India

bombay, tubal tying operation, varanasi, 1993

I arrived in Bombay in November 1992, knowing that I wouldn’t be back to the United States for six months. This would be the longest trip of its kind in my life (thus far). My main mission in India was to settle into a small village so that I could document every day life for a children’s book I had been commissioned to do for Ticknor & Field, a division of the Houghton Mifflin company. Like my Monhegan Island book, my first book with Ticknor & Field, the intention was to show children how life can be both similar and different than their own in a different part of the world. I met a good-looking long-haired blond guy while standing in the customs line at the airport and we shared a cab into the city center. The ride was a visual and auditory overload and I was very happy for his good company.

There was trouble brewing in Bombay between the Muslims and Hindus at the time and by December 6th, 1992, there would be full-blown riots in the streets (I was on the beach in Goa at the time of the riots, so out of danger). The first five photographs shown here were taken in Bombay. The man with his hand to his head broke down as he told his story of how the mob slashed his feet.

The photographs following the Bombay pictures include random shots around the country, a tubal tying operation in a small village and from Varanasi and the Ganges River.