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site includes private photos taken in December 2002 and January 2003.
If you want to use one of these photos, please ask first via email. |
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Deceased
royalty and missing sunglasses
The tombs are are another highlight Hyderabad. Easily
visible from Golconda Fort, the tombs are the final resting
place of the Qutb Shahi kings and their families. I didn't
really learn which was which, so I just photographed what
I liked. The tomb complex is rather large and is spread
out, requiring time if you really want to see the everything.
It was in the tombs complex that I saw and understood
the complete picture of poverty in India. Seeing the poor
or the poverty-striken was oddly normal in India, and
more frightening than I could have imagined. When I really
considered and soul-searched about the experiences here,
I relized exactly how good my life is. I also saw that
poverty I have seen elsewhere, in the U.S. or in Brazil
for instace, would be luxuriant in India. It is hard to
fight cynicism in the face of such oppressive and grinding
destitution.
I say this because of a young boy we met at the tombs.
Rachana and Ajay translated his conversations for me and
we all came to learn his life. At first I thought his
story simply fiction, an attempt to garner a few extra
rupees. So, I bought a few bags of the "Magic Masala"
potato chips he was selling. But as he continued, it was
obvious his story was his own and true. Each day he walks
45 minutes each way to come to the tombs and sell these
chips and water bottles. He can't go to school because
he is responsible for helping his mother to provide for
the family. The father was gone, and mother was the sole
care-taker for the family of several children. His life
was hard, and yet his eyes still sparkled like a playful
child. I thought of the animals in the U.S. who get the
dollar equivalent of health care to feed and house his
family for a full year. I thought of the suburban children
in American cities wrapped in a blanket of comfortable
convenience and gadgetry, to whom so much care and excess
are devoted. I thought of my own conspicuous consumption
and just greed. I cried then, and I still cry now.
We left the tombs and watched the boy hurry away with
the money we decided to give him, carefully hidden and
double-checked every two steps. For me, the money would
have bought two CD's and a latte or two. For him, the
money was six months of food and rent and a few dyas without
the long walk, the police harassement, or the feeling
of want. Where guidebooks say to shun the beggars, I say
no. What is almost nothing to you, is life to them, and
hurts you none. |
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