Rural Roots in Southern India

INDIA | Monday, 14 January 2013 | Views [1314] | View Smaller Image

“Family business”. This shopkeeper tidies bowls filled with colorful kum kum powder in his family business. Many of the small shops like this are passed down from one generation to the next and many of the shopkeepers seem to enjoy talking and interacting with others in the busy market. One young shopkeeper proudly showed us his personal “facebook” – a tired notebook with pictures and short messages written by travelers from all over the world who stopped by his stand over the years. A nice reminder that curiosity about other cultures and the world around us is a universal feeling.

Tags: market colors shop india

“Sensory Overload”. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in India was how bombarded my senses were with so many colors, new sights and smells, a constant soundtrack of car horns, people talking and even cows, and of course such a wide variety of fresh produce and foods to taste at the numerous markets around. This scene in Mysore’s Devaraja market captures a small piece of that commotion – the colorful displays of fruit, curious faces and so many little things that demand your attention.

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“Cotton a trap”. Cotton is grown near the village of Saraguru and it is fairly common to see trucks overloaded with large bags of cotton passing through the streets. Cotton is a very labor intensive crop and one of the local men said that many parents do not want their children to continue in farming. Instead, the children are encouraged to become doctors or engineers, where they can enjoy an easier life. Partly due to this, more and more people are moving away from the rural areas and farm owners are finding it increasingly harder to find labor to help run the farms.

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Rural Roots in Southern India

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