Category: Photography
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The Art of Borobudur
Three months ago, Namit and I traveled to Indonesia. One of the highlights of our trip was a daylong excursion to Borobudur, where we spent nearly 6 hours climbing it up and down, wondering at the history it represented, and admiring its sculpture and workmanship.Borobudur stupa is the world’s largest Buddhist monument (as large as a Giza pyramid) and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Located near the city of Jogjakarta on the island of Java, it’s a stunning remnant of the days when the Dharmic religions were politically ascendant in the islands. It was commissioned and built between 800 and 900 CE by the local monarchs so that devotees need not travel all the way to India for spiritual pilgrimage. Drawing Buddhist pilgrims from as far away as China, its grandeur would have raised the stature of the local monarchs in the eyes of the Buddhist world, which at the time encompassed the whole of southern and eastern Asia. Some say that the site was chosen for being surrounded by three volcanoes, which can be seen in the near distance, and the confluence of two rivers, meant to represent the Ganga and Jamuna of India.
It took two generations of workers to fashion the remarkable monument from over 2 million little blocks of lava rock, gathered from the nearby volcanoes, then grooved and notched to fit into place like a 3D jigsaw puzzle for the gods. The massive black stupa must have been impressive, rising above a sea of unbroken jungle, like a lotus floating on a green pond. When it was completed, the pious meditated as they slowly circumambulated its 10 levels.
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The Orangutans of Sumatra
In May 2009, Usha and I visited the Gunung Leuser National Park in north Sumatra to see orangutans in the wild. We hired a guide in the gateway village of Bukit Lawang and hiked several miles into a dense primary growth forest. Heavy rain on the previous night made the hike rather treacherous and we had to grab on to branches and roots to go up and down the hilly terrain. But the forest was beautiful, abundant with tropical flora and fauna (some of it unique to the island), rushing streams and animal sounds, and we did get lucky: we saw about ten orangutans on our daylong hike. One middle-aged female—rescued years ago by the orangutan center in Bukit Lawang and reintroduced into the wild—even came down and held Usha’s hand! Other primates we saw include gibbons and Thomas’s Leaf-monkeys.
The orangutan (“person of the forest”), whose habitat has shrunk to parts of Sumatra and Borneo, has cognitive abilities that rival those of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the only primates more closely related to humans. Placid, deliberate, and mostly vegetarian, orangutans are known for their ingenuity and persistence, particularly in manipulating mechanical objects, and for their “cognitive abilities such as causal and logical reasoning, self-recognition in mirrors, deception, symbolic communication, foresight, and tool production and use. In the wild, orangutans use tools, but at only one location in Sumatra do they consistently make and use them for foraging, [defoliating] sticks … to extract insects or honey from tree holes and to pry seeds from hard-shelled fruit.” (source) We saw one juvenile male using a stick as a tool.
Here is a slideshow of my best orangutan shots set to music (2 min, 25 sec). Check out some more pictures and a primer on orangutans.
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Indian Vistas: A Calendar
Indian Vistas — 2009 Calendar by Namit Arora (US$16 + S&H)A couple of friends recently suggested that I make calendars out of my travel photo archive on Shunya. So I made one! The effort was a breeze; the hardest part was choosing the 12 images (click to preview).
The new year is a-comin’. Go ahead, buy one! All proceeds will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Category: Photography -
Dholavira: A Harappan Metropolis
(A longer version of the article below appeared in the Dec 2008 issue of Himal Southasian.)
The road to Dholavira goes through a dazzling white landscape of salty mudflats. It is close to noon in early April and the mercury is already past 100F. The desert monotones are interrupted only by the striking attire worn by the women of the nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoral tribes that still inhabit this land: Ahir, Rabari, Jat, Meghwal, and others. When I ask the driver of my hired car to stop for a photo, they receive me with curious stares, hoots, and giggles. 
This is the Rann of Kutch, an area about the size of Kuwait, almost entirely within Gujarat and along the border with Pakistan. Once an extension of the Arabian Sea, the Rann (“salt marsh”) has been closed off by centuries of silting. During the monsoons, parts of the Rann fill up with seasonal brackish water, enough for many locals to even harvest shrimp in it. Some abandon their boats on the drying mudflats, presenting a surreal scene for the dry season visitor. Heat mirages abound. Settlement is limited to a few “island” plateaus, one of which, Khadir, hosts the remains of the ancient city of Dholavira, discovered in 1967 and excavated only since 1989. -
A Child of God
I ran into her in Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. She was a pilgrim at the festival of Buddha Purnima, which celebrates the Buddha’s enlightenment. I don’t know her story. I regret not speaking to her, or even inquiring about her. I confess I was too dumbstruck, able only to take this photo from across the road, approach her to drop some coins in her bowl, and slip away.
Her teeth and hair suggest she is young. Is she a victim of fire or chemicals (accidental or criminal)? Does she have a family? How does she regard herself? What is a typical day in her life?
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Happy New Year!
From the Big Easy, where jazz is king, hurricanes rule, and the Creoles cook up a storm.
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Bihar
The State of Bihar, in the eastern part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, is amply watered by the Ganga and its tributaries, and there is no denying that the landscape here—particularly during the early monsoons when we visited—is among the loveliest in India. So many views of the land, rich in untapped mineral wealth, are crossed by broadly curving, slow rivers. Roads and fields are fringed with palm trees and a profusion of wild, tropical vegetation. Rural vistas end along the curves and jags of low, green hills under a soaring sky, blue in the sun or darkening with the promise of rain.
This land also claims an illustrious history as the onetime center of the subcontinent’s culture and politics. Its name, Bihar, is derived from the Sanskrit vihara (Buddhist monastery), and it was here, 2,500 years ago, that the Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi tree. His Jain contemporary, Mahavira, the quintessential master of non-violence whose teachings reach into modern times in the form of ahinsa (ahimsa) and Gandhi’s ideals, also originated from this region.
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Thanksgiving 2007
While I have no lord to thank, I did again feel fortunate to be alive and witnessing the beauty of this world on a trip through northern California. We drove up to visit friends in Ft. Bragg, an army base and logging boom town in the 19th century, now a haunt of ex-hippies, organic farmers, and environmentalists, some of whom we met, including a Peace Corps volunteer with fond memories from rural Bihar of the 1960s, who also gave birth to her first child there. We passed redwood forests, vineyards, and places with names like Sonoma, Mendocino, Willits, Clear Lake, Calistoga, and Napa. Here are some pictures from this beautiful part of the world.
Category: Photography -
Five Primates
With its 300 or more species, primates represent the third most diverse order of mammals, after rodents and bats. They include lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. For their body weight, the primate brain is larger than that of other terrestrial mammals, with a fissure unique to primates that separates the first and second visual areas on each side of the brain.
In all primates except humans, the big toe diverges from the other toes, together forming a pincer capable of grasping objects. Not all primates have similarly dexterous hands; only the catarrhines (Old World monkeys, apes, and humans) and a few of the lemurs and lorises have an opposable thumb. Fossils of the earliest primates date from at least as far back as the Early Eocene Epoch (54.8 – 49 million years ago).*
(Left to right: Hanuman Langur, 3 Common Indian Monkeys, Black Monkey)
* Text adapted from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 2003 -
On Shooting People
Shooting with a camera, that is. Most regular readers of this blog are probably aware of my large collection of travel photos on shunya.net. About a month ago, a man from Germany emailed me this note:
May I just politely ask you who gave you permission to post the images of all these people on the web? Have you ever asked them for their consent – some of your pictures really look like they were snapshots or secretly taken – even of people in the most miserable situations.
How can you bear people praising your photographic “skills” – when you just took from poor people what others would never yield: their very sphere of privacy and personality.
Category: Photography -
The Burning Ghats of Varanasi
(For a significantly modified and expanded version of this post, please click here.)
Varanasi (Benares, Banaras, Kashi), on the left bank of the Ganga (Ganges), is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus. Among “the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world, its early history is that of the first Aryan settlement in the middle Ganga valley. By late 2nd millennium BCE, Varanasi was a seat of Aryan religion and philosophy and a commercial and industrial centre famous for its muslin and silk fabrics, perfumes, ivory works, and sculpture.”
It was the capital of the kingdom of Kashi during the Buddha’s time (6th century BCE), who, after achieving enlightenment, gave his first sermon at nearby Sarnath (it is said that he purposely avoided this hotbed of Brahmanism). The Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsiang visited Varanasi in c. 635 CE and saw it as a centre of art, education, and religion. The city, he wrote, extended for about 5 km along the western bank of the Ganga. -
A Portrait of Kerala
Kerala is known for its long tradition of religious amity, high literacy rate, high social status of women (due in part to its former matrilineal system), and a relatively decent public health service. In 1957, it democratically elected the first communist government in the world. Owing to its high population density, long exposure to foreigners, and a mercantile spirit, lots of Keralites travel abroad for work, most to the Middle East. Hindus, with their diverse sects and practices, form the majority. Christians, over a third of the population, belong to the Orthodox Syrian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches. While Muslims reside throughout the state, the Mappilas of the Malabar Coast constitute Kerala’s largest Islamic community (the earliest known Indian Muslim community, having existed since the 8th cent. CE). Jains live mainly in the far north. The Jewish community remains a small, exclusive sect, centered around an ancient synagogue at Cochin.
First mentioned as Keralaputra in a 3rd-century-BCE rock inscription of Ashoka, the region was famous among the Greeks and Romans for its spices (esp. pepper). During the first five centuries CE, it was a part of Tamilakam, and so partially controlled by the eastern Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras. In the 1st century CE, Jews arrived and St. Thomas the Apostle visited (or so the Syrian Orthodox Christians believe). Arab traders introduced Islam in the 8th century. Under the Kulaśekharas (c. 800–1102), Malayalam emerged as a distinct language and Hinduism became prominent. The Cholas often controlled Kerala in the 11-12th centuries. Ravi Varma Kulaśekhara of Venad briefly ruled southern India in early 14th century. After his death, Kerala became a conglomeration of warring chieftaincies, among whom the most important were Calicut in the north and Venad in the south. -
Children of a Lesser God
A disproportionately large number of Indians have congenital defects and visibly stunted growth. The poorest of them are often abandoned by their families and/or forced to beg. Tourist and pilgrimage sites inevitably become their favorite stomping grounds. Why does it seem so much worse in India, even compared to the lower GDP nations of, say, East Africa (the only part of sub-Saharan Africa I have seen)?
Excluding the unlucky rolls of genetic dice (many of which can be avoided by a medical pre-screening), most birth defects are due to maternal malnutrition and substance abuse, as well as exposure to toxins, pollution and hazardous waste. In India, the latter may be no less significant. Given India’s worsening urban environments and anemic healthcare, one has to stretch facts, ignore evidence, and be a determined optimist to see light at the end of this tunnel. At least for the foreseeable future, India should remain the prime destination for photo ops of the kind below.
Addendum: A regular reader of Shunya’s Notes, a geneticist, emailed to say that these photos are more likely to be of early childhood polio victims rather than congenital defects, except the second photo which is “more likely to be a congenital disorder because both the upper and lower limbs in the victim appear to be severely deformed presenting almost a case of classic clubfoot which involves a congenital upward and inward twisting of the foot. Whereas in the other photographs the victims appear to have a lower motor neuron disease which is most likely Poliomyelitis and the upper part of the body remains comparatively unaffected … unless one can do an Electromyography (EMG) on the victims, [one can’t be certain].” Since they still fall within the ambit of this post’s title, I am inclined to leave them as they are.
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