November 2008, Kudichintalabayalu Village, Nallamalla Forest.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.) 

November 2008, Kudichintalabayalu Village, Nallamalla Forest.

Kodala Bayanna contracted polio as a child. Both his parents passed away a few years back and he now lives with his old grandmother. A couple of years back the government had given him a tricycle but that soon fell into repair and he does not have the money to get it repaired. Now the only way for him to move is by crawling and sliding.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.) 

November 2008, Kudichintalabayalu Village, Nallamalla Forest.

Ramulu lives alone. His wife left him taking their kids with her. He only replied in monosyllables and sat outside his house staring into infinity. The doctor with us speculated that Ramulu might be suffering from depression based upon his behavior and his wife might have left him because he might have contracted AIDS. Apparently, going to prostitutes is another vice that the Chenchus pick up upon exposure to civilization and not being aware of safe sex practices inevitably suffer the consequences of unsafe sex.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.)

Novermber 2008, Sarlapalli Village, Nallamalla Forest.

Narayana, the man in the photo is 35 years old but looks 40. He has stayed back at home as he is sick. He feels too sick to go to the nearest government health center (which is two villages away, a considerable distance) and even if he goes there he knows he will not be treated well.

Many of the Chenchus we talked to complained that when they approached the government health center they were not treated well by the staff there. The doctors/staff there would not even touch them apparently! They would only ask what their problem was and upon the Chenchu describing his/her problem they would give them some common pills against fever etc. According to our doctor-producer most of the diseases that plague the Chenchus (like scabies, polio) are easily curable as treatments/medicines for them are widely available. If the government can improve the conditions at the health care center and make them more accessible for the tribals most of their health problems would be solved according to him.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.) 

November 2008, Sarlapalli Village, Nallamalla Forest.

Among one of the biggest problems faced by the Chenchus who are in constant contact with civilization is health related. The children (as can be seen from the pale, scabbed hands of the baby in the hammock) are commonly prone to various skin diseases. Many of them never live to see adulthood. And even those who live to be adults are frequently prone to diseases that have been eradicated from urban India. There are many reasons for this. One reason is they have no natural resistance to many of the diseases that are common in a civilized world as until recently they have lived in isolation for generations in forests. Second reason is inadequate health care provided by the government. A third reason is improper hygiene among the tribals when living in a civilized setting. Another important reason for their ill health, especially among their children, is food related which I’ll talk about in relation to a later photo.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.)

November 2008, Sarlapalli Village, Nallamalla Forest.

The Chenchus are a group of adivasis (literally original inhabitants) who live in the central hill regions of Andhra Pradesh. Most of their population lives within the protected Nallamalla Forest in Mahbubnagar district. They follow a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. A steadily increasing exposure to civilization has brought a host of problems for them. The land on which they have been living for generations has been declared as a protected tiger reserve by the government. Therefore, there are moves to displace them completely from the forest area and resettle them elsewhere. The Chenchus are shy, wary of strangers and government efforts to introduce them to agriculture. They want to be left alone by civilization and allowed to live as they have been living for generations. But due to the steady disappearance of their traditional lifestyle under pressure from civilization the Chenchus are slowly dying out like the tiger which the government is trying to protect by displacing the Chenchus. Over the next few days I’ll try to highlight some of the many problems faced by the Chenchus in their struggle to survive.

(To read this photo essay in sequence from the beginning please go here.) 

These photos were shot during a preliminary shoot for a documentary film on the displacement issue of the Chenchus that I’m working on with a filmmaker. We visited 3 villages on that day along with our producer (who is also a doctor) that have been exposed most to civilization and thereby face the most problems. There are many more Chenchu hamlets deep in the jungle that can only be reached after a hard trek. We limited ourselves to 3 villages for the preliminary shoot as they were most accessible.

November 2008, Hyderabad.

September 2008, MV Foundation Alur Camp.

October 2008, Hyderabad.

Yesterday, I attended a play or rather a solo performance on the life of the great Hindi and Urdu writer, the Late Dr. Rahi Masoom Reza. To know more about him go here. The performance was very well written, acted and moving. It was especially relevant for contemporary Indian society where Hindus and Muslims increasingly view each other with suspicion and distrust.

I wish I could have avoided the lamp that seems to be coming out of the actor’s head but since I was limited to shooting from my seat I had to make do with this angle.

September 2008, Hyderabad.

About a month back, along with a few other amateur photographers, I had visited two camps for girls in and around Hyderabad managed by the MV Foundation (read more about them here) as part of the first step in a project we intended to do with them. The foundation works with children who come from a child labor as well as other troubled backgrounds. They take care of them in these residential camps where they are made part of a bridge course and after about a year in that are then put in the normal school stream. Many such children have done incredibly well, with some now studying medicine and some others finding good jobs in the IT sector. 

It was great fun to interact with and photograph the children. They were very enthusiastic about getting photographed. Even though at times their insistence to be photographed multiple times could be a little overwhelming their infectious happiness upon seeing their photos on the LCD screen of the camera made you forget all that. The children were a mix of age groups and came from diverse backgrounds. While most of them came from a child labor background some of them had gone through child marriages, suffered domestic abuse, lived all their lives until brought to the camps literally in jungles and even escaped murderous fathers. But the common thread that ran through all of them was their unwavering commitment to educating themselves. They did not want to go back to their old life and in fact some of them wanted to bring into the camps as many children as they could who were still caught in child labor. And that sincere belief they had in education I found very inspiring.