India's eyes

Brother and sister, part of the musician family, play traditional music in Jaipur’s Fort august 2012 

To Agustín, who is teaching me how to look through my new camera, and to those Indians who are looking to the world

The poem

I have been influenced by India since I was a child. I remember that I was eleven, and my father read a Rudyard Kipling's poem to me that impressed me at the time, but which eventually became the only recipe for my life. The poem in question is If, and its first verse is:  “If you can keep your head when all about you . . .” In some way India and I have been joined by this link for a lot of time. Initially it was not easy to understand this poem well, but with time I have managed to discover the meaning of each one of its verses and it has been of great help to me.

Be ready

A trip to India, at least one similar to the one I have done, needs time to be prepared. Maybe the principal preparation is the mental one. What you are going to discover in India will never make you indifferent.

I had spoken with many people before going to India, and the majority agreed that one of the most shocking things for the westerner is the intense smell that you encounter. Nevertheless my friend Agustín, one of the best photographers that I know (You can look at his pictures here) insisted to me that I should centre the lenses of my camera on the people, the way they look, their expressions. Very right he was.

If you are going to visit India you must be ready for all of the things you are going to discover there. You must be ready for the smell, the poverty, the food, the air and the land too. You will find paradise and hell in the same place.

Eyes

Whilst travelling through India I was able to share my life with all kinds of people, poor, rich, Brahmins, and especially many merchants. This allowed me to capture a glimpse of their souls in a few mediocre photographs, but I preferred this instead of taking high quality photographs of simple strangers. It was exciting to share my life with foreigners, to share their food, their journeys, and their stories; but it was only when I began to photograph people in India that I could see India’s eyes. Then I could see all their feelings, their souls and their beliefs united. India’s eyes showed me: ire, love, happiness, nonchalance, rancour, mystery, hunger, pain, resignation, freedom, destination, past, poetry, music, curry, sandalwood, misery, wealth, rottenness, worry, deception, frustration, desire, tension, work, sea, desert, fear, perfidy, distress, horror, happiness, tranquillity, meditation, tradition, culture, oblivion, religion; but above all passion. All this and much more can be discovered in a simple glimpse of the eyes, and because of this, the way that Indians look at the world never makes you indifferent.

A trip always offers you the opportunity to learn something, but as important as it is to learn, it is also very important to unlearn. Forgetting old paradigms is necessary if you want to incorporate new visions. This trip has allowed me to learn how to look through the eyes of a different culture and to understand my favourite poem better. This trip has given me the opportunity to look through India’s eyes.