Portfolio - Life

Tashi Tandup of Chichum Village, Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. August, 2000
For the elderly of Spiti, the favorite pastime is religion and there’s no solace as humming scriptures in Bhoti script. For the Spiti youngsters, time is on overdrive. As tourist influx grows, the next page may have a different story to tell.

Korzok, District Ladakh, J & K, July, 2000. 15000 Ft.
A lama, with all his inquisitiveness and longing looks out of a window at strangers with strange toys. He knows a few games, but years from now, when he grows up to be a man, free in Korzok, he’ll learn another game, living in cave holes on cliffs for months. A game of tolerance, compassion, perseverance and commitment.

Tabo Village, Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. May, 2000
The influx of foreign tourists has ushered in enterprise for the lamas of the thousand year old Tabo Monastery. Converted to a fast-food joint, an annexe of the monastery serves a few moments of earthly atmosphere amidst endless heavenly landscapes.

Village Pangmo Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. August, 2000
Buying local dried black peas in a house in this surreal village, Dolma, after some silent deliberations, asked me to take her picture. She posed by this beautiful doorframe, eye on eye.
…and then she looked away at some nondescript point on the floor.
We see the beauty of the moment and aglow in it simple desires…longings of the Spiti girl, many of whom are ordained to become Buddhist nuns at age five.

Lalung Village, Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. August, 2000
A dog-eared Hindi textbook hides the face of education standard available to tribal children. Thousands like 1st grader Wangchuk of Lalung Village will never know that strewn for years across annals of bureaucracy in some distant metropolis, reside several files promising better standards. …they too are dog-eared.

Chichum Village, Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. August, 2000
Locked out, a small boy waits for mother to get back from the fields. Learning freedom young is a gift born out of necessity

Chichum village, Spiti, District Lahaul & Spiti, H.P. August, 2000
Twelve years of the Spiti sun beats gold into the skin…beauty of the Spitian girl can perhaps only be matched by her will to begin hard work at a much younger age.

Norbu Sumdo, District Ladakh, J & K, July, 2000
Our muleteer turned out to be an old acquaintance of this Changma couple of Norbu Sumdo. It was near his village in Spiti a brother of this Changma died while crossing a river. As the narration rambles in a strange language, memories cloud the atmosphere inside the soot-plastered tent.

Village Tokto, District Kinnaur, H.P.
For those living in remote villages (like Toktu) that have been only recently connected by a kutcha (unmettaled) road, it’s the beginning of a transition period
As long as the village had no link with the outside world, it was a target. Target achieved, village gets lost in a milieu and is forgotten.
Whether the transition will be from dark to light or vice-versa is a paradox man was born with. Rattan Negi of Toktu and his sister Asha are looking at new images today.
Hopefully, at images that are better.

Chumuik Shiiaete, District Ladakh, J &K July, 2000
For the gypsy girls of a place in the middle of nowhere called Chumuik Shiiaete, boundaries are meaningless. Buried somewhere under the stones strewn not twenty meters from their tent is an invisible line separating Himachal from J & K. Culture and kinship transcend here. In such a desolate place, the only boundary they know is the one that secures families in friendship and togetherness. It’s a different light they see the world with.

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
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.
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.
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.
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.