For various reasons — mainly health, work and visa — it’s time to go home for awhile. I have no idea where this labor of love will lead me or exactly when I’ll return to India, but one thing’s certain: I have no regrets. India is rough and exhausting, my body has suffered wear and tear, it’s cost a load of cash, and I’ve often wondered what the hell I’m doing in India instead of Italy, but ultimately it did what I hoped: improve my photography, engage me with the world in a richer way and make me a happier person. How can India do all that? I can’t fully explain, but it just can.
This country has monumental problems — 300 billion people living in poverty, rampant government corruption, discrimination, environmental degradation, sexism, the monsoon, and the list goes on — but there’s an amazing, positive counterbalance to all that in the spirit and creativity of the people. I don’t wish to romanticize India in my pictures, to make it seem less brutal and infuriating than it sometimes is, but I can’t help but be struck by the intense flashes of life and beauty in this country, and that’s what radiates strongest to me, through all the mess, and keeps me coming back. Maybe next trip I’ll photograph some of India’s “issues,” or maybe that’s not. Certainly my focus and goals will be different next time, but this trip just hasn’t been about that for me. Maybe one sees in India (and in life) what one wants to see. For me, after 12 long years of working for law firms, I needed a radical change. I needed culture, color, beauty, aesthetic arrest, authentic (non-corporate) diversity, religion, mystery, the unknown and unknowable, adventures, new friends, kids, old people, free people, positive energy, peace, love, and to get off my ass! I needed to say something, to do something, to find a new way of being in the world, to become myself again. And that’s exactly what I got! Life gives you the adventure you’re ready for.
So, thank you, India. I shall return.
And, yes, that’s a huge butterfly on her belly.
