Brahmin Blues & The Bishnois
Jodhpur, with its Brahmin-blue lanes of the old city and its glorious Mehrangarh Fort which mushrooms from beneath a huge rocky cliff to dominate the once indomitable Blue City, is a popular stop on most tourists’ itineraries. I am fortunate enough to have visited Jodhpur on a few occasions, each having its own photographic focus. My focus for this trip was to capture scenes of everyday life, a task I was soon to find out would be almost impossible.
As more and more tourists equip themselves with top-end professional cameras, the opportunity to get great shots reduces. This is solely due to the fact that many tourists do not show any kind of respect to the people they are trying to photograph, which in turn makes the local residents understandably angry and also means they refuse to have their photograph taken. All in all it is a very sad situation, and it only seems to be getting worse, making the professional photographers’ job even harder.
Luckily people seem to warm to me quite quickly, I have no idea what it is about me but usually after 5 minutes of chatting it’s like we have known each other for quite some time, and it’s due to this that I managed to get some photographs of one family. The first day I met them, after sitting down and having a few laughs, I took a number of portraits and promised to send them the images, however on my return home I came across a printer and so had them all printed the same day. The following morning I found my way through the maze of streets to this particular family’s home to give them their photographs, needless to say they were absolutely delighted and brought everyone from the neighbouring houses around to have a look. It is experiences like these that the tourists who simply shove their cameras into other people’s faces miss out on entirely, which is a shame as it is experiences like this that make my trip!
A trip to Jodhpur would not be complete for me without a quick visit to Jaswant Thada and the market, and here are a few of the photos that I managed to capture, plus the second photo shows what I class as the best tea stall in all of India, no other glass of chai will compare to this place!
As I mentioned earlier this was not my first encounter with Jodhpur, and the main reason I chose to re-visit this magical place was to get out into the Thar Desert and meet the Bishnois. I was fortunate enough to find a guide who said he knew of some villages not frequented by groups of tourists and so the Bishnoi living there were very traditional and enjoyed meeting the one or two tourists who came to see them each year. After a very long drive along unmarked roads and past untouched desert we arrived at the villages and were greeted with smiles and curiosity, and unusually for tribal villages, a keen interest in having their photographs taken. Everyone was extremely friendly and numerous offers of chai were extended, and even though all of our conversations had to be translated I felt very much a friend to everyone I met, it truly was an absolute pleasure.
For those of you not familiar with this group of people here’s some information that I found on Wikipedia:
“The Bishnois are known as the conservationists to whom the preservation of animal and vegetable life is a religion and has been so from the early 15th century. Their lives are governed by tenets created by their spiritual mentor, Guru Jambheshwa – 10 are directed towards personal hygiene and maintaining good basic health, seven for healthy social behaviour, and five tenets to worship God. Eight tenets have been prescribed to preserve bio-diversity and encourage good animal husbandry.
The most famous Bishnoi story is that of the Khejarli Massacre; the Bishnois narrate the story of Amrita Devi, a Bishnoi woman who, along with more than 366 other Bishnois, died saving the Khejarli trees. Nearly 2 centuries back, Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur required some woods for the construction of his new palace. So the king sent his soldiers to cut trees in the nearby region of Khejarli, where the village is filled with the large number of trees. But when Amrita Devi and local villagers came to know about it, they opposed the king’s men. The malevolent feudal party told her that if she wanted the trees to be spared, she would have to give them money as bribe. She refused to acknowledge this demand and told them that she would consider it as an act of insult to her religious faith and would rather give away her life to save the green trees. Every year, in September, the Bishnois assemble there to commemorate the extreme sacrifice made by their people to preserve their faith and religion.”
