Kalimpong

INDIA | Friday, 5 July 2013 | Views [691] | View Smaller Image

This was the first time I had visited a developing country, and in hindsight I'm so glad it was India. Within the first day I'd had a breakdown when the reality of extreme poverty hit me. And yet reaching the more secluded hills of Kalimpong, I witnessed the positive side of poverty. The appreciation that the people had for every little thing was and is something to learn from. One of my biggest learnings was how universal certain traits of humanity were. For instance, the motherly love and pride in this photograph is a familiar subject matter, something we can recognise immediately without needing to know anything more. While India as a 'place' was completely unfamiliar to me, motherly love was as familiar as anything, leaving me questioning the concept of 'place' as location.

Tags: mother, baby, love, india, kalimpong

I can still hear the chuckle of this old woman as we trekked past her home on the side of a hugely steep mountain. Here she is captured pensive, though moments later she would laugh at me trying to take photographs of the dogs lazing at her feet. What I found in the Kalimpong community was a simple contentment with life, free from what we could actually accurately label #firstworldproblems, minor problems of the developed world which we blow far out of proportion. I think it's also very important to emphasise the agency of these people, recognising that they have hopes, fears, and lives as vivid as anyone else.

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Difference often makes us laugh. Not for superiority’s sake, but simply because we don’t know what to make of it initially. Again a mother’s love prevails as the familiar element in this photograph, but of course what we see first is a little nude boy having a bath outside in the not-so-sunny weather. Kalimpongians do not have the easiest access to clean water, especially those living so far from the centre, so we can only assume this was a rare treat for the boy.

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Kalimpong

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