Forest Man, an inspirational short documentary film (19 mins): "Since 1979, Jadav Payeng has been planting hundreds of trees on an Indian island threatened by erosion. In this film, photographer Jitu Kalita traverses Payeng’s home—the largest river island in the world [on the Brahmaputra river]—and reveals the touching story of how this modern-day Johnny Appleseed turned an eroding desert into a wondrous oasis. Funded in part by Kickstarter, "Forest Man" was directed by William Douglas McMaster and won Best Documentary for the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014."
Also consider watching this insightful video on how to grow a forest in your urban backyard—a TED Talk by Shubhendu Sharma.
Namit Arora in Animals, Art & Cinema, Economics, Environment, Photography, Science, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Zambia, Oct 2015.)
We entered Zambia by bus from Malawi and first saw the amazing South Luangwa National Park. From there we took a bus to Lusaka, the urbane metropolis of the bipedal Zambians. We had the nicest bus yet on our African trip, with video screens that however played gospel musical videos—evidently inspired by American Evangelical musical videos—for the full nine hours of the journey! This would've been a lot less bearable without the famed musical talents of Africans, at once rich and resonant (perfect weather, short naps, and the beautiful landscape helped too). Nearly everyone in Zambia is now Christian. Local preachers sometimes board long-distance buses from one stop to the next and sermonize; passengers even sing along. The president of Zambia recently held a national prayer day to beseech the Lord to arrest the decline of the Zambian currency in international markets. It astonished me yet again: Here too an entire population so quickly and so totally embraced a religious tradition so alien to their own. Old layers of magical thinking made room for new layers, such as the strange story of a son of a male God coming to earth and dying for other people's sins. Christianization in Zambia has also meant that, over a few generations, society has become more patrilineal from its mostly matrilineal roots, aspects of which nevertheless survive. A Zambian man we met couldn’t comprehend the Indian practice of dowry, the polar opposite of their own custom of men paying bride price.
Traveling westward in Zambia, I noticed rising prosperity, greater urbanization, and evidence of Zambian per capita income being 4X that of Malawi and Mozambique. Zambia's linguistic/ethnic landscape is fragmented across 72 languages (!), most mutually incomprehensible. In Lusaka, which hosts Zambians from all regions, English is commonly heard. English, as in India, is the first language of a minuscule number but the medium of instruction in all Zambian schools is now English, alongside courses in one or more of the 72 regional languages. Most people speak several languages. Modernity and Christianity have loosened old bonds of tribe and ethnicity, making intermarriages frequent in Zambia. A severe shortfall in rains last year was causing power outages—nearly all of Zambia's power is hydroelectric—but the outages were well-managed, and the outage schedule for each locality was announced ahead of time. How I wished India would learn from this. [—Namit Arora, October 2015.]
Namit Arora in Culture, Photography, Religion, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Malawi, Oct 2015.)
We crossed into Malawi from Mozambique and immediately found traveling easier: its distances shorter, tourist facilities and transportation better, and English a lingua franca. The gigantic Lake Malawi has long shaped patterns of life in this most densely populated of sub-Saharan countries, encompassing nine major ethnic groups, many of which are matrilineal and Christian. All of its native languages belong to the Bantu family, and while English is the official language, more widely spoken is the national language, Chichewa (similar to Hindi in north India; ATM machines operate in both English and Chichewa). At least nominally, a third of the population is Catholic, a third Protestant, and a fifth Muslim; people variously combine monotheistic lore with native beliefs that include animism, ancestor worship, and witchcraft.
Compared to Mozambique, I saw a more hopeful economic dynamism in Malawi's rural and semi-urban areas, reflected in its many micro enterprises, provision stores, roadside bars and eateries, and emerging consumer economy. Aspirations for upward mobility seem common enough. Its young democracy is taking root and its religious and ethnic groups coexist rather well, with differences among the latter (and their historical endogamy) yielding to a more inclusive "Malawian identity". These aspects however coexist with some grim realities: half the population is under 15; a quarter of them don't attend school; public corruption is rife; life expectancy is only 54 (due largely to malaria and AIDS); its lakes and rivers are very overfished; and its fast growing population is coming in greater conflict with wildlife. In this part of Africa, too, China looms large, evoking both admiration and disquiet. Many locals appreciate the Chinese investing in Malawi—for creating jobs and building its infrastructure, including its shiny new parliament building, its first five-star hotel, and a science university—but they worry about back-room dealings and unfair mining, timber, and trade concessions that the Chinese seem to be extracting from Malawi's politicians.
We visited two areas on Lake Malawi's shores (Cape Maclear and Nkhata Bay), the beautiful Liwonde National Park, and the capital city, Lilongwe, with its planned spaces, a nature reserve, and pockets of cosmopolitan affluence (some of its shopping centers seemed built in the image of suburban California). Yet again, we met and conversed with far more nice and interesting people than I have any right to expect on a short visit, and I'm grateful for the kindness of strangers that came our way in ample measure. [—Namit Arora, October 2015.]
Namit Arora in Culture, Photography, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Mozambique, Sep/Oct 2015.)
We began our journey in Mozambique on the southeastern coast of Africa. It’s a huge, sparsely populated country of 25 million people, with the greatest density being spread out along its 1,500 miles of stunning, tropical coastline. The south, which includes the capital of Maputo, is the region of greatest development, economic activity, and settlement. With large populations of both Christians and Muslims, Mozambique is famous for the long amity between these communities. Portuguese is the lingua franca among a host of native languages.
Mozambique holds the distinction of having had the longest experience of European colonialism on the African continent, beginning hardly a decade after the first European ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. Here the Portuguese stumbled upon the bustling world of Indian Ocean trade, which had already been plying for centuries. Determined to dominate it, they conquered one of its robust island trading ports and built a permanent settlement by 1507. The island, called Mozambique after its reigning sultan, Ali Musa Mbiki, would become the first capital of colonial Portuguese East Africa, which grew from there. For over 450 years, Portugal administered its colony with overtly racist policies and little concern for its development.
This long engagement with Europe has left its mark most obviously for today’s visitor in Mozambican cuisine, both in the unique fusion that today makes up Mozambican food, as well in introducing the many European and New World foods that entered the common diet. Most significant of these is corn (maize), which revolutionized African agriculture and quickly became the primary staple food across Southern Africa. The Portuguese also introduced the cashew nut, which is today a major export crop and readily available as a street food, along with the chili pepper, which was nativized to become the peri-peri pepper, used to make the hot sauces that are a table-top staple across the region, to name but a few examples.
Mozambique won its war of independence from Portugal in 1975 and set about building a communist government, but was soon engulfed in another horrendous, 16 year war—in part a civil war, in part a proxy war fueled by South Africa, Rhodesia, the Soviet Union, and the USA as another front of the Cold War—that handicapped its development and helped to keep it one of the absolutely poorest nations on earth.
The country has come a great distance since the days of the war and today it bears an undeniably optimistic outlook toward the future. Especially in Maputo, where its rapidly growing economy is anchored, there’s a sense of hope and possibility, a belief that the country can be drawn upwards from its past. In and around Maputo, a thoroughly modern city, infrastructure development appears to be going strong, aided enormously by China, which has won for itself rights to newly discovered oil fields in the north. But it must be said that not all Mozambicans are on board with the trade-offs being made, and fear their country is being sold off at a pittance. Public education and healthcare suffer miserably; any Mozambican with any means plans on a trip at least to South Africa, India, or further afield to receive medical care or opportunities for higher education.
Mozambique is a physically demanding place to travel, as distances are long, buses unwaveringly unreliable and unfailingly overstuffed. Though the roads are all newly built, and along the coast the major routes are paved, though there is as yet little motorized traffic along them, it’s clear that the infrastructure is not keeping pace with the country’s own demands for intra-country transit. Chinese assistance has provided modern airports, roads, and buses, but I was astounded to learn that there is only one passenger train operating in so vast a country—and that too a creaky old thing that clatters slowly, when at all, back-and-forth along a single 360 km track between Nampula and Cuamba in the north. While making one’s way across immense, empty stretches of countryside, packed 25 people and cargo to a 14-seat minivan, the thought that a passenger railway would revolutionize Mozambique’s development is inescapable. Nevertheless, with patience (and strategically self-imposed dehydration, to avoid the need for a bathroom), one can discover a country of astonishing beauty and friendly, welcoming communities of people who are finding a new way in their rapidly changing world. At every stop, the discomforts of getting there immediately evaporate into the wonder of the present. [—Usha Alexander, October 2015.]
Usha Alexander in Culture, History, Photography, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
(On the ethnic history and politics of Sri Lanka and a review of Samanth Subramanian’s This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War. A shorter version appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, 3 April 2015. Below is the original long version—the director’s cut. Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
______________________________________________________
Few places in the world, of similar size, offer a more bracing human spectacle than the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. It abounds in deep history and cultural diversity, ancient cities and sublime art, ingenuity and human folly, wars and lately, even genocide. It has produced a medley of identities based on language (Sinhala, Tamil, English, many creoles), religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, animism), and geographic origin (Indian, Malaysian, European, Arab, indigenous), alongside divisions of caste and class. Rare for a country its size are the many divergent accounts of itself, fused at the hip with the politics of ethnic identities—a taste of which I got during my month-long travel on the island in early 2014.
The Sri Lankan experience has been more traumatic lately, owing to its 26-year civil war that ended with genocide in 2009. The country’s three main ethnic groups—Sinhalese (75 percent), Tamil (18 percent), and Muslim (7 percent)—now live with deep distrust of each other. One way to understand Sri Lankan society and its colossal tragedy is to study the causes and events that led to the civil war. What historical currents preceded it? Did they perhaps make the war inevitable? What was at stake for those who waged it? What has been its human toll and impact on civic life? In his brave and insightful work of journalism, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, Samanth Subramanian attempts to answer such questions while bearing witness to many of its tragedies.
A Brief Social History of Sri Lanka
Around two-and-a-half millennia ago, waves of migrants from the Indian subcontinent overwhelmed the island’s indigenous hunter-gatherers, the Veddah (a few descendants still survive). Migrants arriving from modern day Bengal, speakers of Prakrit—an Indo-European language that evolved into Sinhala—intermixed with indigenous islanders to later become the Sinhalese. Other migrants from southern India, speakers of Tamil and other Dravidian languages and belonging mostly to the Saivite sect, also intermixed with the islanders to later become the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Which group of migrants arrived first, a question hotly pursued by the nationalists, lacks scholarly resolution. Both groups established themselves in different parts of the island: the Sinhalese in the center, south, and west, the Tamils in the north and east.
"We live in a world of unseeable beauty, so subtle and delicate that it is imperceptible to the human eye. To bring this invisible world to light, filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg bends the boundaries of time and space with high-speed cameras, time lapses and microscopes. At TED2014, he shares highlights from his latest project, a 3D film titled Mysteries of the Unseen World, which slows down, speeds up, and magnifies the astonishing wonders of nature." Must see.
Namit Arora in Animals, Photography, Science, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
For most of April, I traveled in Sri Lanka with my partner, Usha. Not only a beautiful island with a rich cultural history and ample wildlife, it's the only country in S. Asia rated "high" on the UN Human Development Index. It has relatively low economic disparity, little abject poverty, high literacy, and universal healthcare. To most Indians, Sri Lankan urbanscapes and rhythms of life will feel familiar and comfortable. I found traveling to be easy enough, the locals friendly, and the food delicious. Sri Lanka even has seven UNESCO world heritage sites.
It's also a country whose major ethnic communities—mainly Tamil and Sinhala but also the Muslims—haven't learned to live with each other. Their troubles mostly began in the 1950s with Sinhala nationalism and majoritarianism, driven by chauvinistic monks and militant buddhists, and fueled by cultural insecurities and jaundiced readings of religio-historic texts like the Mahavamsa. Humiliated and cornered, the Tamils demanded their own homeland; many resorted to violent resistance, leading to harsh reprisals from the Sinhala-dominated state. Over nearly three decades, Tamil areas suffered great destruction, mass exodus, and genocidal violence; ruins of war abound in the north. The LTTE may be finished, but will the great many atrocities committed against Tamil civilians near the war's end be forgotten or forgiven easily, esp. with no reconciliation underway, tens of thousands forced off their lands, and 100K+ refugees still in India five years after the war's end? Under the Rajapaksa family's authoritarian regime, Sinhala pride and triumphalism have resurged, public corruption is rampant, there is little freedom of the press and disappearances are common, especially in Tamil areas that have an oppressive army presence. The economy, however, is growing again and new infrastructure, often funded by the Chinese, is coming up: an airport, modern highways, high-rise apartments, casinos, resorts, and more. For a country its size, I found Sri Lanka to be enormously complex and interesting.
Read a brief history of Sri Lanka here. For a closer look at contemporary Sri Lankan society and politics, start with the following: How Not to Win a War, Buddhists Behaving Badly, Beyond the Beach, Sri Lanka After the War, Five Years On (an archive of recent journalism), and the harrowing documentary, No Fire Zone. Below are some of my pictures.
Namit Arora in Culture, History, Photography, Politics, Religion, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
NEW: River of Faith, a new documentary film about the Kumbh Mela 2013 by Namit Arora (56 minutes).
Last week I attended the greatest of the Hindu pilgrimage festivals, the Kumbh Mela, a riverside religious fair that takes place at the confluence of the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati. Bathing in the river during the Kumbh Mela is considered a meritorious act, cleansing body and soul, and it attracts tens of millions over 6-8 weeks, making it the largest gathering of humans on the planet for a single event. A hundred million might attend the 2013 event that opened on Jan 14 with about ten million in attendance, including me and Usha. Click on any photo below to see a lot more of my photos (with captions) from the Mela's opening days. Next month, I also intend to put out a travel essay and a video documentary on the Kumbh Mela, including many interesting interviews with naga sadhus.
Namit Arora in Culture, Photography, Religion, Travel | Permalink | Comments (1)
|
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)
Some travel impressions prompted by the living and the dead of Varanasi, India.
In early 2006, I was on a train to Varanasi when my mother called from Jaipur. Terrorists had just hit Varanasi with explosions at multiple sites, including at the train station; many had died. Since I was going there as a tourist, she urged me to postpone the trip and get off earlier. I was traveling with my partner and two white American friends, both on their first visit to India. They seemed rattled enough and I worried about their safety. What if Hindu-Muslim riots broke out? We were ten nighttime hours away from Varanasi, so we had to decide fast.
The reality of the event sunk in further when an NDTV reporter and her camera crew got on the train. With time to kill, she began quizzing tired and bemused passengers about their take on the news. And she did so in an overexcited style that seemed to dominate live reporting in India. When she thrust the mic at me, I could only mutter something about my worry for my companions.
I persuaded my fellow travelers to continue. The terrorists had already done their deed; Varanasi was likely the safest place to visit now. Worst case, we could stay holed up in our hotel. Truth be told, I was also drawn to this unbidden frisson of travel. When we arrived in the morning, we found a part of the train station cordoned off by the police. I could see blotches of red on the ground. The driver of the taxi we took into town had witnessed the explosions: flying body parts, screams, the ensuing melee. He had helped take the injured to the hospital. But our decision to not abort our journey turned out to be a good one—the city remained calm and we moved around freely. I felt proud of my fellow citizens for being so mature about the situation. It was my first time in Varanasi as an adult, and the place did not disappoint.
Namit Arora in History, Photography, Religion, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
A poetic rumination on our existence by Alan Watts. Strikes me as "scientifically-alert" Upanishadic metaphysics with dubious bits minimized.
Namit Arora in Philosophy, Photography, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments. A shorter version appeared in Himal Southasian, Oct-Nov 2011.)
I’ve managed to write a long essay on Trinidad without mentioning cricket, rum, or the steelpan. Can I be forgiven for that?
_____________________
In April this year, I visited the Indian Caribbean museum near the town of Chaguanas in Trinidad. Set in a large hall, the museum had no other visitors at the time. Its curator, 69-year-old Saisbhan Jokhan, came out to greet me and quickly proved to be a trove of information. As I began taking notes, he asked if I was a journalist. I told him that I represented a venerable publication called 3 Quarks Daily, and intended to write about the Indo-Trinidadian experience. His eyes lit up and for the next ninety minutes, he accompanied me in the museum, explaining and answering my questions.
The museum commemorates the history of a million Indo-Caribbeans whose ancestors came as indentured laborers from India between 1838-1917. Graphic panels at the museum include details on immigrant ships, copies of girmits, or indenture agreements, and rare archival photos of life on sugarcane plantations. Evocative objects abound: an improvised sarangi, a pair of wood slippers, a rotary sugarcane press like the ones still used in mofussil India, even a lifesize model of an indentured worker’s hut. Other displays show milestones in the life of the community, such as a 1970 photo of the first Indo-Trini policewoman; a panel on Alice Jan, the first lady of Indo-Trini culture; and Indo-Trinis winning the right to build their own schools in 1952, allowing them to replace Christian teaching with Hindu teaching.
The museum is run by the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, a conservative Hindu organization that also runs many temples. Talking to Jokhan it struck me that he lived with a clear sense of ‘his people’, what they have suffered, what challenges awaited them. His tone, and the museum’s singular focus, brought to mind a pastiche of Jewish museums I have seen over the years. This too felt like a museum designed to preserve the collective memory of a people’s suffering and struggles, and Jokhan seemed to me the right man for the job: proud of his identity, devoted to his community, slightly paranoid.
Jokhan’s historical memory is alien to people like me who have joined the Indian diaspora in recent decades. We have fostered the stereotype of Indians as a model minority, led by professionals and marked by diligence and enterprise in the pursuit of opportunities around the globe. But most of the Indian journeys in the colonial era were very different. They involved harsh unskilled labor on sugarcane estates, horrible living conditions, and severe discrimination. Trinidad, which I will look at here, is one chapter of that past; others include Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, and Réunion.
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
Grande Riviere, a tiny village on the northeastern coast of Trinidad, is one of the few beaches in the world where the leatherback turtle comes to nest. It lies near the end of a serpentine road that hugs the palm-fringed Atlantic coast for miles, then cuts through the lush rainforest of the Northern Range. A river, for which the village is named, and the rainforest—abuzz with the sound of crickets and birds—tumble onto its Caribbean sands, giving the place a remote and sensual air.
Cacao plantations once flourished here but the few hundred people of Grande Riviere now rely on fishing and ecotourism. All three or four of its pricey tourist lodges are near the beach; a village bar, a couple of provision stores and eateries, and a post office are on the main road further behind. The star attraction, and the primary reason for our visit last month, is clearly the leatherback.
My partner, Usha, and I arrived in the early evening with Ulric, our gentlemanly guide of Afro-Carib ancestry, whom we had hired in Port of Spain to drive us to a few places on the island. After we decided to stay at the Le Grande Almandier (the LP guidebook called it "the best value"), he left to spend the night at a friend's place in a nearby town. Being the kind who love their work, he had gone out of his way to bring alive the island and its people to us, not the least through his own personal history. All day his Trini English had grown on me. Dinner consisted of vegetarian pickings from a Creole-French menu, a legacy of the plantation era culture in these parts. At the Visitor Center, we secured our permits to see the turtles, saw a documentary film on them, and waited.
Is there another animal that appears more often in human mythology, folklore, and literature than the turtle and its land dwelling cousin, the tortoise? They have variously stood for wisdom, tenacity, longevity, fertility, or stability in cultures around the world. The leatherback is the largest of all living turtles, the male up to 900 kgs and 3 m. It feeds mostly on jellyfish and lives up to 45 years (a disputed number). Unlike other turtles, it lacks a bony shell but has a hard leathery skin. That plus its powerful flippers and hydrodynamic body allow it to dive down to 1400 m and swim as fast as 35 kmph. Given its large size, its natural predators include only sharks, killer whales, and now humans.
Namit Arora in Animals, Environment, Photography, Science, Travel, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
Look out for Human Planet from the BBC, "an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind's incredible relationship with nature in the world today. Uniquely in the animal kingdom, humans have managed to adapt and thrive in every environment on Earth. Each episode takes you to the extremes of our planet: the arctic, mountains, oceans, jungles, grasslands, deserts, rivers and even the urban jungle. Here you will meet people who survive by building complex, exciting and often mutually beneficial relationships with their animal neighbours and the hostile elements of the natural world." YouTube has many clips from the series.
The series began airing earlier this month in the UK and will have an international release later this year.
Namit Arora in Animals, Culture, Environment, Photography, Travel, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
Observing anniversaries is often a way to mark the passage of time, celebrate small achievements, and reflect on the journey. It can also be an exercise in self-absorbed narcissism. ☺ Be that as it may, I'd like to observe a minor milestone in my creative and online life. Earlier this year, Shunya completed its 10th anniversary. I created this website in 2000 to share my travel photos from around the world—photos that were fading away in cardboard boxes—and to learn web publishing. It was to serve as my web address, and perhaps become a quiet record of a personal history. ("Shunya" means the number "zero" as well as "void" or "nothingness" in Buddhist philosophy.)
The site has since evolved much and now includes prose by me and others, photo essays, and videos. A big expansion came when I took a two-year break (2004-06) to visit 100+ destinations in 20+ Indian states. As a result, nearly half of the ~15K photos on Shunya are from India, the rest from ~50 other countries. In the last two years I've added a host of essays to it, including ones I've written for 3 Quarks Daily as well as by others on this group blog. I've even made new friends through Shunya, found long lost ones, and received many notes of appreciation.
Encouraged by the inquiries I got out of the electronic blue, I also began licensing my photos based on the buyer's means and ends. Over a hundred organizations, including 15 museums, 25 academies, and 35 publishers have since licensed photos from Shunya. I've given away quite a few for free, especially to progressive non-profits, students, and starving artists. They have inspired paintings (samples below) and adorned calendars, posters, music CD jackets, slideshows, brochures, ads, postcards, websites, and book and magazine covers.
(Artists: Mukta Sareen, Trevor Guitar, Neelam Solanki (3-4), and Cristina Goia.)
Google Analytics reports that Shunya got 3+ million page views in the past year. Each month over 100K people—45K+ from India, 25K+ from the U.S.—stop by at least once. According to Alexa, ~15 out of every million people on the Internet visit Shunya (15 ppm, as I like to think). In 2005, I put ads on the site, which has since paid for at least one vacation abroad each year for me and my partner. Not bad for what is still a labor of love and lunacy (fortunately, I have a day job ☺). Shunya will continue to evolve, but it has already been a very gratifying journey that has helped me grow as a person, writer, and travel photographer. Thank you for your interest, friends and visitors!
(Shunya home pages from 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2010, respectively.)
Namit Arora in Art & Cinema, Daily Noise, Photography, Travel | Permalink | Comments (9)
|
I had meant to post some pictures of my Loire Valley vacation with Usha's family in August, along with a few travel impressions. Given that I have made no progress with the latter, I'm decoupling the two and posting the pictures for y'all to browse. This vacation was different from my usual ones: it was not planned by me, relatively expensive, and in a group. But it was perfectly enjoyable, largely because Usha's family is pretty cool (and I feel fortunate to be part of it), but also because the six-day, sixty-mile walk through the countryside was very pleasant; the chateaus were impressive; the local bread, wine, and cheese didn't disappoint either. Yummy food shots from four restaurants included.
Today, dear reader, is also the fourth anniversay of Shunya's Notes. Thanks for reading!
Namit Arora in Photography, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2)
|
This six minute video by photographer Chris Jordan consists of a series of pictures of Albatross chicks taken on Midway islands in the Pacific—among the most remote marine sanctuaries in the world—two thousand miles from the nearest continent.
The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar over the vast ocean polluted by plastic debris and other waste collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. (source)
Namit Arora in Environment, Photography, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
Five from the Shunya archive.
Namit Arora in Animals, Photography | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
"My passion for photography started in 1996 when I received an old camera from father ... For a long time, I have been focusing my attention on portraying people living on the edge of society and have done this in various countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. ... For the last four years, I have been working on child labor. ... Children in poor countries spend long days working under very unfavorable conditions. Child Labor is an issue closely connected with poverty, education, socio-economic exploitation and discrimination. These factors keep children out of school and force them to work under harsh and dangerous, unhealthy and fatal circumstances. Child workers are subject to abuse, both physically and mentally, by their employers. These youngsters even risk their lives for low pay."
Read Manisha Verma's short interview of GMB Akash and checkout his photography at his website.
Namit Arora in Photography | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
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.
Traveling upward from the bottom, levels 2-6 are covered by scenes from Buddha's life and teachings, carved in low relief, each one of the 3,000 panels entirely unique. These levels are meant to represent the concerns of this material existence. On the top 4 layers one sees only bell-shaped stupas and statues of the Buddha, which represent increasing degrees of perfection and proximity to Nirvana. Altogether, Borobudur monument is adorned with 555 Buddha statues. Its 10 tiers form a mandala when viewed from the sky (which no one in those days could have done). The resulting symmetries and geometries make for an immersive experience of entering a hallowed place. In those days there would have been thousands of monks from all over Asia, making it a great religious center.
A surprising feature of the monument is the degree to which the artisans mimicked the Indian style of sculpture and relief. They nearly replicated the look and feel of contemporary Indian Buddhist carvings, while creating an original design for the stupa as a whole. Many of the relief panels are simpler in scope than those from ancient India, yet the craftsmen reproduced very well the fine and nuanced expressiveness of the faces, similar to what one sees on Indian stupas and temples of that period. To accomplish this, legions of Indian craftsmen were brought in to teach, train, and work alongside the local craftsmen. Many of them married in and stayed on here for the rest of their lives.
The stupa at Borobudur was in use for only 150 years before the site was abandoned. The local populations fled eastward (probably to Bali), possibly because of insurmountable devastation caused by a volcanic eruption. Thereafter, the monument fell to ruins and was reclaimed by the jungle for almost 800 years. It was finally uncovered, during colonial times, by the Dutch and English, who began to restore the pile of tumbled stone to its former glory in a series of Herculean excavation and rebuilding projects, culminating in the most ambitious archaeological restoration project in history, between 1975 and 1982.
I've put together a short video tour (3:45) of Borobudur using the video and photos that Namit captured.
Usha Alexander in History, Photography, Religion, Travel, Video | Permalink | Comments (3)
|
Namit Arora in Photography, Travel, Video | Permalink | Comments (3)
|
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.
Namit Arora in Animals, Photography, Travel, Video | Permalink | Comments (7)
|
(Photography by Hans Silvester. Link via Maniza Naqvi @ 3QD)
Namit Arora in Culture, Photography, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
|
Recent Comments