Incredible !ndia is the Indian Tourist Board's slogan. A place of colour, dreams, and the mystique. A land of economic growth, where magnificent historical buildings provide the cornerstone of the tourist industry.
The authorities would be perfectly happy if every visitor came
to be chauffeur driven around India and only made contact with the affluent, blinkered middle classes. Everyone is aware of India's darker side but the government would rather continue to conveniently ignore it.I have been asked many times by people back home how I deal with the poverty. At first I wondered myself but like most other people, once the initial shock had worn off, I slowly became numb to the vast majority of the deprivation I was confronted with on India's streets.
I have heard many travellers and Indians alike answer this dilemma in a similar manner. Simply that they do not have to deal with it. They see it but every evening they can return to the sanctity of their own home or hotel, and shut out the horrors of the streets. This may sound callous but it is the bare truth, and it provokes hatred within me towards the upper echelons of Indian society, other travellers and most of all myself.
An incident recently put the magnifying glass over the issue and the Indian middle classes' insensitivity towards the poverty which surrounds them and the suffering of others.
Delhi is unavoidable if you travel the vast rail network in India for long enough. It is the central hub linking north, south, east, west and central, and consequently I frequently find myself back at the Anoop Guest house on Paharganj for a couple of days, taking pictures of the beautiful and interesting people of Delhi.
It is almost always guaranteed that I will end up at Connaught Place for an afternoon stroll. It is a good place to escape the mayhem, as it is the preserve of the middle classes with it's trendy shops, water fountains, green lawns, big cars plus there are no cows to sidestep.
Despite these strolls though, the middle classes (and women) are a weak point in my archive of the faces that make up India. It is not through any lack of contact with them, it is just they hold no fascination for me. They are so wrapped up in themselves that very often that the conversation lurches from pleasantry to pleasantry without ever progressing, and I am not going to waste my film on people who bore me. They are also more likely to refuse the glare of my lens and I hate people who say no.
One afternoon as I walked back from Connaught place along the tree-shaded avenue which joins it to Paharganj I spotted a man lying with his lower half slumped in the road, whilst his torso and head were baking in a uncovered sun spot on the pavement. He seemed peacefully unaware of the rickshaw, taxi and bus drivers just about mustering the consideration to swerve round his splayed legs. Was he stoned, pissed or dead?
I had seen him many times on my strolls and often he had thrown me a brown-toothed smile from beneath his matted mop of dark hair. I had taken his picture on more than one occasion. We were probably of a similar age, and whilst my belly is starting to bulge from alcohol, he was immaciated with ribs like a xylophone. He always smiled and posed for a photo though, and believe me getting your average Indian on the street to smile for a photo is not an easy task.
I approached and him and asked if he was alright, with the hope that he would suddenly realise his legs were out in the road and make his way back onto the pavement. As I leaned over him he turned and stared at me blankly. The right side of his skull near his temple was missing and his exposed brain was black with maggots and flies. The brain had become concave where the parasites had eaten it away. I am no expert but this was not a new injury.
I recoiled away and began to gag. I gulped some luke warm water down to ease my stomach and composed myself. I approached a man selling cumcumbers from a cart and asked him why no one had helped this man. His answer made me feel sick again but in an all together different way. With a dismissive wobble of his head he nonchanlantly said - 'Sir, this is Dehli, and we really don't have a history of helping people you see'.
Here was a man in a sickening physical state, just a few minutes walk from the central plaza, in the capital city of one of the world's largest civilisations, next to a McDonalds, a brand new billion dollar metro system, Mercedes cars driving by, and not a soul would help because it was not in their history. Believe that if you will.
The truth is people are too scared of touching the lower castes. Too wrapped up in their pursuit of gain to consider the people who for millenia have propped up society by doing the jobs they considered beneath them. The snobbery within the Indian middle classes is putridly palpable.
The only reaction I saw that day was from a lady in a pink sari with a bulbous belly, who glanced over as she bought some cucumbers to wobble her head, as she winced at the distressing sight before her. Not one person stopped. The cucumber seller said simply, 'what can they do?'
I then found myself in a painful dilemma. What could I do? This down-trodden urchin was near the end despite his bodies' desperate will to survival. He had maybe a day or two left at the most. Even if I got him to a hospital what could they do?
Should I record this situation in one of my portraits? I'm sure many people would find this idea abhorant but it wasn't a question of any desire to take the picture but a feeling of necessity. It seemed strange but the hardest thing was that I knew I couldn't ask for his permission.
"Excuse me sir? I am well aware that you about to imminently leave this existence but would you mind awfully if I recorded your encroaching death, as an illustration of the disintegration of human kindness for future generations? Your death will highlight the need for love and compassion in the world. Sorry sir, what was that... you'll have to speak slower and louder as my Hindi isn't very good".
I cautiously stepped foward, my inner monologue screaming it's apologies for what I was about to do. I had preset my camera - 200asa - 250th - f4. As I set myself the man rolled his head back over exposing his injury once more - and then he died - right there in front of me. I took one frame and walked away. As I walked down the road I broke into to a trot as I agonised over the picture I had just taken.
I returned 30mins later like a criminal to the scene of a crime. Five policeman were dragging his body onto the pavement. Only when he was dead did anyone think to stop.
That evening I left for Goa. Like the rest of India I just walked away. Like them what could I do?
Later that week, I was with another group of Europeans who found a dog lying on the beach gasping for air. He had a hole in his neck probably inflicted during a fight. The wound was infested with flies and maggots. We arranged a vet for him and fed him daily. A dutchman put his hand into the wound to apply cream to it twice daily, and eventually he recovered.
We called him maggot.
