καιρός remembered

Girlhood in India

This photograph – the girl in it – moves me deeply. With her still-young, prematurely aged face, marked by the hardships of a life lived in poverty, she is heart-rendingly beautiful. I admire her, feel sorry for her, and would love to stroke her head and hold her close.

She looks at me with a surprised, slightly bewildered expression on her face.
A moment later, her crying little sister or brother calls for her motherly attention, and she turns her now genuinely concerned face round, in a gesture of comfort.

I have been looking at these photographs for a very, very long time. And I know, despite all the conflicting feelings they stir in me, that this is the face of India that touches me right in the heart. Over the past 40 years, it has etched itself into my memory in various forms.

Every now and then, when I am on the verge of despair because of the many faces of hypocrisy, indifference, deceit, lust for power and greed that we are so often confronted with, I have to seek out this face once more and look deep into its eyes.

Photos of the week: Ramgarh, Jharkhand, India 2013