Benares, India, 1970
From my independent study, ritual project on the IHP scholarship trip. The group was in New Delhi for several weeks after spending nearly a month at the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, in southern India. Three of us split off to travel by train to Benares. In the first shot, the group at the right consists of a ritual storyteller and several musicians. He was reciting/performing scenes from the Hindu epics (I don't know which ones, we didn't have a translator or guide). There was a lot of dance-like movement and a chanting delivery of the story.
The next morning before dawn we managed to communicate enough with a Ganges boatman to hire him to row us up the river past the "burning ghats," as people engaged in ritual bathing in the holy river.
(Click on any of the pictures for a much better view than the front page presentation.)
2 comments:
What a wonderful mood in this images from Benares/Varanasi. I assume this was a similar unforgettable experience as the wedding from your next post.
Thanks, Markus. It was an amazing and unforgettable experience. Very unsettling as well, downright spooky. I was centered on trying to capture what we were seeing—making pictures under really challenging conditions. My two companions, without that centering device to lean on, got pretty freaked out by it all.
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