Mathura Man

As I wrote earlier, I am going through all my thousands and thousands of photos from the padyatra and reliving everything, shocked all over again. I don't think I've yet processed more than 10% of what I saw and experienced. Anyway, I came across this photo, which I took as we were walking out of Mathura, alleged birthplace of Krishna. It's a little northwest of Agra and southeast of Delhi. This man was just too good to walk past and I asked him if I could take his photo. Perched up on top of the counter of his little roadside shop, he didn't move, just smiled a 'yes', and I set my focus and snapped. If you look carefully in the right lens of his sunglasses, you see Babulal, the sadhu on the padyatra, walking by, bubbled in the reflection. On the man's clothes and in the hair of his beard is pink dye that was still being flung around a few days after the Holi festival, the main day of which was March 15th. Uttar Pradesh (where Mathura is) goes particularly nuts on Holi, turning it into an almost two-week long frenzy of throwing dye on each other and even whacking each other with big wooden sticks.


Many very everyday people in India make super-fabulous use of sunglasses. I'm sure they think nothing of it, but that doesn't stop me from admiring their sense of style.

I have thousands of photos like this that I desperately want to share. I can't decide what to do with them all. To start, though, I have been carefully selecting several photos of each padyatri to have printed here in Bhopal so I can give them out to everybody who walked to Delhi. I know they want them and it's a small way for me to thank them for letting me get up in their faces everyday to photograph them, in every kind of moment, mood, and situation.