On the road from Delhi to Agra today, at first I thought I’d swear off using my camera for a time and just sit back and witness this wild environment of extreme strangeness. After a few moments of this nonsense, however, my hand reached for the camera. But, for the most part, my first impulse was truest, since we traveled so quickly that no sooner had I registered a scene I wanted to record, and tried to aim the camera and shoot, than it was transformed into a thing of the past, a memory, vivid but unrecorded. So here, my attempt at non-digital recording:
Women in orange, vivid turquoise and magenta saris walking through waist-deep fields of bright green mustard plants, tiny graceful points of color against a beautifully textured field.
Cow dung as an art form: the first, most startling image was of circular “cow patties” laid out to dry along the roadside near a stretch of small businesses, looking like so many hubcaps lost along a bumpy stretch of highway. Later forms of dung storage include a dome-like mound about 5 to 6 feet tall, with the flat circular shapes standing on edge but at a slight angle, alternating directions with each layer, creating a herringbone pattern when viewed from the side. Yet another, seen within the city limits of Agra: women carrying huge bowls, at least 3’ in diameter, atop their heads, filled high with stacks of dung circles like so many loaves of bread. All for use as fuel, in this country where nothing goes to waste.
My favorite scene of crouching man – a figure in turban and shawl crouched tightly atop a wall of a partially built – or un-built – building near the roadside, as if guarding the vacant overgrown space within the walls.
Many many women walking with huge loads of produce, firewood, or bundles of mysterious goods wrapped in bright silk or plastic tarp sheets, balanced atop their heads.
Children hand-in-hand gaily skipping along the street.
Schoolgirls in uniforms of bright pink loose-fitting pants and shoulder wraps with black blouses, fluttering by in groups of two or three or five, carefree and sprightly.
Wile E Coyote’s supplier: a 4 or 5 story brick factory building standing out in the middle of rural wheat and mustard fields, far from any vestige of urban surroundings, with a large ACME posted at the top – this must be where Wile E Coyote gets his TNT!
A man pedaling a bicycle down the dusty road, with a huge tractor tire strapped to the rear fender, standing on edge and perpendicular to the bicycle itself, like a circular backdrop, creating an oddly shrine-like frame around the rider.
A man pedaling a bicycle down the dusty road, with a huge tractor tire strapped to the rear fender, standing on edge and perpendicular to the bicycle itself, like a circular backdrop, creating an oddly shrine-like frame around the rider.
