Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 9:41PM ;)
True, I did post the wedding of Sujitha and Manoj, but in the morning before the wedding began, I did some casual shots of
Friday, April 27, 2012 at 8:39PM ;)
The drive by large van from the K. Ganesh home, where we were hosted, to the house of the groom's parents took somewhere between half-an-hour and 45 minutes. The bride used the time to apply her makeup and finish her beauty routine. By the time we arrived, Sujitha looked... well, see for yourself... stunning and gracefully beautiful! Now it was time to enter the home of Manoj's parents - the household that she was about to become a member of.
;)
Along with a host of relatives who had come up from Bangalore and an uncle who had come from Wasilla, Sujitha was greeted at the gate of Manoj's father and mother, Mahadev Bimanna and Jayshree Biradar with a blessing.
;)
As lunch is being prepared, Sujitha sits with her cousins, Aishu Visnu and Brindha Padmanabhan, in the upstairs living room.
;)
There is time to visit and socialize. Sujitha returns to the lower level and then poses in the doorway to the Biradar home with Manoj. Above the doorway is a representation of the deity Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings. The doorway frame is decorated by the same forehead symbol that identifies members of the Lingayat faith.
;)
Back inside, Sujitha visits with her close friend and former coworker in Bangalore, Ganesh Arumugham. In the aftermath of tragedy, Ganesh was her confident and comforter at work. Ganesh plans to marry in October. In the background, Sujitha's brother Ganesh talks with cousin Aishu.
;)
As her father and brother-in-law to be pass by, Sujitha receives a hug from Aishu.
;)
Sujitha and Soundarya - "Soundu" - had often spoke of the good times they would share together at the wedding of Suji and Manoj. Soundu is not here, but the unfinished tribute to her and Anil tattooed onto the bride's arm continually reminds us of her and in spirit brings her to us.
;)
As requested, Suji puts her henna wedding art on display.
Not long after I took this photograph, Aishu and I were visiting and she asked me how I felt about India. I told her that I love India, and that I regreted that I had not come here earlier in life so that I could have came back more often, could have seen and learned more.
"But then we wouldn't have been part of your India," she responded. No, I argued, I could still have met them at my niece Khena's wedding - even after I had already gotten to know India and they would still have been part of my India. Since then, I have thought more about it. I think Aishu was right. If I had gotten to know India when I was younger, everything would have turned out differently. My relationship with the country would have been different. It would not have happened the same at all.
Aishu and her extended family are not only part of my India - THEY ARE my India.
I am glad now that I did not come earlier. I would not have wanted India any other way.
;)
Soon, lunch was served.
;)
As always seems to be the case in an Indian home, it was excellent. And don't let this fool you. The servings kept coming and coming. I ate in abundance.
;)
After lunch, there was a bangle function for Sujitha.
;)
Suji receives instruction of the way of the Lingayat when it comes to wearing bangles.
;)
Sujitha and Aishu.*
;)
After the bangle function, Sujitha and Bhanu spent time meeting in turn with and socializing with different women family members and friends of the Biradar's.
;)
There is a sacred necklace and locket Sujitha will be expected to wear from now on, although most of the time it will hang on the inside of her clothing and will not be seen. The Brahmin also wear a necklace to serve the same basic purpose, but it is made of gold and is different in design and make. She shows her Lingayat-style necklace and locket to cousin Bharathi Kalyan and mother Bhanu.
;)
The earliest, pre-temple shrines in Hindu culture date back thousands of years and are built on a design called Lynga, said to symbolize the male and female union, in both the physical and spiritual sense. The Lynga is contained within the silver locket. A Rudraksh seed also serves as a prayer bead.
;)
In the late afternoon - early evening, Sujitha's father Ravi will perform a lead role in a Puja function called Kalasha. In the meantime, lunch has left just about everybody feeling sleepy so they nap on the floor. Sujitha uses her dad as a pillow.
;)
Ravi, performing the Puja of the Kalasha, along with Chandu Bagale, maternal uncle to Manoj.
;)
Again, my knowledge is too limited for me to attempt to go into any detail, but the coconut, mango leaves and water in the post are considered to be a symbol of abundance and the source of life, to contain the elixir of life. The Puja Kalasha is considered to be auspicious, a prayer ceremony to request all the things it represents to be plentiful in the couple's life.
;)
Priest Mallayswami conducts the puja. A videographer with a strong light also documents the event. I should note that this videographer was very polite and friendly and eager to help me out. He did not speak English, so we could not speak directly, but if he was not shooting and he saw me shooting into what he deemed to be too dark of a space, he would turn on his light just for me.
I didn't always want the light - sometimes, I just wanted the glow of a lamp, or the softer light natural to the room, but he made such an effort to assist me that I could not help but appreciate it and so just accepted it. I have decided that the strong, hot, glaring video light has become a natural part of Indian weddings and is just one more element for me to work with, rather than to rail against.
;)
Ravi holds the plate with burning lamps.
;)
Ravi wears the type of hat worn by the men in this part of India.
;)
Participants are blessed and purified in the smoke.
;)
Manoj is blessed.
;)
Sujitha was blessed in the same manner. I photographed it, but I like this shot a few seconds later better.
;)
The couple prays.
;)
Chandu Bagale feeds Ravi either sugar or something made of sugar.
;)
Ravi returns the treat.
;)
Sujitha stands with Manoj and the family about to become her own.
*April 28: There is special significance to the ring on Suji's little finger that I was unaware of when I posted this. She explains in comments.
Series index:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 11:31PM ;)
During a function that will mark the final night before the wedding that the bride stays in the home that houses her birth family, Bhanu prays for her daughter. If the family lived here in Pune, this function would be taking place in their home. As they, and I, are staying in the home of the family of their relative Krishnamurthy Ganesh the function takes place in his house.
;)
Without someone like Manoj and Suji here to guide me, I will not attempt to describe the religious significance of all that is happening. Manoj's family is Lingayat, a religion within Hinduism founded in the 12th century by a Basavavanna, who had been Brahmin but wanted to abolish the caste system and so formed Lingayatism.
Sujitha is Brahmin by birth and upbringing but will now be considered Lingayat. Not so long ago, a Brahmin and a Lingayat could not have married, but now they can.
;)
The priest, Mallayaswamy.
;)
Sowmya Ganesh assists Sujitha after she applies the forehead markings that identify the Lingayat.
;)
Sowmya then turns to Manoj and his forehead markings.
;)
Sujitha and Manoj.
;)
Priest Mallayaswamy blesses the couple whose wedding he will soon preside over.
;)
Afterward, Bhanu is once again overcome with the same emotions she experienced when the train reached Pune. As family members gather around to give her comfort and support, she hugs her one surviving daughter.
;)
Now, Manoj and Sujitha will receive blessings from everyone in the house, beginning with the mother of K. Ganesh, Janaki Krishnamurthy who is bedridden.
;)
Sujitha returns the blessing with her touch of compassion and love.
;)
The couple then kneels before grandfather Natarajan to receive his blessings.
;)
They receive the blessings of Sujitha's hosts, the Ganesh's. And yes, once again, I gave the couple my blessings in the way of their own custom and tradition. Once again, it felt good, as though I were blessed myself - which I was: blessed to be there for this sacred and special event.
;)
Blessings from the parents of the bride.
;)
Afterward, everyone seemed to be happy, feeling good. Up to this point, all present, except the priest, had been relatives of the bride.
;)
Then two of Manu's male cousins, Prashant and Jayantm arrived. Sujitha then served coffee to the priest and the male members of the family she is marrying into and had a cup herself.
;)
Afterwards, she gathered the empty cups.
;)
Then... dinner, south Indian style, prepared by Sowmya with a little help from her guests - and yes, once again, the dining was superb. Aishu Visnu, Sujitha's cousin, cultural sister, and close friend from Bangalore, expressed her fondness for Sujitha by feeding her.
;)
Manu had returned to the home of his parents. His cousins had left also. Now, Sujitha joined her family and relatives for a final night of socializing before the wedding. Aditya, youngest son of the Ganesh's pulled out his guitar and began to strum and sing.
;)
Suji got her turn and made everybody laugh. Everyone tried to get me to play, but I wouldn't do it. Once, I was fairly good on the classic guitar, but that was long ago. I haven't played in decades. The fellow on the right is Abhishek, who is studying to become a pilot in the Indian Air Force. His father is retired from the Air Force and now runs a business supplying aircraft parts to the Air Force.
;)
Perhaps you have noticed the tambura in a few of the pictures that I took back in Bangalore in the home of Ravi and Bhanu. It belongs to Bhanu. She seldom plays it now, but on this night she was persuaded to play the guitar. She held it as though it were a tambura.
Somehow, even though she was out of practice and hestitant in her performance, when she played, she touched me deeply.
;)
As Bhanu played, Aishu painted the toenails of the bride.
;)
Aishu also painted Sujitha's fingernails.
Series index:
Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 1:55AM ;)
When I first met Ganesh, I didn't know he was a photographer. He didn't know it, either. It was August of 2007 at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to his cousin, Vivek. Ganesh was standing right beside his sister, Soundarya, wearing a blue t-shirt that said, "Italia." At the end of that first trip, he took me on a little tour of Bangalore on his motorbike. I needed to buy some gifts to bring home, so we parked at the end of Commercial Street and walked from there.
He wanted to carry my camera for me. I did not want him to, because it is pretty hard to use a camera if someone else is carrying it. But he REALLY wanted to carry it.
So, finally, I let him.
We then went into a store that sold jewelry and carvings and rugs and paintings and prints and more. It was run by a very aggressive and persistent salesman. I usually abandon such salesman fast, yet, this fellow was also charming and pleasant and fun to talk to, so I stayed to bargain with him. As we dickered, Ganesh lifted my camera and shot a picture of us.
I was surprised when I looked at it later, because it was very good. It is not uncommon for someone to somehow get ahold of one of my cameras and take a picture or few of me somewhere, just for the record. I always appreciate the gesture, but very seldom do the photographs look like anything more than snapshots that anyone would take using any camera.
But Ganesh's image looked like a photograph, like it was done by someone who knew just what he was doing. Impressed though I was, I still reckoned it to be a one-time lucky fluke.
;)
After I returned home, I stayed in almost constant communication with his sister, Soundarya. She would often bring Ganesh's name into the conversation, but not in the context of photography. None of us yet thought of him as a photographer.
Then, in May of 2009, I came back to shoot Soundarya's wedding. Less than a year had passed since I had taken a bad fall, destroyed my right shoulder and it had been replaced with titanium. I still wore a brace on my right wrist and hand, but by then had pretty well figured out how to use my cameras again.
I carried two cameras at the wedding - one with a wide-angle zoom and the other with a telephoto zoom. I had barely started to shoot the wedding when Ganesh volunteered to carry one of my cameras. I told him no, it was okay, I could handle it myself. I carry two cameras for a reason, so that I can switch rapidly back and forth between wider and tighter views, without stopping to change a lens. If someone else is carrying one of them, then I can't switch so rapidly back and forth.
I had come straight off the Arctic sea ice at Wainwright into record-setting heat in Bangalore - 100 plus. I was sweating so hard I drenched my shirt. I know I looked like a wreck - a brace on my right hand and wrist, my shirt soaked in sweat, my hair plastered to my head, drops of sweat falling into and stinging my eyes...
Ganesh was very worried. He kept running off to get me lemonade, and kept urging me to let him carry a camera. He did not understand that when I shoot pictures, even if I look a wreck and even if I am tired, it doesn't matter. I can go and go and go until the job is done. I just don't stop and I don't need anyone to carry a camera for me.
;)
BUT HE REALLY WANTED TO!
I was probably shooting about ten wide frames to every tight frame, so finally I gave in. I let him take the camera with the telephoto but told him to stay close, because I could need it at any moment. I planned to let him carry it for maybe ten minutes and then I would take it back.
I removed the super-wide angle from the camera I was shooting with and replaced it with a 24-105, which gave me a decent wide angle up to a small telephoto. This would cover most situations. Ten minutes passed and I let him carry it a little longer. Soon the wedding progressed near to the point where Anil would place a sacred necklace around Sandy's neck and they would be married.
I knew I wanted to shoot this, the most important moment of the wedding, with both the wide and narrow views, so I turned to retrieve my other camera from Ganesh... but I could not see Ganesh.
Worse yet, at that moment, the aggressive local photographer with the blasting flash decided I was where he wanted to be and so he stuck his elbow into my ribs and started to push. As I was a guest in his country, I had been pretty deferential up until then and had done my best to work around him and when he would spoil my shot, I would move and find another.
But not this time. Not for this moment. This time, I pushed back. "I came all the way from Alaska to photograph this wedding," I told him. "You better back off now." He did. Once, and once only. From there, everything happened fast. I could not stop or move to find Ganesh and get my other camera. I just had to make what was on my camera work. I would get no tight shots.
;)
Back in Alaska, when I finally got a chance to look at that part of my wedding take, I was surprised to find some very nice tight shots of the moment when Anil had placed the necklace around Sandy's neck, shot from the same angle as my wider shots.
"How the hell did I do that?" I wondered.
I thought about it off and on for the next month or two and then suddenly it dawned on me - I didn't do it. Ganesh shot those tight shots - so well that anyone would think it was professional work. He had shot right over my shoulder. Had the situation not been so tense, I would probably have found him and would have been able able to get the camera.
To what end? A certain, beautiful, instant in the wedding of Soundarya and Anil would have been captured either wider or tighter - but not both. Yes, I would have captured the basic scene both wide and tight, because I can switch cameras very fast - but I could have only shot that moment once, with one camera, one lens.
And now it is recorded both ways.
Ganesh and I were a team that day. I just didn't know it at the time. I didn't know he was a photographer.
;)
I know it now, so does he and that's how we both learned. Ganesh has a natural eye that needs no instruction. He has talent and he has passion. Yes, he has much to learn (and so do I) but photography is in his soul. He loves to shoot pictures of birds and wild animals. I can assure you, he has way better pictures of birds than I do. He also loves to shoot pictures of people, especially children. He has a job in high tech sales. His highest goal is to be there for his parents and to support them as they grow old and he feels the best way he can do that is keep doing what he is doing.
If he could make enough to support him and them with a camera, then, yes, he says, he would go professional, as it is in his heart. He says India is different than the US and feels it is almost impossible to make a living as photographer in India - except, perhaps, in the wedding field. In India, there is high demand for wedding photographers.
So he is already getting himself some wedding gigs to see what will happen. A few days ago, he told me about one wedding he was dickering on and how he was going to set a good price and he was not going to go below that price - because he could give them something special, something more than the normal Indian wedding photo shoot. And right there, he already has me beat. If you come to me tomorrow and somehow convince me to shoot your wedding, I will not give you a price. I have never given anyone a price. I'll just shoot it and if you want to do something for me later, fine, if not, that's okay, too. But please don't ask. Unless you are very close to me or we have a special tie, I'm not going to do it. I don't care if I go broke first. I just won't do it.
So Ganesh is already making sure that if he does a wedding, he is going to get decent pay for it. And he has a vision for shooting weddings that I think I have influenced. He might use a strobe sometimes, but when he can he will go for the beauty of natural light and when he has to use strobe, he will learn how to bounce it and shape the light.
But still, he thinks his economic propects are better at his sales job. I cannot second guess him on this, but I do recognize his talent and if I can help, I want to.
;)
He wants to come to Alaska next summer and I want to bring him here. I want to take him to the Arctic Slope and introduce him to the summer birds that come there - and to birds elsewhere in Alaska - and polar bears and moose and caribou and he will go nuts and shoot great pictures.
We just need to figure out how to pay for it. There's got to be a way. There is always a way.
Mostly, I worry about feeding him. He is vegetarian. I don't know how a vegetarian can survive for any length of time on the Arctic Slope, or anywhere out in bush Alaska. But there's got to be a way. We will figure it out. We've just got to get him here, first.
Subhankar Banerjee - he is one of Alaska and the Arctic's finest and most acclaimed photographers. He was born and raised in India. I'll lay odds that sooner or later he will even read this blog post. He found the way. Ganesh can find the way, too - even if only for a little while.
I have written about how cheap things are in India - but not camera equipment. A good camera costs more in Bangalore than it does in Anchorage.
The story of how Ganesh got his first real camera body, the one you see here, is sad. It is one of my old cameras that I outgrew. I gave it to Sandy, because she loved photography, too. Technically, she didn't know anything and was prone to blur, but with her cheap little camera she took some of the sweetest, most sensitive, pictures I ever saw - bugs, calves, cows, puppies, kittens, old ladies, family... pictures that transported me into another world. So I gave the camera to Sandy and Ganesh inherited it from her. He bought the 80-200 lens seen here himself. Now he needs to get a good wide-angle.
Except for the fifth, the photos here are self-explanatory. As for the fifth, the concessioner just spilled hot coffee on Ganesh's hand, and on his camera. The concessioner tends to Ganesh as Murthy wipes the coffee from his camera.
Series index:
Saturday, April 21, 2012 at 2:03AM ;)
Sujitha sits by the window on the train, watching a bit of India pass by...
;)
...a stone fence...
;)
...overgrown, crumbling, stone fence...
;)
...man and two structures that look to me to be some kind electrical boxes, plus trees...
;)
...the fellow standing by the car looks like a cop to me... I'm not worried about getting a ticket, though... none of us are...
;)
...this divided, six-lane, highway did not even exist the first time I came here in 2007...
;)
...yes, she's talking to Manu again... that's brother Ganesh sitting beside her...
;)
...a tall building, all by itself; apartments, it looks like to me - or maybe condominiums... back home, in Alaska, at this very moment, sled dog teams race down the Iditarod Trail...
;)
...just like Bob Dylan used to always sing: "But right now I'll just sit here contentedly and watch the tracks flow... no matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow..."
;)
...as the tracks continue to flow, Suji eats a cookie... called a "cracker..."
;)
...thinking of something nice... it is nice just to be on this train... nice to be with Suji and family... seeing a sliver of India pass by...
;)
...somebody across the aisle has caught her attention... maybe grampa Natarajan... a look of affection always seems to come to her when she looks at Natarajan...
;)
Sujitha, riding the train to her wedding in Pune... more train ride pix coming... I was going to post every sequence before I went to bed, but that doesn't make any sense... traffic drops off to almost nothing in the overnight hours...
...this will put me one more day behind, but, oh well. It doesn't matter. It will get done and then it will be sitting here, in cyberspace, ready for any visitors who want to come and drop by, or to google the right word, and then stumble upon it.
Series index:
Ganesh, Indian Railways, Sujitha in Beyond, Family, India, Soundarya, Sujitha's wedding, train 