{"id":10563,"date":"2014-12-21T05:51:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T00:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=10563"},"modified":"2014-12-21T22:18:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T16:48:53","slug":"travel-photography-mendicants-varanasi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/travel-photography-mendicants-varanasi.html","title":{"rendered":"Travel Photography: With the mendicants of Varanasi"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was written for Terrascape<\/strong>, a travel magazine where I write a monthly column on photography.<\/p>\n

One of my long standing wish was to photograph the mendicants in Varanasi. I have been to Varanasi many times in the past, but in all these years, I was apprehensive to approach the sadhu<\/em>s with a camera. I had heard about short-tempered nature of many and was unsure about reaching out to them. I did not wish to photograph people from a distance either. As much as possible, I prefer to make conversations, know about the people I am photographing and keep them comfortable during the shoot. During the last visit, I decided to put my uneasiness aside and make an effort to approach them.<\/p>\n

\"Mendicants<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead of trying to connect with any mendicant I bump into on the river-front, I planned to meet them at their own residences. Obviously, the first step to doing this was asking permissions. I wasn\u2019t very hopeful with being let in, but decided to try out anyway. To my surprise, the Guruji of one of the largest and well-known river-facing residence of the mendicants gladly consented to our request. Even better, the resident mendicants were happy to oblige to the camera.<\/p>\n

What also followed were several interesting conversations. Most of the mendicants here were affiliated to the\u00a0Akhara\u00a0<\/em>where I was, but there were many who were also wandering hermits often going from place to place and living in any place where they found temporary shelter.<\/p>\n

\"Mendicants<\/a><\/p>\n

We were at the akhara a few days after Dev Diwali. Saraswati Maharaj, the guru <\/em>of the Akhara, told us how they had lit-up the ghats <\/em>in front of the akhara <\/em>with large torches this year, and how they intend to go on increasing the number torches year after year.<\/p>\n

The mendicants willingly stood in front of the camera and were happy to have their photographs taken. I was surprised at their friendliness and willingness to mix with complete strangers without any inhibitions. All my prejudices about them turned out to be just that \u2013 prejudices.<\/p>\n

At the end of our session, we were even offered lunch at the Akhara. We couldn\u2019t have asked for more. It was a day of learning for me to be free from assumptions, believe in goodness of everyone and be ready to make the first approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was written for Terrascape, a travel magazine where I write a monthly column on photography. One of my long standing wish was to photograph the mendicants in Varanasi. I have been to Varanasi many times in the past, but in all these years, I was apprehensive to approach the sadhus with a camera. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[53,142],"tags":[537,141],"class_list":["post-10563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-photography","category-uttar-pradesh","tag-travel-photography","tag-varanasi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-2Kn","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10574,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions\/10574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}