One year to the day after I drove Murthy and Vasanthi to the Arctic Circle, Melanie and I arrive in Bangalore; Soundarya - the bride-about-to-be with kittens

This is Soundarya Ravichandran and while I have wanted to return to India ever since I first came in August of 2007, she is the reason I came now. Tomorrow, she will become the bride of her soulmate, Anil Kumar, and Melanie and I will be there. 

I first met Sandy at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to her cousin, Vivek and there has been a strong bond between us ever since. I consider her a soul friend and I call her "Muse," because ever since I met her, whenever I am taking pictures, I try to imagine how the images might interpret my world to her.

In fact, there are many, many, many pictures in my portfolio now that I took specifically for her. She has actually seen only a very few of these images, as it would be too great of a task to either post or email, or even process them all, but I have them and she is the reason.

Not long after we met, I promised her that, if it were at all possible, I would come and take pictures at her wedding when it happened.

So here I am.

And here is she, with a kitten born to a feral cat at the house of Vivek's parents, who are hosting Melanie and me.

And here is Melanie and me, reflected off the window of the Seattle airport train that takes passengers from one one course to another.

Melanie, in the Mumbai airport.

A little girl in the Mumbai airport.

Forty-one hours passed from the time I drove away from my house to when we met Murthy and Vasanthi at the Bangalore airport. Murthy then summoned his favorite cab driver, Gulpi, and then brought us to the house, where Vasanthi made us coffee.

She makes it with milk and it is the best coffee that I have ever tasted. 

As we ate lunch, Sandy picked up my camera and turned the tables on me.

In India, it is polite to eat with your right hand, so I am exercising good manners here. Vasanthi is also a great cook. If she were to resettle in Anchorage and open her own restaurant, Wow!

Sadly for me, I love spicy food so much that I spent a few decades overdoing it and now the doctor has forbidden me to eat it, except a little bit every now and then. And when I overdo it it, I know it real soon.

But in India, the food is spicy. And so good.

One year ago, on May 8, I drove Murthy and Vasanthi up the Haul Road to the Arctic Circle and then on to Cold Foot. I had planned to take them on a whale watching cruise in Prince William Sound, but Murthy had read about some folks who had crossed the Arctic Circle on the Haul Road and then received a certificate attesting to the fact that they had done so.

He was convinced that the government had a little station there where they awarded everyone who came across with such a certificate and his highest goal was to go get one.

I knew that there would be no such station, but, along the way, I managed to find a place in Fairbanks that did issue such certificates to tour groups, and so I picked up a couple and at the circle awarded them myself.

Now Murthy has the certificates hanging on the wall for all who enter to see, along with the picture that I took of him and Vasanthi at the sign that marks the Arctic Circle.

The beautiful little girl is their granddaughter, Vaidehi, who lives with her parents in Chennai, on the coast.

Sandy and the two kittens. I will post more of the cat series on Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat Blog when I get the chance.

Vasanthi, Soundarya and Natarajan, their father and grandfather. 

Dear Cousin Prakash: I wish that I could have known you better

The gentleman sitting with the boy on his lap is Prakash and the boy is his son, Karthik. Next to them sits Akila, the wife of Prakash. Sadly, she is now a widow and Karthik without a father, as Prakash lost his life just before the New Year began when he was struck by a bus in India. Prakash was 42.

I call him "cousin" in the title to this entry not because of any relationship of blood between us, because there is none, but to honor him and the family connection that first drew us together on the evening of August 22, 2007. That connection was the pre-wedding reception of my niece, Khena, to his nephew, Vivek, held in Bangalore in the south India state of Karnataka. 

Now Vivek is my nephew, too, and, by my way of thinking, that makes his Uncle Prakash my cousin.

I have a project in my head that I long to carry out, and that is to journey back into the places of origin and current habitation of all of my extended family, from the Apache and Navajo Indian Reservations of Arizona, the Mormon heartland of Utah and Southern Idaho, elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains, the coast of California,  the Midwest, Deep South, the East Coast and now India.

My purpose would be to photograph as wide a swath of my family as I can, and to tell what I can of the stories of this large, diverse, family that could not have been imagined by any member of it a little more than one generation ago.

This is from the next day, August 23, 2007, at the wedding. The very beautiful young lady that Prakash holds is niece Vaishnavi, also known as Sonal.

By itself, my ancient, new, family in India is large and diverse and though I met many of them at the wedding, in most cases, these were fleeting encounters. I have been privileged to get to know a few of them a little better. Vivek, of course; his parents, Murthy and Vashanti, who not only put me up for my final days in India, but visited us here in Alaska this past May, after which we all went down to Alta, Utah, to celebrate the second wedding of Vivek and Khena; Nephew Vijay - Vivek's brother - and his wife, Vidya, a friend to all animals and the mother of beautiful baby girl Vaidehi, born this past spring even as her grandparents were visiting us.

Through Cyberspace, we communicate regularly and send pictures back and forth.

Vivek's cousin Ganesh took me on a tour of Bangalore and is also special to my heart. Ganesh has two sisters, Soundarya (Sandy) and Sujitha (Barbie), both of whom will wed next month - Soundarya on Valentine's Day, which is also Margie and my wedding anniversary, and Sujitha the very next day, February 15.

It had long been the plan of both Soundarya and me that I would return to India to photograph her wedding, as we have shared an exceptionally special relationship since we met. I call her "Muse" and many of my days have been brightened by the mere appearance of a "sandyz" mail in my inbox.

I thought that on this second trip to India, I would begin to track down my new family members of south Asia; I would photograph them, both in portrait and candid form, visit with them, and begin to learn their stories.

But there was a communication mixup, and Sandy's wedding wound up being scheduled during the one event taking place here in Alaska this winter that I absolutely cannot miss.

Prakash, his beautiful wife and energetic son were among those I had hoped to photograph and visit.

Now, I do not know when I will return to India. To be honest, given the kind of year 2008 was for me, I lack the financial resources - although for Soundarya and Anil's wedding - and Sujitha's, too - a lack of resources would not have stopped me.

But I will return, because my family in India is exceptionally important to me. When I do, Prakash will not be there. His ashes were set free at his funeral in Chennai, but I will still learn what I can of him, and of Akila and Karthik, who I do hope to photograph.

For now, all I can do is to send my condolences. 

Flashback to India, August, 2007: the girl who Latika brought to mind; two of her street peers

In the previous post, I refered to the movie Slumdog Millionaire and mentioned how, when I saw the character Latika begging on the streets of Mumbai, I thought of a girl whose path had crossed mine in Bangalore. This is not her, although I did meet him on the same day.

When he first showed me the snake and the tiny chess set, I told him, politely, that I did not wish to buy either, or anything else that he was selling. He must have been quite certain that he could change my mind because, over the next couple of hours I roamed here and there and he continually materialized in front of me, smiling, exuding complete confidence that this time I would be either so charmed, impressed, or exasperated that I would buy from him.

When I look at this picture now, I kind of wish that I had bought that snake from him.

I hope he is doing well. Maybe he will be a millionaire one day.

These flying legs do not belong to the girl that I first thought of, either, but they do belong to someone who also survives by making her living on the India street. I was riding in an "auto-rickshaw" with my nephew and niece, Vijay and his wife Vidya, and we were briefly stopped in backed up-traffic. I glanced at the driver's mirror. I saw the reflection of a girl as she wind-milled our way in cartwheels from behind, nimbly navigating the narrow gap between two uneven rows of vehicles, all jam-packed tightly together.

Quickly, I raised my camera and shot, hoping to catch her image as she cart-wheeled by. The first part of her to enter my frame was this - her upturned, bare, foot which barely escaped her long, billowy, pantaloons.

The momentum of her cartwheel pulls her all the way into my frame...

and then she stops, obviously surprised.

This is the girl who Latika made me think of.

And when I saw her up ahead of me, begging like this, getting turned away, I thought of my oldest daughter, Melanie, when she was the same age.

There are strong resemblances between them, both in physique and facial structure.

She went from car to car, begging.

And then she was at our cab. Latika. My own daughter.

I look at this picture that I took as part of my incessant quest to document the world as it unfolds around me and I feel helpless. There is no way for me to know, but I hope that there is not a Fagan, a Maman, waiting to confiscate her earnings, eager to manipulate by other means her profibility in future years.

For the moment, when she stands in front of me, it does not matter. I must give her something. One way or another, even if by chance it means I must also fund to an even greater degree an evil Fagan, her survival depends upon it.

The only thing is, at some point in every day that one roams in India, he must stop giving, for there are too many open hands that reach toward him and he lacks the capacity to drop something, even small, into each of them.

Yet, I cannot tell you how badly I yearn to return to India. Every single day I feel this desire. And it has been a year and four months now. And each day when I look into the mirror, I see more white in my beard than I did before. And now the white even creeps into my hair.

What the hell was God thinking, to create such a magnificent, full, complex, challenging and diverse earth, and to give a human such a short time to get to know it?