Mother and child
Mother and child
Betrawati, May 2005
Mother with baby and son on porch
Mother with baby and son on porch
Tupche 2000
In a house above a small shop, a proud mother feeds her youngest son.
Down below people may be sharing news, buying white plastic bags of cooking oil, large bricks of Puja soap. If not helping in the fields, girls may be skipping rope, boys playing Carrom board, small children trailing empty plastic bags behind them like kites.
Although it lies just across a suspension bridge from Betrawati, I didn't get to Tupche more than a few times. It's a spread of terraced rice fields with a few clumps of houses and shops peppered here and there. To get from here to there you zigzag your way on the raised dike/walls that separate the fields. After the rice has been harvested children can play in the dry stubbly fields.
When I revisited Tupche two years later I walked by the house and the father, who I had not met previously, stopped me to thank me for this photo.
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I had been kneeling down on the porch to take the first photo; when I turned around I took this second photo.