Life
Tabo Village, Spiti, District Lahaul &Spiti, H.P. May, 2000
Tabo Village, Spiti, District Lahaul &Spiti, H.P. May, 2000
At age ten, tending to her five-month-old brother all day is child’s play. Safely buckled-in by iron clips, the newcomer is all ears for the joke his sister shares with her street friends.
Village Didu, District Solan, Himachal Pradesh. April, 1999
Village Didu, District Solan, Himachal Pradesh. April, 1999
Sapna, a two-year-old resident of this small village will in coming years nourish a dream. To grow up and walk out of her poverty into a world full of happiness. Little does she care for her dark present, lurking behind her.
Village Giabong, Ropa Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.-Chulli1
Village Giabong, Ropa Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.
The Nati—a traditional dance of the Kinnauris for rejoicing is performed occasionally in every village.
With Chulli (apricot wine) up to the gills, an indulgence tips over to frenzy at a Giabong party.
Village Chitkul, Sangla Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.
Village Chitkul, Sangla Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.
In the Sangla valley, monks can get married. At eighty-five, Tashi still spends eight hours everyday reading the holy scriptures, and like she has done for sixty-five years, his wife remains in the background, serving him salted tea every two hours.
The regimen has endured the vagaries of bone chilling eighty-five winters at 11,000 ft.
Village Giabong, Ropa Valley, Distrct Kinnaur, H.P.-chulli
Village Giabong, Ropa Valley, Distrct Kinnaur, H.P.
A 5th standard classroom of a government school doubles up as a village bar at night. Chulli (apricot wine) and freshly slain-freshly cooked goat meat laced with red-hot chilies on the side.
Astounding? Incredible? Nope.
Possible. In a school where kids are taught breaking windowpanes is a form of fun …in a state where school infrastructure lies crumpled in fat bureaucratic files, anything is possible.
Village Rakchham, Sangla Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.
Village Rakchham, Sangla Valley, District Kinnaur, H.P.
Hiding between moments that make time, live nuances of life that change the shades of mood.
For many in Kinnaur, like Baldev Negi and his sister, Tara, it’s all for a little happiness at the end of a tiring day.
Village Sangla,.District Kinnaur, H.P.
Village Sangla,.District Kinnaur, H.P.
I don’t know what this little girl of Sangla is thinking. Maybe no one will ever know…
But what we do know is that we are feeling human beings and certain visions move us…sometimes inexplicably.
Strolling through history brooding in the alleys of Sangla, one such vision happened and crossed my path.
Village kasha, District Shimla, H.P.
Village kasha, District Shimla, H.P.
Living under a sky that has not seen a road on the ground below since the earth came into being, the elders of Kasha Village handle the fields like they did centuries ago…all for a little share each evening to sustain life as they know it.
When Sham Lal, clutching a bag full of potatoes posed for me, I knew what to see and what to make visible…the simple needs of the people living here and their innocent ignorance of life beyond a certain mountain range bristling with conifers.
Its pleasures. Its dangers.
Village Rogi, Kinnaur, H.P.
Village Rogi, Kinnaur, H.P.
Somewhere deep within the heart of Kinnaur, lived a feeling no one had felt before. On seeing this little girl, in a village lost in clouds, I suddenly knew I had found it. Surfacing in her eyes like a dream, riding on hope and wonder, the feeling took me by the eyes.
Radha Negi of Rogi village may not become the Madhuri Dixit of Bombay, but then nature always has its ways of balancing things.