Thursday, November 27, 2014

Tradition to trend


--Beards
Dear readers/followers I usually don't post secondary research, but this just seemed so interesting that I had to post.



Indian Islamic man, Hennaed hair


Elderly Indian man, Sadhu/sanyasi possibly

Elderly Indian man, post Holi


Indian Islamic man, Western India, printed turban


Indian Islamic man, green turban


Indian Sadhu, Coloured forehead & beads


Sikhism Inspired fashion image


Waris Ahluwalia, Sikh designer NY









Accessorised beard


Flower beard


Accessorised beard


Flower beard


Flower beard


Flower beard


Flower beard


Flower beard


Flower beard


Beach scene beard

My sincere credit to pinterest and the many photographers/stylists/models who are contributing to this. I could not find origins of all the pictures though please feel free to write in to me should you have any queries/requests. Thank you once again.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Nascent Nelipots

Barefoot Bhakti..

The more I  travel this land (India) the smaller I feel and probably lack words to describe the deep feeling it leaves me with.

Our Rishi munis have lived detached from the material world for thousands of years.

We have visitors from world over who come to this land to understand the meaning of this enigmatic country. For us city brats it is much about how terribly inadequate our systems are and its best to flee, it does take a while to understand what a land of plenty we are, pause; and wonder what still keeps going?




Sometimes we need to come full circle to understand this, we are not a 'trend' driven culture and words like fashion/trend are fairly recent, probably still not understood conceptually as a nation. So, something like walking barefoot which is either for reasons of material detachment or poverty, is now 'fashionable'


Often enough it is not adopted for either of the above reasons and there is a group of people doing it. The Nascent Nelipots!



The original pundit in the background does believe in footwear. The one in focus has clearly been a nelipot for a while and to him it's not just a holiday trend.


The soles get tougher and acclimatise after a while of walking barefoot.


#Nelipots have even creeped into the punk souls so we have an overlapping cross trend here. Bare-soled punks!


I usually strike a conversation with people I photograph so the picture has more depth than just a flash image. 

Why does one choose to walk on the rough streets of India without footwear? 
It is of course not the easiest terrain to walk on keeping in mind the weather & our not so clean uneven streets. Some just took off their shoes in the heat and didn't put them back on but it has a deeper meaning, spiritually; to absorb praan (life) from holy land, which is commendable, pilgrims do this as a form of tapp.








Thursday, January 30, 2014

Pushkar Jewels

Lasagna in a butter dish!! where else could it be? Pushkar... the beautiful camel fair. No matter how many times over the Rajasthani colour, costume and people have been photographed there's always more. From my brief visit, I caught some jewellery that tells much, a lot of it has disappeared though and I see earlobes with piercings and nothing to adorn them! lucky to have spotted some handsome folks who still dress gracefully!








Each time I'm here I love it even more than before. The people, the vibrations and the devotion! It makes one re-affirm 'belief'!