Category: 2014 India

An octogenarian, Padma’s mother, Mercy, doesn’t think she’ll be able to make the long and tiresome trip to India for much longer. But she reckons she’s still good for one more trip to bid farewell to the homeland and extended family. Mercy wants to ensure that the family’s Indian heritage is never forgotten so she has invited her grandsons, Joseph and Xander, and her son in law, me, to get better acquainted with the extended family in India.

We’ll begin the farewell tour in Chennai but only as a stopover as we then travel up the coast to the home of Mercy’s youngest brother, John, to attend the wedding of his granddaughter. Then we’ll ride the rails and travel to small towns in Andhra Pradesh where we will visit the extended family and spend Christmas with family in the town of Gudur.

On the third week, we’ll leave Mercy in the hands of family and we’ll fly north to Dehli and the Taj Mahal. Then off to the far northern state of Kashmir. We’ll fly into Srinagar and then drive up to the Himalayan hill station of Gulmarg where we’ll try some downhill skiing in one of Asia’s most remarkable ski destinations. We’ll then spend New Year’s Eve on a houseboat on Dal Lake and start the new year with a dawn boat ride on the lake to see the floating markets.

For Joseph and Xander it will be their first trip to India and their introduction won’t be as tourists but as visiting family.

For me it will be the culmination of a trip first planned 37 years ago. When I was 19 I studied Eastern Religions at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. I became fascinated in Hinduism and all of the religions and culture of India. I spent several months planning a trip from south to north of India. I got as far as Sumatra on that trip and never made it to India. Finally I get my chance to see India.

4 January 2015

CHENNAI TO ADELAIDE

We have safely reached home after a long overnight flight from Chennai via Kuala Lumpur. On our last day Padma asked us what we missed most about home. The boys mentioned beef. They missed their all beef hamburgers and sirloin steaks. Every time we saw a cow on the road I could see them salivating with the thought of beef. For me it was blue sky. We arrived in India at a time when the seasons were changing and as a result we had three weeks of haze. Or it could…
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3 January 2015

FAREWELL INDIA

We were overwhelmed by the number of family members who came to the airport to bid us farewell and a safe journey home. Ravi and Minny left Gudur before dawn for a three-hour journey to the airport; Chandra, Sampath, Uma, Kumari came from afar the previous days and Usha, Santhosh, Raju and Sujatha came from Chennai. They all came to have one final chance to say goodbye. Imagine taking a six-hour round trip like Ravi and Minny did just to say farewell at the airport. We arrived to the airport early…
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2 January 2015

ONE PHOTO, PLEASE

‘One photo, please.’ I kept hearing their voices all the time. The children asking me to take a photo of them. ‘One photo, please.’ ‘Thank you.’ And I kept thinking of all the times I was thanked for taking a photo of a child, a man or a woman. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Why were they so keen to have their photo taken? Why did they feel compelled to thank me when all I did was press the shutter release button? Andhra Pradesh was a photographer’s dream for an editorial photographer…
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1 January 2015

KASHMIR’S LAKE DAL

Allāhu akbar! The Muslim call to prayer at dawn woke us all from our deep sleep on the houseboat. They must have a special New Year’s Day version of the call because it seemed to go on forever. It was a good alarm clock for me though as I wanted to get up at dawn and check out the lake since we arrived in the dark. From the bedroom window though I could see it was still dark as we were completely fogged in so I went back to the warm…
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31 December 2014

SRINAGAR

We said goodbye to the Himalayas and drove a couple of hours down to Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir is a shopper’s paradise due to its carpet and textile industries so our first stop was a carpet wholesaler. Our home is already well decorated with handmade carpets from Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and India but we weren’t thrilled with the carpet Padma bought a few years ago in Agra so we thought we’d have a look at some Kashmir carpets to replace it. Big…
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29 December 2014

GULMARG

When we first made our plans to go to India last April, we decided we would leave Ammamma with family in the south while Padma, Joe, Xander and I did a bit of exploring in the north. I had been dreaming of Kashmir for 37 odd years so that was my first choice. But it would be winter there and therefore we couldn’t do any trekking. After a bit of research I discovered that Gulmarg, a hill station a couple of hours away from Srinagar is regarded as one of Asia’s…
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27 December 2014

THE TAJ MAHAL

PHOTOBOMBING AT THE TAJ We arose early to begin a painful long journey by road to Agra and the Taj Mahal. Our travel plan called for us travelling along a modern expressway to Agra. A trip which would have been an easy three hours. But the expressway was closed due to fog as there were just too many collisions. So we went on the old road – four long hours through monochromatic dirty countryside of beeping and weaving in and out of traffic. The Taj Mahal has been photographed millions of…
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25 December 2014

SEVA JYOTI LEPROSY REHABILITATION CENTRE

After Christmas lunch, cousin Joshua asked if we’d like to join him on a visit to a leper colony. I thought at first I was losing something in translation but indeed Joshua worked with lepers and had a scheduled visit. We drove for an hour through little villages and finally arrived at a Seva Jyoti Leprosy Rehabilitation Centre in the Nellore District. I was the first out of the car and was immediately swarmed by people who wanted to shake my hand. I shook a bunch of hands but then one…
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25 December 2014

LOST IN TRANSLATION IN GUDUR

After the Christmas service I walked around in the courtyard and in the street and watched the people emerge. Some children saw me with the camera and asked for a photo so I took them and soon there was a queue of children all wanting photos. As soon as I would point the camera at them the children would freeze up and stand in a rigid pose. A woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked for a photo. I obliged and showed her the image in the camera monitor. She…
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