a lens into India’s villages captures the humbling strength and vibrant spirit thriving far from urban clamour

Browsing through reels, I came across one which highlighted a favourite childhood practice. During our art classes, the sun, moon, sky, trees, flowers and a hut with a river flowing close to it would be an eternal favourite with most children. We were so idyllic and close to Nature. We always dreamt of a peaceful life with a close community, our loved ones and no eternal change. It’s adulting that turns it all upside down.

The dream dies, huts replace skyscrapers, trees replace roads and meat replaces flowers. Money becomes the mainstay and relationships are lost in the dust and heat.

Until one day, there comes a chance to see the India you always dreamt of, beyond your city limits. For three years, between 2018-2022, I travelled the length and breadth of the country for three coffee table books on CSR. I’d always wanted to write stories that had a positive impact on lives, and I thought this was my time.

Alas, the dream breaker was the fact this was funded by marketing, which means all these stories ended as glossed over narratives, not the picture that calls for change. It was disheartening not to fully do justice to the remarkable people I encountered, their tireless efforts, and their heartfelt dreams. It took two years to process the emotional impact of witnessing the India of my childhood imaginings, which, in truth, was no mere fantasy.

All along, the people living on the margins, far from the city’s hardcore ways, helped me absorb my most humbling experiences in the villages of India. The headlines in international papers about these rural regions, which I had once perhaps questioned, now resonated with a stark truth.

Most of these villages were just a street of 5-10 mud homes, supporting each other, living a precarious hand-to-mouth existence, and some couldn’t even earn that. Some situations were particularly dire, such as in Jharkhand, where an elderly woman survived on a meager INR 400 a month as a temple cleaner, supplemented by the food she received there.

An entire village there made beedis, and for every thousand beedis, they would be paid INR 100. A group of women would sit and make them through the day. A pregnant lady weighed a mere 40kg and she had a small child as well. An image that wouldn’t leave me for a long time, was a girl of barely 8-9 years old, wearing only panties and holding a pair of beedi-cutting scissors and roaming around the village – a sight that evoked deep unease and a constant prayer for her safety.

In another village, near closed coal mines, a group of women were taught financial literacy. They were made to save INR 5 daily! One of them even offered me tea from her wheely stall. Full of spirit despite her circumstances, she even offered me tea from her makeshift stall – an offer I regretfully declined, realizing later that a small payment would have fostered self-esteem rather than dependence.

Eventually, the cumulative weight of witnessing such hardship led me to a forced departure from these projects.

During these often-traumatic village travels, while not actively for the assignment, I captured images that personally resonated with me. It felt ethically wrong to exploit the deeply personal stories of the people I met for my own gain.

These momentary glimpses, where physical, mental, and spiritual needs are often unmet, are messages of hope and vibrancy in the midst of all they call life.

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