there are less people, especially less tourists. The roads are more narrow, the markets smaller. The pictures display ox-wagons full of hay and women carrying bundles of long twigs on their heads. It looks more rural to you – although Vrindavan is still a town, not a small village, as you realize when you get to see Nutella and Kellogs Cornflakes on the market. Of course you take a picture to show it to your friends and family.
It is not this all that shocks me, no, not at all. That is what you do on a journey and this is how everyone takes pictures. To take them home and show them to their loved ones. Show what you have seen and how different this country on the other side of the world is.
It is the other photos that make me sad. The pictures that you take when you don't walk on the main road, those photos on which one does not see impressive buildings or well maintained and clean gardens. It is the dirt. It is the garbage. It is the stink that you thought you could not take a picture of but which now seems to come out of the photos of the side of the road, where sewage water is standing in the heat of the sun.
And the poverty. Pictures of small children, wearing only torn shirts, their legs crusted with dirt, sitting with their bare bottoms on that same road that you walk on with your shoes, on the same road where those animals, that look so cute on other pictures, eat, sleep and defecate. Photos of pigs, digging their noses through mountains of plastic, waste and garbage in an empty plot.
It upsets me to think that this is what you saw when you came to my country. It makes me sad to think that this is what you will show your family and friends. It shocks me – but then again, I know about it. I don't feel like going out myself in my own town because I know about the dirt and bad smell. We run a school for the children of such families whom you are taking pictures of. Those who don't have anything. But still, those pictures shake my heart and make me wish that we could do much more.
The only consolation I have when I am in the middle of these feelings is that you have stayed with us and saw our children. I click further on and I see that you took photos while they were playing, laughing, studying in school, dancing on an Ashram celebration or waving to you when you met them out on the road. It is like a little dot of light in the darkness when I see that you caught the poor ones with a big smile in their eyes and on their faces, be that in our Ashram or anywhere outside. That makes me feel that it can be alright that you took the other pictures and maybe good if you show them to others. You might not only tell of sights and tourism on one hand and dirt and poverty on the other but also about happiness and love.
About help and compassion.
About what we can change and what we can give.
About love.
Related posts
कृपया ग्लानि न करें यदि किसी की कल्पना करके आपका खड़ा अथवा गीली हो जाए
Bitte haben Sie kein schlechtes Gewissen, wenn Sie eine Erektion bekommen oder nass werden, weil Sie sich jemanden vorstellen
Please don’t feel guilty if you get erection or wet by imagining someone
Meine Beziehung zu meinem Vater
My relationship with my father
पिता के साथ मेरा सम्बन्ध
Neues Kapitel im Leben, Herausforderungen und Lektionen
New chapter in life, challenges and lessons
