Indian Kit Kat Commercial

Independence Day Redux

Reshma, Me, Viny

This Sunday is Indian Independence Day. According to Bangalore Time Out, the major celebratory activity in the city will be a synchronized flag-waving and hoisting ceremony rather than backyard bbqs and fireworks (so glad I was home for that), but we did have a party of sorts in the office today. By party I mean dress-up day, with an hour spent forcing employees to sing impromptu solos and impersonate each other. Apparently, I am a chronic hair-twirler with an Apu-does-Paris-Hilton accent. That's hot.  Here are some non-plop shots of my co-workers looking way too glam for the office:

Archana

Nazia and Jampa.  Jampa, a Tibetan refugee, is wearing a traditional Tibetan silk dress.

Ganesh

Pragnya

Jampa really needs to give me that dress.

Viny - "Glamour Shots by Deb"

Sneharaj

Biriyani lunch with Basavaraj, Pradeep, and Prathap

Ladies of Clutch Group

Our receptionist Mona showing the traditional Coorgi style and Jayalakshmi, our finance lady

Stuti

Suzane, modeling the traditional (and punk rock looking) sari of Manipur (her home state), and Mamtha. 

Reena in a traditional Tamil Nadu sari

Mary, our office cleaning lady

Srikanth, Renjeet, Sneharaj, Abhishek, and Vipin.  Don't you wish you could rock a skirt at work sometimes?

I enjoy making photos for my best hobby

Another week, another walk, and more of the same - animals, people, plops....I keep taking pictures of these things because they are pretty much all I see.  At least this week, the people part was easier.  We took a rickshaw over the closest "flyover" (overpass) and walked to a nearby village that we always pass en route to somewhere else.  Every time we go through this area, I always regret that I am not on foot, mainly because there are usually a lot of goats roaming around.  The ones in my neighborhood are always tethered to bicycles or riding in rickshaws. I started out just taking pictures of the movie posters and animals (my m.o.), but was quickly approached by the locals, all of whom wanted their photo taken!

This past week, I did ask a co-worker to write down a bunch of helpful photo-related sentences for me to say in Hindi and Kannada.  Like "You are looking very beautiful, Ma'am, one photo please," and "May I please take a photo of you? I enjoy making photos for my best hobby," but I didn't even have to use any of this sweet talk.  (Which is good, because I didn't remember it exactly, and probably would have said something horribly offensive.  Curse words like "ben chode" [sister fucker] are a lot easier for me to recall than routine pleasantries, I am afraid.)  People were literally following us down the road begging for a photo! So I got the people shots I wanted with 75% less awkwardness!

According to Stuti, most of these people don't even own mirrors, which explains why they are so delighted with the tiny digital screen playback feature.I just figured they were in awe of modern technology, but maybe they are just happy to get an opportunity to check themselves out! I honestly hadn't even considered that.......and I kinda feel like a schmuck.....but also a little less guilty, because I know that for these people, this weekend, I was sort of doing good.  I'm looking forward to going back there with the prints.

In other news, we met an older British man on the street and ended up hanging out with him all day on Sunday.  His name is Allistair, and he might be our new best friend. I think we are having brunch next weekend. He told us about his "sling box," which is some device he uses to tap into his cable box back in the UK, so he can watch all of his normal programs, and even fuck with his son and change the channels all the way from India!  I seriously wish I had one of those....someone please figure out how to do this so that I don't have to keep watching movies in 10-minute segments on Youtube. 

Plops....and portraits.

When you are living abroad and communicating primarily through social networking sites and blogs, it can be hard not to feel pressure to have constant "news."  After I posted a link to my previous entry on Facebook, I got a lot of encouraging feedback, and am feeling less pressure to be entertaining.  One particular comment was especially inspiring to me: Freda's suggestion that I do an "expose on cow plops."  Cow plops!?!  Not only do I love the word "plops" and want to incorporate it into my daily (if not hourly) vocabulary, it was great to get an assignment like that.  Plops (of all kinds) are plentiful here, so I knew it was something that was totally doable, and having some direction made my routine photo-seeking walk around the neighborhood feel a little bit less aimless.

In the end, I took very few plop shots, but managed to get some other photos that I am really happy with.  I'm going to put them up in the order that they were taken.  You can see that I start out with the typical Deb photos: animals, people taken from afar, crumbly buildings. Oh, and plops.  Don't forget the plops.  I tend to take a lot of pictures of animals, but the reason for that goes beyond the fact that I love them - they usually don't seem to notice, and they generally don't mind (Well, except for cows.  They DO mind. A lot.).  Most importantly, there is no culture gap to worry about.  The street dog isn't going to think I am mocking her sagging nipples.  She isn't going to feel ashamed that she is picking through the trash for food, or feel like I am exploiting her poverty for entertainment puposes.  And she certainly isn't going to worry about these pictures showing up on the internet.

But people are tricky. You never know how someone is going to react to you taking a picture of them.  And especially as an outsider in this country, I am concerned about the implications that can arise when I take a picture of someone who is dressed differently or whose living conditions differ drastically from my own.  I worry about it so much that I rarely have the guts to take the photos I want to take.  So it is always a pleasant surprise when people seem eager to pose.

It happened yesterday as I was photographing that dog in the trash.  An old man saw me taking pictures and started gesturing for me to come over.  I came closer, and he started posing, lifting these plastic bins and nodding towards the camera in my hand.  I was so excited to have that shot, and he seemed genuinely pleased when I showed him the digital image on the screen.  After that, I wondered if other people would be willing to pose for me.  So I asked.  Or got Tim to ask, when my shyness creeped back up.

It was still really awkward.  I wondered if I should give the family of laborers living in two tents and the skeleton of the house they are building for someone else some money.  They didn't ask and I didn't want to insult them.  Would that be insulting? I don't know!  This is why it is so fucking uncomfortable! I'm hung up on ideas I got from living in a pluralist society, with a sociologist mother and a politically-correct liberal arts education. I don't know what these people are thinking, what the proper thing to do is, or even whether they are substantially aware of the digital media age.  They don't have televisions or computers, and most of the labor class have never gone to school.  Ugh.  Learning Kannada would help.  I could give them compliments to put them at ease.  Or I could lie and say I am a photography student doing an assignment for school.  Or something like that.  I'm going to have to get someone to help me out with this at work.  A script, maybe.  But in the meantime, I think I am going to print their photos out for them.  Hopefully, they will be happy to have pictures of their baby.  I'll do the same for the little boy who lives in a shack on my street with the people we gave all those packets of Pop Rocks to that one time.  That makes me feel a little less anxious about this whole taking pictures of people thing, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with it.  Definitely something to work on going forward.  That and getting more good plop shots, of course.