Woman in blue, woman in red, and kittens resting
Woman in blue, woman in red, and kittens resting
Betrawati, 2005
Trio in COVID masks and saris
Trio in COVID masks and saris
On the occasion of the Shree Krishna Janmashtami festival
(celebrating the birth of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu)
Patan Durbar Square, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, August 11th, 2020
Aunt and her niece, cooking a meal
Aunt and her niece, cooking a meal
Janakpur, Nepal, October 21st, 2015
Urmila (in orange) and her niece Ram Kala work to prepare a meal.
Urmila is one of my friend’s maternal aunts, and Ram Kala is a cousin.
With the punitive months-long Indian blockade of fuel and supplies, cooking gas is almost impossible to come by and so meals are cooked over wood fires. Because of the smoke inherent with wood fires, families try to cook outside if possible. Cooking times are lengthened, and with only one stove “burner”, each part of the meal (lentils, rice, tea, et cetera) must wait it’s turn to be cooked.
Though the small rectangular stool in the lower-left is only a couple of inches tall, it can make all the difference comfort-wise when one is squatting by the fire for an hour or more.
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Rabina
Rabina
Manamaiju, Kathmandu, Monday, October 12th, 2015
With a twelve-year-old photo (seen below) in hand, I went looking to see if I could find Sabina or Debika.
From the details of the old photo, I knew that the building they sat in front of in 2003 was now gone. We asked at a small shop, showing the photo, and were told to go down to the furniture shop.
Down the way a bit, under a blue tarp, a man worked with a chisel on lengths of wood, creating tenon joints. We showed him the photo and he motioned to a small room-sized building a stone’s throw away made from corrugated metal. Someone under the tarp called "Oh, Rabina bahini" and a moment later, Sabina’s younger sister Rabina came out and greeted us.
She loved seeing the photo of her older sister—younger in the photo than Rabina is now. She let us know that Sabina was fine, but that she lived in a different part of Kathmandu now. I was struck with how much Rabina looked like her didi [older sister].
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Rabina and her mother Sanu.
Asmi and Ramdevi, bohini and didi
Asmi and Ramdevi, bohini and didi
Kathmandu, June 18th, 2011
I stopped by a house where I had taken a family photo in the past. While Ramdevi (above in red) filled me in on some of the names that I hadn't gotten those many years ago, she herself is not in the older photo (which can be seen below).
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Asmi and Ramdevi’s family, back in 2005 (or 2003). I believe that is Asmi in the pink.
Sisti
Sisti
Betrawati, 2000 or 2002
Sitting on a bag of rice on top of a full TATA bus, I passed a building where Sisti bahini was looking out the second-story doorway.
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Sisti with her brother and mother.
I believe that Sisti’s family runs a fabric shop in town, just south of the bridge.
2000
Boy in a tea shop
Boy in a tea shop
Kathmandu, January 2003
I believe I was looking for the Shree Ganesh Himal Boarding School, when I stopped in this tea shop to ask for directions. This young boy worked there, the proprietor’s son I think.
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Mother and child
Mother and child
Manamaiju, Kathmandu 2003
I had taken many photos in the area so when I walked past her house this woman recognized me. She motioned me over excitedly and, as I navigated the thin squiggly trail to her house, she brought her baby out from inside.
Her house is just out of frame on the left;
behind me there are terraced fields;
before me, there is the beautiful smile of a very proud mother.
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Anup
Anup
Betrawati, November 2002
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Sujal, sitting on the stairs
Sujal, sitting on the stairs
Dadagaun, Kathmandu, 2005
I was visiting friends when I happened to see Sujal, a child of my friend’s neighbors. Sujal sits on the stairs outside of his family’s apartment. When he can manage to get out of the loving arms of his mother, his aunt, or one of the neighbor girls, he’s starting to walk.
I believe Sujal—just 18 months old—had just had his bath. His mother had then lovingly applied a small tika to Sujal’s forehead and kajal around his eyes.
The stairs behind Sujal lead to the roof, which is unfinished but provides a space to dry laundry in the air, or vegetables in the sun. The stairs themselves also provide a space to lean pots to dry after they have been washed at the nearby communal spigot.
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(Sujal’s image above was scanned from a 4x6" that I had had printed with a white border. As such, it's not quite a full-frame image; the image is a little tall for it's width, but I was hesitant to crop it any more)
In this photo showing the same steps, you can see two pots drying. After they have been scrubbed clean inside and out, a thin coat of mud is applied to the outside. I believe that while the mud still allows for the transfer of heat, it keeps the pots from getting black from the fire of the family stove.