My ex student Mounika now studying for college asks me to come out with her and help her take better photographs one Sunday, i miss her in my classes (she’s a brilliant artist) so i am happy to have her come along, also if i go into the villages with any of my kids from school, it’s always a different experience…
We go to Ajjampudi, about half a km walk from the orphanage. Mounika is Hindu and wants us to go into the temple…the priest insists on making a small ceremony (a puja) for us, none of which i can film…darn it…but i emerge with a spot of vermilion pigment on my forehead and half a coconut in my hand as a memento. A (not tame) monkey observes us from the outside…
As ever a group of kids start to follow, some of them are village kids from my class…
They are mad keen to be photographed and even though i beg them not to they jump into water to swim and show off, climb walls, dive for water lilies…
This little group of kids are all brothers and sisters…and they live in a ramshackle hut with no windows and no doors…with elderly grandparents…
The village kids who live in modest circumstances themselves consider this to be a very bad situation. This hut is in an awful position as the rice fields are full of snakes and mosquitoes…this little corner of India is a very tough place, full of extremes.
the boys show me how to make instant necklace garlands from the water lilies…
